the fountain

Music: Labradford: Mi Media Naranja (1997)

Last night Brooke and I saw The Fountain, Aronofsky's sci-fi labor of love that was four years in the making. After two hours of what seemed like a prolonged dream-sequence the film abruptly ended, without discernable resolution. I decided to applaud in the (surprisingly) half-full theatre, to which a number of spectators responded with a chuckle. I think this gesture and response sums up the reactions to the film. It was not a good film, but . . . walking to the car Brooke and I agreed that we simply didn't know what to think of it beyond the failure of form.

Andrei Tarkovsky is one of my favorite filmmakers, and I suspect that admission foreshadows what I’m about to say: I like The Fountain, pretension and all, very much. I like it because no one in the theatre knew what the heck to think about it as the credits rolled. Our impulse, I think, was to pan the film as overwrought and overacted (it was, in fact, overwrought and overacted). But the imagery and tone of the film was engaging, and despite its best efforts to laud the Love of Kitsch, it was not all roses and sunshine. The problem I had with the film is that I did not feel with it; intellectually I knew at times I was to feel anguish, but the drive toward anguish was rushed and, so, I didn't feel it. Taking cues from Tarkovsky (in my mind, the obvious homage), the film needed to be longer for the emotional complexity demanded by the plot to be felt. I think that the reason the film has flopped is because it was rushed. I have hope that the "director's cut" on DVD will remedy the problem, although I have doubts as well. I worry that Aronofsky has not seen Solaris or Stalker (two of the slowest yet greatest sci-fi films of all time).

This film is a good thing, if only because it is a major release that attempts to push at the boundaries of what is deemed commercially viable. It's clearly a product of compromise---and I detest the surface "love conquers all" message---but something about the loneliness of life in general is dealt with in a pretty way. Yes, I found the maudlin moments laughable, but watching this film I wanted to "go along." It's not Tarkovsky . . . but it gestures toward that kind of filmmaking. Films are the dreams of our collective; while imperfect (and at times laughably stupid), The Fountain does express something that we suspect exists outside of schemes of mastery and efficiency---something beyond calculation. Ok: the film sucks. But the discernable motive of the film speaks to the promise of art and the failure of love, it dances about the edge of kitsch so well I have to see it once more . . . .