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The Fountain
NexusSix
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So... what did you think?
Maybe... this was one of those movies that I followed too much/too often early in the production game and when I finally saw it, it did not live up to expectations (see: King Kong). I was expecting so much more...
My take: wonderful premise, beautiful visuals, an original idea and something we do not get enough of in the celluloid medium, but... at 90 minutes and for under $40 million... an overreaching existentialist student art project that never got around to telling a real story or hooking a "real" audience? Yeah, I "got" what Darren was trying to "say," but I didn't find it as engaging as I had hoped.
I found Aronofsky's underlying message bold and engaging and his visuals sweeping and profound. The story's structure was enticing... but as a whole work of art, it never gelled for me.
One possibility: I need to see this again another 5 or 6 times to sort it all out.
Another possibility: I don't need to see it ever again because, well, shit ain't "got" the first time means there ain't no reason to see it a second time.
My biggest complaint:
[spoiler:9b1c723512]Art fag director who has his protagonist float in space--Lotus-style--underneath a Supernova dying star... While I loved and enjoyed the 26th century astronaut visuals, I was kind of hoping and praying that some 26th century jocks showed up in X-Wings, the Pillar of Autumn or a formation of Colonial Vipers and laid some hot lead/frecking laser testosterone smackdown on Hugh. Am I wrong here?[/spoiler:9b1c723512]
Bullshit in the paragraph above set aside, I'd love to hear some honest reactions to this movie. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it.... it just left me feeling slightly disappointed.
How did you feel?
Maybe... this was one of those movies that I followed too much/too often early in the production game and when I finally saw it, it did not live up to expectations (see: King Kong). I was expecting so much more...
My take: wonderful premise, beautiful visuals, an original idea and something we do not get enough of in the celluloid medium, but... at 90 minutes and for under $40 million... an overreaching existentialist student art project that never got around to telling a real story or hooking a "real" audience? Yeah, I "got" what Darren was trying to "say," but I didn't find it as engaging as I had hoped.
I found Aronofsky's underlying message bold and engaging and his visuals sweeping and profound. The story's structure was enticing... but as a whole work of art, it never gelled for me.
One possibility: I need to see this again another 5 or 6 times to sort it all out.
Another possibility: I don't need to see it ever again because, well, shit ain't "got" the first time means there ain't no reason to see it a second time.
My biggest complaint:
[spoiler:9b1c723512]Art fag director who has his protagonist float in space--Lotus-style--underneath a Supernova dying star... While I loved and enjoyed the 26th century astronaut visuals, I was kind of hoping and praying that some 26th century jocks showed up in X-Wings, the Pillar of Autumn or a formation of Colonial Vipers and laid some hot lead/frecking laser testosterone smackdown on Hugh. Am I wrong here?[/spoiler:9b1c723512]
Bullshit in the paragraph above set aside, I'd love to hear some honest reactions to this movie. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it.... it just left me feeling slightly disappointed.
How did you feel?
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NexusSix on
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I felt that, although it was certainly interesting, it needed more connection between its parts.
[spoiler:cbc3d9549d]The future self needed a bit more of a join with the overall story; it just sort of dangles there, independently.[/spoiler:cbc3d9549d]
The constant repetition was also unnecessary, I found.
Not for the visuals but the depiction of a man losing his loved one--I felt it was an extremely emotional movie.
[spoiler:93895a594b]1500 seems to be a mirror of 2000/2500, except 2500 is a continuation of 2000. Am I making sense? I don't know.[/spoiler:93895a594b]
[spoiler:7e17c1e2ca]well, it was the book that she was writing, and yeh, a parallel story of his quest to find life for her...[/spoiler:7e17c1e2ca]
dream a little dream or you could live a little dream
sleep forever if you wish to be a dreamer
dream a little dream or you could live a little dream
sleep forever if you wish to be a dreamer
[spoiler:cd954d70ba]The 1500 storyline is the one written by Hugh's late wife, and later completed by him. I assume Izzy wrote the role of the conquistador with her husband in mind.
