THE FOUNTAIN
THE FOUNTAIN
January 7 2008, DVD, living room, rented from Hollywood Video
I watched this because A) I've been wanting to see it since long before it came out, being a massive Darren Aronofsky fan, B) because Shawna gushed about it at work to me, and C) I wanted to decide whether or not I wanted to just buy it.
Suffice it to say I'm cueing up my Amazon account right this damn minute, and purchasing the hell out of it.
This movie is a love letter to a man very much in love. He's in love with his wife's cunt, he's in love with his come, he's in love with how gorgeous everything looks when you're in love, and how sad is the knowledge that you might not be together forever. This is a love letter apologizing for being a busy person, and trying to get it right, and not being there because you're trying to save your beloved from certain doom, and how pointless that is, and how he should really just stay home and hug her.
This is Darren Aronofsky and Rachel Weisz.
I think I remember somewhere reading that the movie was a very emotional experience for all of the three leads (Aronofsky, Weisz, and the sublime Hugh Jackman), and how it was actually very easy for everyone to do their performances, because Darren was so very much in love with Rachel he did a great job of explaining to Hugh what he should do, and Rachel was so very in love with Darren that she makes love to the camera when he's on the other end of it, and the acing that Hugh had to do with her was in the form of a love letter from her beloved Darren, and Hugh Jackman is very much madly stupidly in love with his wife, and so he was easily able to access the necessary emotions to carry this fucking weird-ass, beautiful, gorgeously romantic and philosophical movie. I don't know if this is true or anything, but still - that's the impression I got. And who would be able to resist the adorability of Rachel Weisz?
So beautiful. Last time I saw a movie this visually astonishing was MIRRORMASK, and that shit was wack, storywise.THE FOUNTAIN is awesome, storywise, as well as having the tastiest low-budget psychadelic visuals since BARBARELLA. Really, the entire production design is fantastically rich and gorgeous, reflecting the dirty-gold decadence and confusion of its earliest storyline. Oh, and did I mention the parallel storylines, interwoven seamlessly and linked by moments of emotional crisis? Did I mention the concept of a shared consciousness that permeates the universe, birthed by what to me seems like the DMT truth that users of harmaline alkaloids experience, what with the elves and whatnot? I mean, seriously, has this guy been taking the same drugs as me? The drugs that make you believe in true love, but also acknowledge how cosmically difficult that would be?
But Darren Aronofsky believes. Or at the least, he can make a movie that has me weeping at how romantic it is in the first twenty minutes. It helps that the lovers are Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, a pair of cuties if ever I've seen 'em, and that they play a valiant conquistador fighting against the Inquisition in 13th-Century Spain and Queen Isabella, medical research genius Tommy Creo and impossibly dewy wife Iz (dying of a convenient brain tumor, and given to spouting off wholesome bullshit about accepting her death), and well, I guess the unfortunate spirit of Tomas/Tommy, skinheaded, wearing baggy gray pajamas and trapped on what looks like a big divot of the Earth's crust trapped in a bubble floating through deep space (did I mention the weird?) with the Tree of Life, desperately trying to work out his relationship with the ghost of Iz and Isabella. OK. Sounds complicated. Is. (no pun intended.) But worth it, and not that hard to figure out, as soon as you're cool with Hugh Jackman's shaved head and the fact that he's alternately slowly picking away at that Tree of Life and eating bits of it, and hugging and kissing it and screaming. He has vowed to figure it out, and he will not give up. Oh, and his eyebrows are bleached, too. It's pretty hot, really. He makes a really sexy skinhead. Rachel Weisz is beautiful and excellent at what she does - I've liked her for a long time. This movie officially makes it love. (The special features are helping, too - she's a profane-mouthed, dead sexy English gal in reality, and I bet she's a blast to hang out with.)
But jeepers, man, give me the number of your drug dealer.
No, really, it's fantastic. The most emotionally pure and resonant speculative films sound pretty dumb when you try to describe them. I'm also not using the most high-flung language I could, because I really don't want to reduce it. It is an experience of nearly pure feeling. Intellect helps, sure, especially if you've read any Jung, but there's no need for me to go on about it. I'd only get it wrong, anyway. THE FOUNTAIN is beautiful and I'm buying it, and I guess that's all there is to it.
Also? Soundtrack by Kronos Quartet and Mogwai. C'mon.
