i'm in love with this film.

The visuals are really amazing and the movie is like a painting come to life, but the very bizarre and Buddhist plot ties its various lines together in an unsatisfying quagmire that comes across like one of those nonsensical riddles (aka "koan"), mak... (read more) The visuals are really amazing and the movie is like a painting come to life, but the very bizarre and Buddhist plot ties its various lines together in an unsatisfying quagmire that comes across like one of those nonsensical riddles (aka "koan"), making this but one thread in the many that together form the Emperor's new clothes.

I was intimidated by the movie's reputation for being incomprehesibly abstract. But in the end, I think it's deceptively complicated. Beneath the multiple time periods and storylines and all the fancy directorial pyrotechnics, at heart "The Fountain... (read more) I was intimidated by the movie's reputation for being incomprehesibly abstract. But in the end, I think it's deceptively complicated. Beneath the multiple time periods and storylines and all the fancy directorial pyrotechnics, at heart "The Fountain" is a bittersweet fable of love and mortality. Hugh Jackman gives one of his more emotionally unfettered performances, though I still think at times that he can't hide his musical theater background (every time his voice rises he sounds like he's about to burst into song). And it's always a treat to see Ellen Burstyn, though I was hoping that after "Requiem for a Dream" she would have been given more screen time.

My attention lagged during the middle of this movie - the more straightforward moments are probably the least interesting. I wished they'd made the dynamics between the doctor and his cancer stricken wife a little more original and less trite. But "The Fountain" ends with a sweet, tragic and poignant moment. After all the time travelling and trips through space with a tree in a force field moments, the movie works best at the end with a pair of simple, poetic gestures.

(Note: Spoilers for both this movie and "Star Wars Episode III" follow, because of similarities in themes that I see between the two films.)

"The Fountain" is not a movie that I can in good conscience recommend to anyone, young or old, nor i... (read more) (Note: Spoilers for both this movie and "Star Wars Episode III" follow, because of similarities in themes that I see between the two films.)

"The Fountain" is not a movie that I can in good conscience recommend to anyone, young or old, nor is it a movie lacking in redeeming qualities. Hugh Jackman's performance is certainly notable, and my dislike of his character (and of most but not all of the movie's other characters) stems from the scriptwriting and not his acting ability or lack thereof.

The movie is a quest for eternal life. More accurately the movie could be described as three separate, loosely intertwining quests: one in the present (a modern drama dealing with a man whose wife is dying), one in the "future," and one in the past, during the Spanish Inquisition. Spoilers for all three parts follow, but the plot in this film is so bare-bones that I honestly can't explain what the movie is about without giving away details.

After a Scriptural passage from Genesis mentioning the tree of life and its guarding by angels, the movie starts its story in the past, as an anonymous knight is attacked by a number of pagans. The knight is not killed but is forced up a set of steps and made to deal with a strange-looking "guardian," who is armed with a flaming sword but is certainly not an angel. The guardian kills the knight, and a man meditating in the future, in what looks like a crystal ball or a snow globe with a giant tree inside it, wakes up screaming.

This is how "The Fountain" tells its story, though it's not a "time-travel" story by any means; this film simply shifts back and forth between the perspectives of three very different people seeking, in some form or fashion, the same goal, whether for themselves or others.

After an unfortunately pointless "art montage" in the future (a silhouette of a man doing interpretive dance against a scrolling starry sky adds nothing to the film), the focus shifts to the present, where surgeon Tommy Creo is forced to deal with a terminal condition from which his wife is suffering -- ostensibly brain cancer. At the same time, the surgeon and his medical team are attempting to reverse similar problems in a baboon. The film introduces a mythical, arcane plant found in Guatemala, which is said to give or at least prolong life, and out of desperation the surgeon mixes up a compound using an on-hand specimen of the plant. The baboon not only survives its operation but begins aging in reverse and becoming healthier than it was. The compound, however, is not ready for human use, and Tommy becomes impatient out of fear for his wife's life.

Thus arrives one of the many problems I had with the movie's script: Tommy Creo is a surgeon but is very unstable: he throws heavy tantrums in his bedroom and inside his hospital itself, at one point pinning another doctor up against the wall largely because the doctor has a better grasp on reality than Tommy does.

(Remember in "Star Wars Episode III," where Anakin was given the prophecy that his wife Padme would die, and Anakin set out to do anything that he possibly could to save his wife's life, even to the point where the end no longer justified the means? That is Tommy Creo throughout the entire film.)

Most of the film's "plot" is built on a Mayan creation story, and while I don't necessarily mind the use of such things as narrative focal points, per se, this does lead to some really bizarre theological questions and issues. There are two spiritual viewpoints given in this film -- Inquisition-era "Christianity" and Mayan thought -- but only one of those (the latter, of course) is given any real insight. The film says absolutely nothing about death that hasn't been said in many other movies dealing with the subject, and even the idea of "making the most of every moment" is never really brought up. Certain imagery seems to espouse reincarnation instead of true "eternal life," making this plot all the more confusing. The Inquisition-era subplot, which is actually really interesting, is sorely underutilized, and the futuristic subplot really has no plot whatsoever; its sole redeeming merit is its art direction and music -- both of which are very good.

Towards the end of the film, both of the above qualities really begin to pick up, with the art direction in particular approaching and perhaps meeting "Pan's Labyrinth"-levels. The similarities end there. While I was watching the film wind down, I was thinking about what I would write for my review. I thought about bestowing two and a half stars, then three (once the art and music got better), but then the ending came, which was not only awful but actually rather nonsensical. I felt like I had been denied "closure," as I was left wondering whether or not Tommy had actually come to grips with all that had happened. I guess I'll never know, but what's worse is that I really don't care.

Perhaps I need to see this a second time, but the first time I saw it in the cinema nearly caused me to fall asleep. It's a very dull movie which could have been better if you actually felt concern for the main characters but the hard fact is that I... (read more) Perhaps I need to see this a second time, but the first time I saw it in the cinema nearly caused me to fall asleep. It's a very dull movie which could have been better if you actually felt concern for the main characters but the hard fact is that I didn't care for them. At all. There are some beautiful and poignant scenes towards the end of the movie, but it left me mostly feeling cold.

I will concede the film is not a great success. Too many screens of blinding lights. Too many transitions for their own sake. Abrupt changes of tone.

The movie may have significant truths to impart, although I have my doubts, but it feels too inexperienced, too unworldly, to have earned the right to them.

Exquisitely beautiful and almost unbearably sad... The Fountain is cinema as poetry; romance as revelation; science fiction as prayer.

The picture is visually intoxicating --- the images have a luminous psychedelic beauty --- and the film's themes emerge elegantly out of the story's intricately-looped tri-level structure.

A haunting and remarkable emotional journey that takes us places movies rarely dare to go.