''Together we will live forever.'' The Fountain is one of the deepest and beautifulest movies I've ever had the pleasure to witness. If you follow it through to its conclusion and are open minded, a deep thinker then it becomes gratifyingly mind-b
...( read more)lowing. As for the tree of life and Izzi's book, is it real? Is she the tree? Or maybe Tom and Izzi are both a combined element of the tree in the end, the Tree representing or being their eternal love in essence them.The main message The Fountain delivers is accepting death and it's never easy to lose a loved one; True lovers fight to keep this love always. I could watch this film over and over, and still pick up different ideas from it. People will understand this film one day, maybe when were more evolved mentally, we've all closed our minds.
I believe to the best of my ability I understand The Fountain now. I accept what other people think because end of the day I'm in awe of something that is unlike most material, that isn't afraid of being hated by a religious or material obsessed public. Always seems whatever card you play, the more stupid people become. The tree she is, he is, entwined in love. Some people think this film is about death or life, that it is sad, the truth is in between, death is the road to awe.''I'm sorry father, for you there is only death. But our destiny is life!''
Death as a means of life, falls on deaf ears in todays zombie-like society. All in our little boxes or one track thoughts. We want a movie that has a basic plot, simple characters, that forever keep changing titles but in essence end up all the same. Well I don't want that, thats why Fountain is so special to me because it explores the whole notion of Death, Rebirth and Love, not to mention the difficult process of losing a loved one and how we would do anything to save them. In essence sometimes we can't change something that's destined to happen, which begs for the old acceptance and to let the river run its course which remains the real message. The Fountain is neither stereotypically happy or sad to me, in the end its resolute, a simple Zen-like fable bordering on rebirth and love eternal.
The parts played beautifully by Hugh Jackman and Rachael Weisz and the love they feel for each other is for me genuinely believable. One scene near the end where he is looking at her like an embodiment of memories, of realities where the Queen Isabella and Izzy merge, is wondrous to behold. Which begs me to wonder if the book Izzi writes isn't something made up from her imagination but one where she has remembered a previous life. Queen Isabella being one of he incarnations. Aztec beliefs also strangely mirror Buddhist ideas in a ''Death is the road to Awe'' sacrificial sense, underlining First Father and Rebirth. Which also makes me think the future Tom, is he not Tom at all or the embodiment of First Father. In essence is he First Father?''All these years, all these memories, there was you. You pull me through time.''
Darren Aronofsky is a genius and the greatest film-maker of our time. He is a visionary, and one of the greatest unique script writers out there. Hugh Jackman's performance ranks among the greatest male screen performances in unappreciated movie history. Rachel Weisz is amazing, as is Ellen Burnstyn, and Sean Patrick Thomas. Clint Mansell teams up with The Kronos Quartet and the Scottish rock band Mogwai to bring us some of the most beautiful and epic music I have ever experienced upon thy ears. Matthew Libatique's cinematography is breath taking too making a worthy companion to the rendition of sound. It is so simple, yet so effective and so hypnotic. Jay Robinowitz deserves special mention here because the story is so well put together it flows, and as an editor myself, I can understand how hard that must have been. The three time lines weave in and out of each other flawlessly.
Darren Aronofsky has a talent for looking at things that I think is so close to my own reflection and thoughts on higher things. Upon reflection Fountain is very similar to Requiem but does it in a more spiritual approach.
Darren's fascination with Mortality has always been there, just go back to Pi with the conversation at that Coffee Shop concerning the Tree Of life between a Jewish man and the film's mathematician scientist. The Fountain will cut Movie Lovers down the middle one half thinking it's cult inducing hippy trash about some bald guy in a bubble and the other half truly seeing it for the deep visual entrancing Journey of one man's struggle with Death, in a race against time to try to save his wife.
A masterpiece of Film Fountain belongs with 2001: A space Oddysee and even Requiem for a Dream for it's higher meaningful depictions of life and love. Each time I watch it there's always another piece, another juicy mesmerizing question raised; Always something that I didn't see before.''Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul.''
Overall, The Fountain uses each three segments and strands of the singular story to represent and reflect one another. A Grand Inquisitor begins to mirror Izzi's cancer, the future Tom mirroring life going on for the living, the present Tom having to go on with existence. The tree dying being one and the same as the situation of the dying wife. The Fountain is an answer and rubix cube of a cycle, the cycle being death and life. When we see each reality most will interpret these three strains as singular paths of different existence. The only one of relevance linking them all together is the present, the past one being Izzi's mind. When we come to the end sequence, it shows us proceedings that are mind blowing; Proceedings hard to comprehend, and also something that is a revelation of the film's ultimate answer. Obviously the answer is open to interpretation or even controversy with audiences which for me adds to the genius during the film's storytelling and soulful visual acculturation.
It's answer being not one of eternal life, rather one of mortality, struggle and acceptance yet again. Izzi shows us in her book, Tom's past mind set, one of unrelenting unwavering head long brashness. Hence why he drinks from the tree of life he is consumed by it, unready. Yet in this act Tom and Izzi's minds connect future with past, catching present in the middle in harmonic proportions. The answer that remains is that memories, love, death, and time are impossible to fight, quite like swimming up river, fighting against the current, when really you should be going with the flow. With The Fountain, my advice, go with the flow, and reap the rewards.
''Death is the road to awe.''
