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My Views on The Fountain

Sunday 12/03/2006 8:46 AM

The Fountain is not a movie. It is an experience.

A few years ago, Steve Soderbergh re-interpretted an old, obscure Russian science fiction movie called Solaris. I had never seen the original, but with George Clooney and an intriguing trailer, I checked it out. And fell in love.

Solaris (the new one, not the old one) is a breathtaking work of art, work of experience. But it is not for everybody. Almost every person who has watched it on my recommendation has at best been bored with it. Some have despised it. Yet I can still watch it over and over.

What's so special about Solaris? I could write about it for a long time, but I will try to sum up its magic in a paragraph or so. Long stretches of dialogue-free story. How the soundtrack plays as important a role as the script and the actors. The things gloriously hinted at and left for you to ponder and explore on your own. Solaris is the best kind of movie in that it strives to not just entertain, but transform you.

The Fountain is another such movie.

Told in three parallel stories, The Fountain addresses the acceptance of loss and death in both direct and indirect ways. In this age of trick endings in movies, by the end of the film most audience members are either straining their mind to decipher it all or just flat out angry that their hour-and-a-half of patiently sitting in the theatre has not been rewarded with a pat, tidy ending.

The Fountain is like a great song you've just discovered and have to listen to over and over again. Most movies aren't like that — you see them and you're done with them. Once you know what happens, the allure is gone. I am writing this late Friday night and by the time you read this I will have seen The Fountain for the third time. Not for the spectacle. Not because I'm trying to figure it out. I will have seen it yet again because it is a song I'm trying to learn, and only by repeating it encore after encore will I learn the rhythm, the lyrics, the feel.

Movies like The Fountain are anathema to the movie industry of today. Actually, with one exception, Stanley Kubrick's 2001, movies such as The Fountain would probably fail at any time, yesterday, today and tomorrow. There are some parallels between it and 2001, but there is a huge, critical difference as well. When 2001 was released, director Stanley Kubrick was at the height of his power and was able to sway the studio to promote it heavily. Plus, America in the late 60's was much more amenable to experiencing a movie as "trip" instead of pure story-driven entertainment.

Director Darren Aronofsky has not had any such good fortune with his film that swings for the fences and beyond. While you should not doubt for a moment that The Fountain will fail commercially, you should also not mis-read those box office tea leaves as an indication that it is a poor movie.

Do you know who M.C. Escher was? He's the guy who made all those black and white drawings of impossible scenes that defy reality in novel ways. Picking one at random from my memory, I remember the puzzle of alligator shapes on a desktop with some of the puzzle pieces transformed into actual alligators and walking around the desk only to merge again with the puzzle on the other side.

The Fountain is the most Escher-like movie you will ever see. With its fractalish construction where small elements in one storyline connect you to larger elements in another, The Fountain is a kaleidoscope of theme, a mirror reflecting in a mirror our forever-ago questions about mortality and, even more importantly, life itself.

The beauty of The Fountain is that it needn't be explained to be enjoyed, deciphered to be learned from, or resolved to evoke bittersweet joy.

Go with the flow. Go see The Fountain. There are plenty of seats, but not much time.

File Under: Movies
Music: Clint Mansell "The Fountain"

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