The Fountain [USA, 2006]

Nine Things about the Film The Fountain

1. This movie is about a Hugh Jackman traveling through space in a giant snowglobe, talking to a tree and tattooing himself when he’s not meditating.

2. No, actually the movie is about Hugh Jackman playing a renegade cancer researcher who ignores his dying wife and loses his wedding ring.

3. Ok, seriously, the movie is really about Hugh Jackman in the role of a Spanish conquistador looking for the Biblical Tree of Life inside a Mayan pyramid.

4. Director Darren Aronofsky wove these three storylines together, spanning 1000 years, in a hypnotic, gorgeous allegory wrapped in metaphor and myth. Of course, it was a box office flop.

5. The movie does start out very confusing. And if you can’t maintain attention to it, it will remain confusing. But if you make the connections between the storylines, patterns begin to emerge. Aronofsky has called this movie a Rubik’s Cube, which has only one solution… although you can get to it in different ways.

6. The movie is about death. Specifically, it’s a conflict of perspectives about death. Either “death is a disease”, or “death is the road to awe”.

7. From the millenium-spanning, continent-crossing, religion-blending stories, it all ends up centering on a man afraid of the fact that he’s going to die.

8. I think this is Hugh Jackman’s best performance.

9.This is a hallucinatory. philosophical experience that many people will find frustrating for reasons they can’t quite explain. But for those people who can get on the movie’s wavelength, Aronofsky uncovers some core psychospiritual concepts that dwell hidden within each one of us.