Pushing the Edge of What's Acceptable Talking with Darren Aronofsky |
Did working with a smaller budget [on The Fountain] force you to be more creative? Yeah, absolutely, but I think you're always trying to be inventive, and you're always pushing your budgets to the edge. When I had $60,000 to do Pi, I had to figure out how to make that film with that money. When we had the tight budget on The Fountain, I wanted to give it this epic feel and look. But I'll tell you: The average cost of movies in Hollywood is about $80 million. But I think that The Fountain looks as good as any of those films. That's because a lot of that money goes to waste, and in The Fountain we didn't waste a dime. There were reports of the film being booed at the Venice Film Festival. Does reading that sort of thing bother you? Well, it was not true. And that was what was upsetting—some people did boo, and then some people did applaud, and then there was even a fight between two journalists that were on either side. And to me, that was the interesting story. It was a shame that it never got reported, because I think that's what my films have always done, they've always been divisive. They're always pushing the edge of what's acceptable in film. The fact that it could get a standing ovation as well as upsetting people is, I think, what makes it special. Do you feel any box-office pressure given that the studio did take a chance on this film? I think The Fountain is a very, very commercial film, in the sense that it's about the search for the fountain of youth, which is one of our oldest myths, and it's something that everyone wants in their heart, and it also deals with all the big questions about why are we here, what is life, what is death, what is love, can we love forever, can we live forever. And I think they're going to have an easy time selling it to people, because people want to think about that type of stuff. Josh Bell |
Aronofsky presents this material in a deliberately obtuse fashion that blurs the line between what is real and what is imagined, but his message—that death is inevitable and powerful, and something to be embraced—ends up more important than the plot or even the characters, which is disappointing given the scope of the narrative and its powerful potential. The beginning of the film is disorienting in its jumps from past to present to future, hinting at some grand design behind all the confusion, and the anticipatory feeling that Aronofsky creates is sadly never fully rewarded.
That sinking feeling sets in about halfway through, when you realize that the various plot threads are never going to coalesce, that there's never going to be any "Aha!" moment as what Tomas is doing in the past influences what Tom does in the present, or when Tom's obsession with finding a cure for Izzi sends the future Tom into the far reaches of space. No, it's just a long, meandering meditation on the total grooviness of death, with a pretentious ending of pretty images right out of the overrated (and 10 times as pretentious) "Starchild" sequence in 2001.
There are some undeniably beautiful moments in The Fountain, though, probably none more amazing than the shots of the nebula that future Tom seeks out, created not with CGI but by blowing up microscopic footage of water droplets. And Aronofsky frames Weisz, his fiancée, so beatifically that it's not hard to believe that Tom would go into the deepest jungles or the farthest reaches of space for her. Not that she exhibits many other qualities, though, and not that Tom exhibits any other than determination. As befits its status as a feature-length fortune cookie, The Fountain is long on ponderous soliloquies but disappointingly short on anything to really sink your teeth into.