Review of The Fountain (2006) by Chrisp. — 28 Dec 2008

This film has really hooked me, despite its flaws. Tommy and, especially, Izzy are too broadly drawn as characters: in the DVD commentary, Aronofsky admits he wanted them to be archetypes, so their love story lacks the little details and specificities that might have made it really emotionally vivid and put the film over the top for those critics who hated it for the complicated and ambiguous trio of timelines.

Really the movie isn't about Tommy and Izzy, but about Tommy and his own denial of death; Izzy's mortality is just a vehicle for Tom to confront his own. So it's another movie in which the female lead is basically a masculine projection, and that maybe is its real flaw.

But Tommy's journey through grief to ... well, you'll see ... is still moving for me. And, yes, it might be because of the soundtrack, which works for this film as no soundtrack ever has before, tying together the three separate timelines into one emotional arc.

It's also visually gorgeous; during production the planned use of computer graphics had to be scrapped for macrophotography for budgetary reasons, and thank god, because the results are beautiful and unlike anything else I've seen on film.

Overall, even though I could't put the pieces together logically as I was watching it, I found that there was an emotional logic to the film that was deeply satisfying. Although I like to analyze the heck out of films, this is one that really does work well if you just let it wash over you.