And yes, I think the 2500 timeline is really the continuation of the 2000; we can see the tattoo on his ring finger has begun to fade, although I guess tattoos can fade surprisingly quickly under the right circumstances...?[/spoiler:cd954d70ba]
Talk about divisive.
The best way to take the three timelines is artistically.
The first timeline is the story, that is reflection of the primary "Real" reality. This is the woman's perspective for the most part. Her world runs on fantasy, until the last part.
The primary timeline, in the realish world, stands on its own.
The third world is the man's perspective, his psyche. His world runs on sci-fi/psionics, fitting well within cerebral notions, until the last part.
Taken that way, it's a wonderful work of poetry.
Seriously. Ignore the intended meaning. It's done with literature all the time.
I think part of it was the pacing and slight discontinuous story jumps, which I understood and appreciated, but conversely didn't really fulfill me.
Also, there was one pretty big moment that made me think something wasn't right:
[realspoiler:43d6734ce0]It was when Tom finally followed his wife out of the lab, where countless time's before he had shirked her off. This set up the planting of the seed which she would fertilize and grow into a tree with. However, it seemed to me that he was able to make the decision to follow her because he had achieved a higher state of consciousness or whatever from being so close to shebulba. That begs the question, how was the tree created if it existed in the reality that he was not only in, but actively trying to create?[/realspoiler:43d6734ce0]
Also, my friend got a really big inception vibe from a lot of the sexual imagery. I admit that I noticed it too, slightly, but didn't get sexual creation as a main theme.
Excellent point, and I absolutely loved A.I.
I do agree with not taking the film literally, but in the end, it just didn't totally click with me. During the last 10 or so minutes of the film, I was dazzled by some of the visuals, but I couldn't shake this thought from my head: "I'm telling myself that I want to like this film, but something is falling short." Maybe that's what's bugging me--I can't put my finger on why it didn't click with my brain by the time the end credits rolled.
[spoiler:2fd453dde7]Stuff I did like: I did find myself connecting with Izzy's death scene and getting a bit misty-eyed. The bathtub and stargazing scenes were also very well done, and I the nebula/Shebulba was breathtaking.[/spoiler:2fd453dde7]
PS: Well, I think one of the main themes was death being an act of creation, so, yeah, inception and sexual creation definitely fit in there... death as sex? I was reading somewhere (maybe Ain't It Cool) that the Fountain is Aronofsky's love poem to death [shrug].
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Honestly, if I look at it that way, it seems like a pretensious piece of shit.
I loved the movie, but took it very literally, as the story of a man who [spoiler:91cb655325]prolongs his own life in the quest to bring his wife's soul to the center of a dying star so that it may be reborn[/spoiler:91cb655325]
Taking it any other way, I wouldn't have enjoyed it.
Also, fucking amazing soundtrack.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
That said, I liked it.
Given that he had eaten all the bark off of the tree, how long do you think it took him to get from Earth to Xibalba?
Well, we don't know when he left, but the future timeline takes place in 2500.
Hmmmmmmmmm....
Okay:
[spoiler:4dce35a6eb]What's your take on the the whole conquistador bit? More specifically, Astronaut Tommy appearing before Crazy Flaming Sword Dude as First Father? Is this something that Astro Tommy remembered from Izzy's manuscript? Was Tommy finishing the "story" when he appeared as First Father? Or did the conquistador portion of the movie also happen for real, with Tommy living the entire span from 1500-2500?[/spoiler:4dce35a6eb]
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Pretentiousness does not necessarily make something bad. Again, ignoring intent is a useful thing in artistic criticism.
One really doesn't have to differentiate. That's something about art people tend to forget.. you don't have to actually choose a side and define something wholly by a single perspective.
