the fountain, updates
NZ is notorious for withholding new films for months on end, and it was only this week that Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain was released. Finally saw it today.
For the most part I enjoyed it a lot, though I fall into neither the "loved it" or "hated it" camp, as most of the commentators seem to be neatly categorising themselves and everybody else.
It's certainly visually stunning (worth seeing for the colours and lighting alone), but from a narrative point of view I felt it wasn't Aronofsky's best work. I'm comparing it primarily to Pi, his full-length debut, which had an extraordinary amount of understated grit and focus. (Whereas Requiem for a Dream was quite a faithful adaptation to the novel so perhaps not as relevant to the discussion at hand.) Although the main body of the narrative was pretty elegant, I thought the concluding 10-15 minutes were a bit on the hamhanded side and ended up muddying the point rather than defining it. The same can be said for the script - most of it was very good, but some additional editing-down would not have gone awry for the endgame.
Two of my favourite films, Loggerheads and The Hours, are also told in a distinctive tripartite structure. As far as this superficial comparison goes I felt that the three parts in The Fountain mostly worked, though one, being intentionally fictitious, was slightly tenuous in its linkages to the other parts.
Emotionally I felt that it hit its target by and large, though again the little bit of self-indulgent opacity toward the end may have cost the film in terms of just how much emotional impact it could have had. This I really believe is a case where the director let his love of visual beauty run away from him a little bit, at the expense of truly incisive emotional impact.
Thematically I preferred Pi, though it seems more personal preference than anything else. I've always been more fascinated by God, belief, mathematical elegance etc rather than Sweeping Statements Re: Love and Death, which no doubt coloured my perceptions when it came to comparing the two films.
No complaints on the score front. But then, it's Clint Mansell, so that sort of goes without saying. Was quasi-amused (and disappointed) that he didn't go for yet another rehashed version of the melody line used in both Pi and Requiem for a Dream - was rather hoping that was going to become his signature move in Aranofsky collaborations.
It's also interesting to see Hugh Jackman star, in quick succession, in respective new works by my two favourite "new generation" directors. (The other being Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.) I will have to see both again at some point, but off the cuff I think Nolan "won" this round of favourites.
In life news: busy with new work, watching a lot of TV (BSG, GG, SV, SPN, Heroes, Ugly Betty) on the downtime, planning to vid QAF(US) next. Also hope to finish (or at least take a chunk out of) fic (607) by the end of this month.
For the most part I enjoyed it a lot, though I fall into neither the "loved it" or "hated it" camp, as most of the commentators seem to be neatly categorising themselves and everybody else.
It's certainly visually stunning (worth seeing for the colours and lighting alone), but from a narrative point of view I felt it wasn't Aronofsky's best work. I'm comparing it primarily to Pi, his full-length debut, which had an extraordinary amount of understated grit and focus. (Whereas Requiem for a Dream was quite a faithful adaptation to the novel so perhaps not as relevant to the discussion at hand.) Although the main body of the narrative was pretty elegant, I thought the concluding 10-15 minutes were a bit on the hamhanded side and ended up muddying the point rather than defining it. The same can be said for the script - most of it was very good, but some additional editing-down would not have gone awry for the endgame.
Two of my favourite films, Loggerheads and The Hours, are also told in a distinctive tripartite structure. As far as this superficial comparison goes I felt that the three parts in The Fountain mostly worked, though one, being intentionally fictitious, was slightly tenuous in its linkages to the other parts.
Emotionally I felt that it hit its target by and large, though again the little bit of self-indulgent opacity toward the end may have cost the film in terms of just how much emotional impact it could have had. This I really believe is a case where the director let his love of visual beauty run away from him a little bit, at the expense of truly incisive emotional impact.
Thematically I preferred Pi, though it seems more personal preference than anything else. I've always been more fascinated by God, belief, mathematical elegance etc rather than Sweeping Statements Re: Love and Death, which no doubt coloured my perceptions when it came to comparing the two films.
No complaints on the score front. But then, it's Clint Mansell, so that sort of goes without saying. Was quasi-amused (and disappointed) that he didn't go for yet another rehashed version of the melody line used in both Pi and Requiem for a Dream - was rather hoping that was going to become his signature move in Aranofsky collaborations.
It's also interesting to see Hugh Jackman star, in quick succession, in respective new works by my two favourite "new generation" directors. (The other being Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.) I will have to see both again at some point, but off the cuff I think Nolan "won" this round of favourites.
In life news: busy with new work, watching a lot of TV (BSG, GG, SV, SPN, Heroes, Ugly Betty) on the downtime, planning to vid QAF(US) next. Also hope to finish (or at least take a chunk out of) fic (607) by the end of this month.