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UDPATE: This is a mess as a review, but I did add some further thoughts at the bottom - what I perceived the movie to be about, versus what Doreen, my date perceived the movie to be about. See the bottom of this article.

It is DONE!

FantasticFest is over, and it has been a great ride, and it went out with a supernova bang, literally (OK not literally, but on screen).

I only listed The Fountain as that really was the center piece of the day, and the official closing night film. Darren Arronofsky actually intro'd the funky Fantastic Planet, the 60s French hand drawn animated scifi movie earlier in the day, I saw the last 40 minutes or so of that. Very wacky sense of design from another era, I'd never seen the whole thing, so was very fun to watch.

After that I walked out and immediately got in line for The Fountain. The festival has three levels of access - red badges (actually small bottle opener axes on a lanyard, nice touch!) get first priority, then the lesser green ones, then solo ticket buyers. Since the entire group gets to go in all at once, all reds get in before all greens. Pretty much every red axe sold was in line already for The Fountain when I walked out, so I was nervous about getting in.

I'd already employed RBM (Ruthless Bastard Mode) yesterday to get into Pan's Labyrinth, which there was also a huge line for - the red line was dauntingly long, and I was concerned I wouldn't get in, and I happened to have a shirt pocket that I had tucked my green axe (my "badge") into to keep it from swinging around. So I just nonchalantly walked in and wove into the line going down the hall once they started letting the reds in and basically cheated like the ruthless bastard I am to get into Pan's Labyrinth. All just for you folks, of course - definitely Evil Social Engineering, but all for a Good Cause - hey, I'm Press, right?

So when I saw the huge line, and my friend Paul Alvarado (one of the organizers of the festival) said that MAYBE 20 or 30 greens would get in about 20 minutes before they even started letting anyone in, I figured Fate was going to hand me my hat for the shenanigans the day before. This after I'd already line crashed by saying howdy to some friends from the Texas Film Commision, and then just stayed there, in typical "I'm not saying nuthin', I hope you don't feel the need to say nuthin', but I'm stayin' here so long as I don't get any dirty looks." fashion. So after all the Red Axes were let in, an Alamo Drafthouse employee comes down the line and is COUNTING us as we go...so it ain't lookin' good.

She stops counting TWO PEOPLE behind me and Doreen and says "That's it, right here."

So I got to get in, evil bad negative karma and all. I think The Gods want me to be able to review this movie. (Megalomania starts this way, right?)?

So we get in, and not only is Darren Arronofsky here, but also Clint Mansell - his longtime musical compatriot. If you never saw his first film Pi, run don't walk and go rent or buy it, and also go buy the soundtrack - I STILL listen to it in heavy rotation on my nano during runs. Darren didn't say much, other than it had been a long six years getting this film made.

Warning: TOTAL spolier alert

The Fountain stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, and if you haven't seen the visually arresting trailer, DON'T. The trailer gives the impression that the story literally takes place over three different time periods - 500 years ago, present day, and 500 years in the future. This is not the case, and is deceptive and confusing to walk into. When asked about it, the director said that was more of a marketing thing -the future part was simply in the far far future, with no specific time involved. Having seen the trailer and knowing it was in the future helped put some context on those scenes, which are shown without context and you have to figure out WHY this bald guy is alone in a perfectly clear sphere with a huge tree out in the middle of space.

The story can be interpreted in a number of ways, especially early on - is it a literal story, with three distinct parts? Not quite - my take on it, and there's probably room to argue about it, is that it is simply as presented - the dying wife, portrayed by Rachel Weisz, has cancer and is fading. The husband, played by Hugh Jackman, is a research doctor working desperately on research that he hope will cure her tumor. He tries a plant extract and it works well, amazingly well - not only does the test monkey's tumor (later, eventually) get better, but the monkey gets healthier, testing like it did 2/3 of it's life ago.

While the doctor works frantically to save his dying wife's life, she is at peace with it. She's been writing a story, and researching different cultures and their take on life and death. She's written a story, that takes place 500 years ago, as a conquistador struggles to find the tree of eternal life in the Mayan forests, while a dark and bloody Inquisitor tries to take over Spain, one piece at a time, through blood, torture, and "confession." He means to come after the queen, whom the conquistador (played by guess who) tries to save his queen (get it in one guess, OK?).

The book is not done, and the wife wants the husband to finish the last part after she dies.

My only real complaint about the film is that very early on it is very clear what the final message of the film will be, BUT the journey is so interestingly told, and beautifully shot, that it is no problem to wait for it to get there, and is beautiful when it does. In the future segment, I really enjoyed and appreciated that the space vehicle was NOT what Arronofsky himself described as "all we've had are space trucks - metal around something." It is a clear sphere, with no visible controls. A great future vision for scifi - everything is clean and simple and functional and organic - I'd MUCH rather live in that future than in Star Trek or Star Wars as future models. Instead of CG, he found the guy that did all the Kubrick stuff in 2001 and hired him (for cheap, no less, he's been shooting through a microscope for 25 years) and got some incredible footage, all very organic, through the lens stuff, and then composited that digitally. Arronofsky had a great aside about how CG movies are done poorly, it LOOKS blatantly CG, but people like it just for the big CG-ness of it. Whereas if you go back to 2001, those effects still hold up remarkably well even today - Arronofsky clearly wanted to make a film that'd still look GOOD, and REAL, rather than just state of the art for 2006; so that in 10 or 20 years you'd still see the film, and not the obsolete effects. An excellent decision I feel. This, after the film almost got made 6 years ago - Brad Pitt was going to be in it, they spent 18 million dollars preparing, built Mayan temples etc., then it all fell apart. So he came back to this project later, and re-wrote it to be made for less, and they did it, and it's amazing. This and Pan's Labyrinth have affected me as a person more than anything else I can recall seeing this year at an emotional level. Anyway, back to the plot...

