The Journal

Issue date: 11/16/06 Section: LifeStyle

Media Credit: Photo Courtesy of Waner Bros.

Aronofsky's first film in more than six years is maybe a masterpiece

Few young Hollywood directors have had more hopeful anticipation for each of their upcoming projects than the flourishing Darren Aronofsky. With his latest installment - finally - the auteur has apparently proven himself to the floundering studio system.

"The Fountain" is an astonishing piece of filmmaking that spans three separate points in time: the middle ages, the present and the distant future.

In the here and now, Tommy (Hugh Jackman) is a brilliant doctor, dedicated to the research and possible discovery of a cure for, among other diseases, death. Driven by his wife's heretofore, Tom is constantly worried about her. He is so blinded by his work that he isn't privy to her situation at all - that is until he picks up her near-completed manuscript, sharing the film's title, that takes him back hundreds of years to the Spanish Inquisition. There, word of a life-giving fountain spurs a quest for the conquistador that he might save his queen's Spanish kingdom from collapse.

Aside from the gorgeous special effects, Rachael Weisz is equally beautiful in her role as Izzy, Tom's wife. In almost every scene, she emits a radiance that commands everyone's attention, and it hurts dearly every time her husband ignores her pleas.

A hope-induced story down to the core, the film attempts to relieve our stressful lives of conquering battle after battle, and bring us to the realization that love -transcending the ages - is the only idea that truly matters. Indeed, the audience is forced to believe this duet to the repetitious nature of a majority of the script.

Izzy's manuscript has 12 chapters, the final one remaining unwritten. She due to her illness. She entrusts Tom to write the ending of the munuscript for her. Similarly, Aronofsky is asking us to write the final chapter in the book of our lives, whether we choose to live out eternity in love with one person or not.

In reality, this may all just be the manifestation of the filmmaker's own inner reaction to his own engagement to Weisz and consequently the looming, infinite bind of marriage that is humanly inescapable.

Though the manic structure and the fluctuating timeline does confuse the view at times early on, the superb editing skills that Aronofsky displayed in "Requiem for a Dream" (2000), come into play here so that each vignette somehow moves fluidly from one to the other.

Assuredly, connections will be made by glossy critics to the true beginning of great science-fiction filmmaking - that of the great Stanley Kubrick and his "2001: A Space Odyssey." The similarities in story between the two seem uncanny at times, but they are wholly different messages in the end. It almost seems as if the director has made a career-closing film at the onset of his career.

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