Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little bit of rain on the happy parade that were those first two reviews from the recent test screening of THE FOUNTAIN by Darren Aronofsky. Gatsby here didn't care for the flick and he's not shy on tellin' ya' it failed for him. I get the same kind of vibe from reading Gatsby's review that I get when reading someone's thoughts on why DONNIE DARKO isn't as good as people are saying it is. I'm not putting this reviewer down. It's a legitimate opinion and one I may very well agree with when I see the film. I hope not. I really want this one to be amazing. In that way I hope I'm right about the DONNIE DARKO comparison because I fuckin' loved DONNIE DARKO. Anyway, beware of spoilers. Here's "Gatsby."
Hey Harry,
Gatsby here, I wrote in previously with an Elizabethtown review that you published. I wasn't going to write in, but after reading the 2 reviews posted this morning, I had to say something. I was at the Fountain screening last night as well, and all I can say to Mega-Swarm and Filmburst is that we must've been at two different movies.
They told us this was the first screening, but judging by the looks of it, all the effects and music were complete, so this wasn't any type of work-in-progress. To frame what I'm about to say properly, let me say that all of the people I was with were VERY excited to see Aronofsky's new movie. We've all seen Pi and Requiem, and LOVED them. We expected a great movie.
To best sum up our reaction to the film, all I can say is that my friend leaned over to me in the middle of the screening and whispered, "Somebody's about to lose a LOT of money."
I feel bad about talking the film down because it really does ASPIRE to brilliance, it just fails to reach it.
Summary: There's 3 distinct storylines--1) that of Jackman and Weisz as a Conquistator and the Queen of Spain during the Inquisition, when she sends him after the Mayan tree of life as a method to free Spain from the grip of Inquisitors. 2) A modern medical story where Weisz is dying from a brain tumor, and Jackman is her husband, a medical researcher trying to find a cure. A process that uses material from a very rare tree in South America, and 3) a section of Jackman as a monk-like man floating towards the heavens in a bubble with a tree that gives him life and visions of Weisz as both the Queen and the tumor-lady.
I wanted to like this film SO BAD. But 5 minutes in, it felt like I was watching the longest, biggest-budgeted pretentious student film in history. The film is ONLY about an idea. And the ideas are interesting, but there is no drama on which to hang these thoughts.
The Conquistador story has the most interest, in fact, one of the things I learned by watching this film is that I would really enjoy a good Conquistador story. The medical drama is so thoroughly predictable and paint by numbers that it wouldn't equal a decent hour-long episode of a TV medical drama. And finally, the scene in the bubble--well let me say this. I WISH watching a man pull a piece of bark from a tree and suck on it was as interesting as watching paint dry.
I'm sorry I'm coming off so negative. All of us who went afterwards were talking about how bad we felt for not liking this film. In fact, on the review cards they had us fill our afterwards, there were a series of words they wanted us to chose from to describe the film, and weirdly enough, all of us chose Boring and Imaginative to describe it. So obviously something has gone seriously awry.
The filmmaking overall is actually pretty good. Great visuals--and the ending is cool as hell, with flowers bursting out of Jackman. There is another scene at the end however that is a little ridiculous. Conquistador Jackman eventually finds the tree and stabs it with a knife, causing semen-like sap to spew forth from the trunk. Jackman then begins to lap up the semen in a scene my friend compared to "Brokeback Fountain."
The whole film was shot in extreme close-ups on a really long lens, meaning that all you really saw for much of the film was eyeballs. And seeing a ton of tight shots in a row is sort of inherently boring--rather than bringing you into the mind's of the characters, it eventually creates a wall between you where you start to back away mentally for some breathing room.
All in all--a tremendous disappointment. I mean--I AM their target audience. I often like slow movies--Kiarostami's The Taste of Cherry is one of my favorites.
But the ideas in The Fountain are pretty unoriginal--Don't bury yourself in the search for meaning when it's there every moment right in front of you, blah blah blah. For a slow movie to be good, it's gotta be gripping. It has to offer you a reason to keep watching. It has to hold a mystery as to where you are ultimately going--and for anyone who has been to the movies a couple of times, The Fountain isn't going to hold that mystery.
For all those who might think I didn't "get it" --I got it. I get that he died by finishing her story by tattooing himself with ink from her pen. I understand the intellectual ideas at play. I got it all, the movie just didn't make me CARE about it.
Sorry to rain on the parade.
Gatsby