The story of the conquistador is woven into that of the present day and the future, with all three storylines trying to go through the same journey - the wife is accepting her approaching death, the husband wants to fight for her life at all costs, even working on the cure while she lies dying and suffering. Where do you, should you, spend your time in that situation? Is it better to fight for the chance of life, down to the thin, bloody wire, or to accept it and be with the one you love and who loves you?

I meander in my discussion of this, as the film meanders through the story of the conquistador, the doctor, and the traveller. The future portion on the film involves the doctor, who clearly DID figure out how to extend life, as he travels through space towards a dying star, heading towards nova, that the Mayans had picked as the symbol of death and rebirth, and his wife had become enamored of. He wants to take her there. He planted one of these trees of life over her grave, and somehow she is bound up in it after her death - he holds his hand to a portion of the tree and little hairs raise, like those on the back of your neck.

I'm giving myself permission to write in this disjointed way because the film moves and struggles through time and story. Or actually, the film moves gracefully, the doctor character struggles. He wants to find life, or life extension, at any cost, and loses sight of the meaning of death. I can't capture it all with words right now, it is too disjointed in my head.

But the message of grace, and acceptance of death, is I feel well told. I've seen a couple of reviews that call this movie trippy disjointed nonsense, but to me it all made sense, and the fungible line crossing nature of the interleaving stories is the confusing part - did the doctor literally defeat death and live on and travel to the far star, after having planted this tree that grew to huge beauty in the hundreds of years after his wife's death, or did he just write the story and learn to accept that he'd die and write that beautiful ending? I don't know, I'd have to think about it some more, and I will probably go to the movie again to see if I can figure it out...but in the end it DOESN'T MATTER, because the message is the same either way.

Arronofsky has done three films (that I'm aware of): Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and now The Fountain (which Arronofsky joked that they alternately pitched the film as either "a psychedelic fairy tale or a metaphysical chick flick") All deal with trying to find greater meaning in life, and being able to discern what is of TRUE value versus what fame or glory or satisfaction is ultimately hollow. All three are powerful films that are completely different yet still address the same core issues in powerful ways. I think Arronofsky is one of the most important filmmakers working today - or at least important to me in terms of effective, powerful films that address issues I think are important. Both this and Pan's Labyrinth deal with issues of life and death, and what is after death, and what is of true value in life, something that is particularly salient to me in my life right now (pardon the personal digression) - I'm 38, my life is roughly halfway through, and I'm STILL looking for what I think will give me my best life, and my best joy, and my best experience before I die, and what do I want to accomplish and have and experience along the way. Films like these talk about these issues and are touchstones to hold and ponder and treat as prayer beads to worry over and ponder these greater issues.

And isn't that what art should be doing?

I'll stop there - what else more could I add?

Apologies for the delay on this one, I wrote it then clicked on "Save Draft" rather than "Publish Post" by accident yesterday - this isn't much of a review, but was my experience of the film....so be it for today

UPDATE

I thought about this movie some more - to me, there were two possible interpretations:

1.) He really DID figure out a long life drug from the tree (which the present day story hints at), and in X hundred years the tree he planted (same type as made the drug) over his wife's grave was transported to that faraway nebula in a space ship, and he's thinking back on everything in flashback. The queen & conquistador story is the story she wrote about the two of them, he's remembering the story and placing himself and her in it in his mental envisioning of it.

OR

2.) The future story is how he finished the book - he never did actually travel to the star, he may or may not have made a longevity drug out of the plant, but he DID plant one of those over her grave. He wrote the story as his own closure, as he learned to accept her death and let go...finishing the story, writing this fiction about the future, was his gift back to her after she was gone.

Either way, I found it a fascinating meditation on acceptance of death - that no matter how we love someone, or how much we want things to go one way, we ultimately don't have control over it - and some things should just be accepted.

Doreen, who saw the film with me, had this to say (this was her take on it):

This is what I saw:

The Fountain was a love story set in the future, where the 2 characters are destined to be together through rebirth. The female lead is symbolically represented through the tree of life to illustrate her cyclical life from seed (birth) to death. In the conquistador setting, the earliest part of their meeting, she proclaims to be his ‘eve’ which is our beginning of the story. In the modern day part of the story Hugh’s character discovers a scientific breakthrough resulting in a fountain of youth type drug. As a result, we switch between life times and see his life extended into centuries into the future. But, the elongating of his life only delays the inevitable. Ultimately, his life and that of his love will meet and be together again, in another time. Her death, His death and the tree’s death are not the end, and not the beginning; they are at a segment of life’s cyclical fountain and will be reborn again.


...interesting how we heach had our own take on it....I plan on seeing this again when it hits theaters to get a better sense of it - I found Solaris more confusing, but had less to get out of it than this film. My own opinion, of course.

After hearing Doreen's take on it (this was all over dinner discussion Saturday night), I'm liking her idea and wnating to integrate it into my understanding of the film. It was a revelation to me to remember that part of the mythology of the Tree of Life was that OUT OF DEATH comes rebirth - that the tree in the bubble was the tree from her grave, and it was only from death that life could then begin anew - I saw it as sad that the tree "died" before arrving at the star, but that was part of the necessary process (I'm pretty sure) for the cycle to begin anew...again I wnat to think about all this, but what makes this relevant is that the movie makes me WANT to think about all this and get it right in my head. So many other movies are unclear or confusing or ambiguous and you walk out thinking "whatevah" and don't care and don't think about it any more.

OK, enough for now...