Ellen Burstyn,
Hugh Jackman,
Rachel Weisz,
Sean Patrick Thomas,
Mark Margolis
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An odyssey about one man's eternal struggle to save the woman he loves. His epic journey begins in 16th-century Spain, where conquistador Tomas commences his search for the Fountain of Youth, the lege...( read more
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DVD Release Date: May 18, 2007
Stats: 25,034 reviews
Your Rating
Flixster Reviews (25,034)
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February 4, 2010''Together we will live forever.'' The Fountain is one of the deepest and beautifulest movies I've ever had the pleasure to witness. If you follow it through to its conclusion and are open minded, a deep thinker then it becomes gratifyingly mind-b
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November 6, 2009"For every shadow, no matter how deep, is threatened by morning light."
Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is dozens of things, but primarily it's a film about love. Countless films address the same topic, or use it as a framework to tell a story, but few are as pass...( read more) -
September 12, 2009Visually extremely stunning and well acted but with its meaning hidden in three sometimes rather confusing storylines. Love, death, reincarnation and fate being the themes of this very unique film.
Somehow I want to understand it, want to love it more than I do right now. The sec...( read more) -
September 11, 2009The Fountain is a movie with a great concept, but end up being it's own worst enemy. In what was already an interesting idea, more vague concepts and visuals are piled on to make this film more of a Nyquil dream rather than a great movie. The visuals are different, but not that...( read more)
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September 4, 2009Thwart with production issues from the very beginning, its a wonder that The Fountain was ever made at all. For all its trials and tribulations though, it was so worth the weight, the Fountain is an absolute masterpiece and one of the greatest love stories ever produced. My one a...( read more)
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February 8, 2010I still have yet to sit through the whole thing but from what I saw...wow!
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February 8, 2010the end was so unexpected! especially the one where the plant grows out of him. it's not a confusing movie, but there is too much going on.
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February 5, 2010The performances lack specificity, and the androcentrism and Eurocentrism cramp a potentially humane comment on grief and mortality, but it's so gorgeous that it rises above its tropes and manages to be compelling, at times even moving.
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February 1, 2010Aronofsky's cathartic take on mortality is visually immersive, but seemed a little distant. Actors needed to break your heart, and I'm not sure Jackman & Weisz were up to the task. This film has moved so many people I know and love to tears, but just bounced off me; in trying to ...( read more)
Critic Reviews
The movie may have significant truths to impart, although I have my doubts, but it feels too inexperienced, too unworldly, to have earned the right to them. full review
Exquisitely beautiful and almost unbearably sad... The Fountain is cinema as poetry; romance as revelation; science fiction as prayer. full review
The picture is visually intoxicating --- the images have a luminous psychedelic beauty --- and the film's themes emerge elegantly out of the story's intricately-looped tri-level structure. full review
A haunting and remarkable emotional journey that takes us places movies rarely dare to go. full review
In his third feature, Darren Aronofsky tries to replace the prose of narrative cinema with a poetic language of rhyming images and visual metaphors.
With its whispered dialogue and funereal tone, The Fountain takes itself far too seriously. No one else will. full review
I think I finally understand what George H.W. Bush meant by 'a thousand points of light.' full review
Part historical fantasy, part lovers-separated-by-death weeper, part New Age fever dream, The Fountain isn't truly horrible, just very, very silly. full review
Comments
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April 29, 2009Can someone please explain the title to me. I missed the last 5 or 10 minutes of this flick due to technical problems in theatre. No one saw the actual end and I don't understand where the fountain is coming from.
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September 12, 2008Hugh Jackman was awesome ,but it is a very weird story. not happening. need to see some good scenery n Hugh then hav a look.
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July 15, 2008
''Together we will live forever''
Pleased more of my friends adore this film, still haven't seen anything to replace it as my number 1, The Dark Knight, There will be Blood or LOTR come close...possibly but as for The Fountain and it's material or subject matter, still hasn't been anything yet as evolved and different in complexity, from other A to B type movies. -
April 28, 2008I have never before seen a film I would so willingly label as beautiful.
It's funny, while it was running, it all seemed to make perfect sense, but now that I'm trying to write a review of it, I can't seem to put any of it into words- in fact, the sense of understanding has completely vanished, and it's all a jumble. That's what I get for trying to write reviews at three in the morning... -
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February 18, 2008Love the movie, didn't get the whole parallele kind of life that was going on the movie but still it made me think about life and death and the tree of life, I actualy had to read Genesses just to understand. And of course I love Hugh and Rachel...
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December 11, 2007
One man, a woman, a book, a tree.
The book, his mind,the female bond.
The tree of life in all three realities.
Death is the road to awe.
Death as a means of life.
An endless cycle, an Aztec truth.
Theres a secret somewhere you just have to unlock it. -
November 12, 2007I like how people who loved the film think people who didnt simply didnt get it. I did get it, I got everything and it simply felt too ambious and it failed. Its no masterpiece, its just some strange piece of filmmaking that could have been better if Aronosky had been able to find his focus.
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November 11, 2007Hmmmm Christine (The Celtic Poet's) Top pick of 2006!
Hmmm I think my son would say, "Hey, Mom you get to see Hugh Jackman as a bald guy in this one!" .....
Flixster - Share MoviesHey both Ben & I are HUGE fans of Hugh Jackman (Wolverine-Xmen)& Rachel Weisz (Nehpreteri-The Mummy I, II & Scorpion King)
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