January 7 2008, DVD, living room, rented from Hollywood Video
I watched this because A) I've been wanting to see it since long before it came out, being a massive Darren Aronofsky fan, B) because Shawna gushed about it at work to me, and C) I wanted to decide whether or not I wanted to just buy it.
Suffice it to say I'm cueing up my Amazon account right this damn minute, and purchasing the hell out of it.
This movie is a love letter to a man very much in love. He's in love with his wife's cunt, he's in love with his come, he's in love with how gorgeous everything looks when you're in love, and how sad is the knowledge that you might not be together forever. This is a love letter apologizing for being a busy person, and trying to get it right, and not being there because you're trying to save your beloved from certain doom, and how pointless that is, and how he should really just stay home and hug her.
This is Darren Aronofsky and Rachel Weisz.
I think I remember somewhere reading that the movie was a very emotional experience for all of the three leads (Aronofsky, Weisz, and the sublime Hugh Jackman), and how it was actually very easy for everyone to do their performances, because Darren was so very much in love with Rachel he did a great job of explaining to Hugh what he should do, and Rachel was so very in love with Darren that she makes love to the camera when he's on the other end of it, and the acing that Hugh had to do with her was in the form of a love letter from her beloved Darren, and Hugh Jackman is very much madly stupidly in love with his wife, and so he was easily able to access the necessary emotions to carry this fucking weird-ass, beautiful, gorgeously romantic and philosophical movie. I don't know if this is true or anything, but still - that's the impression I got. And who would be able to resist the adorability of Rachel Weisz?
So beautiful. Last time I saw a movie this visually astonishing was MIRRORMASK, and that shit was wack, storywise.THE FOUNTAIN is awesome, storywise, as well as having the tastiest low-budget psychadelic visuals since BARBARELLA. Really, the entire production design is fantastically rich and gorgeous, reflecting the dirty-gold decadence and confusion of its earliest storyline. Oh, and did I mention the parallel storylines, interwoven seamlessly and linked by moments of emotional crisis? Did I mention the concept of a shared consciousness that permeates the universe, birthed by what to me seems like the DMT truth that users of harmaline alkaloids experience, what with the elves and whatnot? I mean, seriously, has this guy been taking the same drugs as me? The drugs that make you believe in true love, but also acknowledge how cosmically difficult that would be?
But Darren Aronofsky believes. Or at the least, he can make a movie that has me weeping at how romantic it is in the first twenty minutes. It helps that the lovers are Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, a pair of cuties if ever I've seen 'em, and that they play a valiant conquistador fighting against the Inquisition in 13th-Century Spain and Queen Isabella, medical research genius Tommy Creo and impossibly dewy wife Iz (dying of a convenient brain tumor, and given to spouting off wholesome bullshit about accepting her death), and well, I guess the unfortunate spirit of Tomas/Tommy, skinheaded, wearing baggy gray pajamas and trapped on what looks like a big divot of the Earth's crust trapped in a bubble floating through deep space (did I mention the weird?) with the Tree of Life, desperately trying to work out his relationship with the ghost of Iz and Isabella. OK. Sounds complicated. Is. (no pun intended.) But worth it, and not that hard to figure out, as soon as you're cool with Hugh Jackman's shaved head and the fact that he's alternately slowly picking away at that Tree of Life and eating bits of it, and hugging and kissing it and screaming. He has vowed to figure it out, and he will not give up. Oh, and his eyebrows are bleached, too. It's pretty hot, really. He makes a really sexy skinhead. Rachel Weisz is beautiful and excellent at what she does - I've liked her for a long time. This movie officially makes it love. (The special features are helping, too - she's a profane-mouthed, dead sexy English gal in reality, and I bet she's a blast to hang out with.)
But jeepers, man, give me the number of your drug dealer.
No, really, it's fantastic. The most emotionally pure and resonant speculative films sound pretty dumb when you try to describe them. I'm also not using the most high-flung language I could, because I really don't want to reduce it. It is an experience of nearly pure feeling. Intellect helps, sure, especially if you've read any Jung, but there's no need for me to go on about it. I'd only get it wrong, anyway. THE FOUNTAIN is beautiful and I'm buying it, and I guess that's all there is to it.
Also? Soundtrack by Kronos Quartet and Mogwai. C'mon.