Friday 14 March 2008

The Fountain - My Review (As Promised!)

So i watched it this morning and found it quite an interesting watch. I definately agree that it needs several viewings before a fair opinion can be formed. The film captures the absurdity of being afriad of death. Death is as necessary as life, they're two sides of the same coin. Like Rachel Weisz put it, stars die and give birth to other stars, it's true that we are just like them. The ending in particular gives a nice visual on one of the many themes of this film, that being that we are all connected. It's fragmented chronology bears similarities to Jacobs Ladder, which shares similar themes to this film.

Throughout the film i was reminded of another film i saw probably over ten years ago now. You know these films you catch late one night (or i should say morning) at like 2-3am and then you never find out what they were called and forget about them? This happened to me and then about 6 years later i was at a friend's house in Manchester flicking through the channels and after about 1 second i recognised the film straight away!! The film is called Being Human and Stars Robin Williams. He plays several everyman characters throughout history and the film shares the same fragmented chaos which manages to show how we are all connected. I remember very little about the film so this will probably be next on my list *rushes off to ebay!*

Definately many ITLADian themes to explore throughout the film and good performances from both Jackman and Weisz. I'll probably give it another watch again soon as i think it deserves multiple viewings aswell. Below is a link for the film Everyman.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106379/

1 comment:

Dreamer said...

Thanks for the review, and also for reminding me of "Jacob's Ladder" -- yet another intriguing ITLADian film.

I've watched "The Fountain" twice, but I'm still a bit confused. I originally interpreted the three storylines as three separate incarnations of the two characters, but then I started to wonder whether the futuristic thread (where Hugh Jackman's character is floating around in space in that bubble thingie) is something that's actually happening outside of time and space -- at the level of the Daemon, perhaps? The official interpretation (as given in the blurb on the back of the DVD cover) is that Jackman's character in that thread is a 26th-century astronaut, but I didn't really get that from the film itself. I also found it strange that there isn't a corresponding "Izzie" character in the futuristic thread -- she always appears as either the historic Isabella or the contemporary Izzie (unless I missed something, which is quite possible).

One thing I found especially ITLADian was Jackman's/Tom's opportunity to "do over" a specific moment of his life, i.e., the time Izzie asks him to go for a walk with her to see the snow, and he says he's too busy. Eventually, he "gets it right" and chases after her rather than stay behind and let her go out alone. And the way I interpreted it, that opportunity to go back and do things differently was created in that weird realm where Jackman's character is floating around in the bubble -- although, as I said, I'm not really sure if that was supposed to be a timeless realm, or the future.

"The Fountain" seems to be one of those films that has to be absorbed by osmosis. It's hard to make sense of it in a linear sense. Perhaps you could say it's holographic.