[spoiler:b7f023376e]It is also that. It's a movie about coping and letting go and loving and life. As much as it's full of fantasy, it's about the harshness of reality, and accepting it, and enjoying it rather than dreading it. Or it's three stories that just happen to paralel each other. [/spoiler:b7f023376e]
Really, it's a nice open-ending movie if you can bear to ignore official statements, so the best thing to do is find the most satisfying interpretation(s) and enjoy them as that.
[spoiler:7b7a8b0e8b] When Izzy died though, I thought Aronofsky and Jackman actually did a reasonable job of making me care. Tommy was doing whatever he could to save his dying wife, but ultimately it wasn't enough. He was so close to finding the awnser but she couldn't hold on.
Also... what do you think happened to his wedding ring?[/spoiler:7b7a8b0e8b]
Anyway, I liked it. I'm curious what the bigger budget, Brad Pitt/whatsherface version would have been like. Usually any senimentally out of Pitt makes me gag, and its possible the extra money would have taken away its... charm?
From the wiki entry, and some interviews I recall reading while it was in production, it sounded like the bulk of the budget cuts came in the form of less extravagant sets, namely in the Mayan stuff, so it's possible the narrative would've just been longer/more detailed in that regard.
I don't really think there'd be much to add to the modern or future stuff.
I agree with whoever said the future part represents Tommy's thoughts/psyche.
I can't remember a movie affecting me as much as this one. When the whole end sequence kicked in I sat there with my mouth open (literally) in complete awe as to what was going on. By the end of it I was essentially crying, I managed to hold it all in by really biting down on my lip but it was still all in me. During the credits I couldn't even talk and my pulse and jacked up so high that my hands were shaking. Leaving the theater I didn't want to say a word to anyone and just sat in the car thinking for a bit.
During the movie I was enjoying it but wanted more Mayan/Future stuff but that ending completely blew me away in ways I never thought possible.
Most amazing ending to a movie I have ever seen. I can't even describe why it did it to me or what exactly it was all about but it was so much information is such a rush of everything great about cinema.. I need to see it again and just let it all out.
I KISS YOU!
I had the same feeling after the movie. I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but I knew it was hard to put into words. Any who...
Something else I wanted to cover in this thread: the fucking advertising. I'm not sure what all was revealed in TV spots and trailers outside of the U.S., but here they pretty much showed most of the important moments in the commercials including...
[spoiler:9fe06c6da2]Tommy's death/ascension shot. WTF?! This IS the movie's money shot, climax and resolution. Well, maybe there's more with Izzy's funeral. Why was so much given away about this movie in the trailers/commercials? Again, another King Kong comparison: I think too much was given away in the advertising... It would've been so fucking cool for this movie to be promoted as some sappy love story, with slight hints of some kind of science fiction undertones, and then audiences finding out on their own what the film was really all about. Seeing Tommy ascending into Xibalba/Heaven/Death in the fucking commercials pretty much said: "hey, here's the whole point of the movie for you, so, like, now you don't need to actually go see it." It was a TV Guide moment--read the synopsis and you don't need to actually watch the episode. :x [/spoiler:9fe06c6da2]
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I agree, but what annoyed me even more about the trailer is that it told you so much about the movie but put the wrong spin on things. It gave the impression that...
[spoiler:2205d22c05]all three time periods were real and the two main characters (or at least Thomas/Hugh Jackman) lived for over a thousand years. I suppose it is all up to your own interpretation, but most of the criticisms I have read about the movie are based on the assumption that everything you see should be taken literally. The future stuff is debatable, but the way I see it, the stuff in the past is definitely Izzi's book. [/spoiler:2205d22c05] I just don't think the trailer prepped you properly for the type of movie you were going to see.
But yeah I thought the movie was amazing. One of the best movies I have seen in a while.
then again, a trailer that makes you understand what this movie is going to be would be boring and pretentious feeling.
Seeing this movie was one of the most fulfilling art-experiences i've had. I hope I don't have to go into the absolute purpose of art at length, which is to reflect and influence human consciousness (not) just on it's own plane of cognitive manifestation. "Art for art's sake"... If you didn't like this film your a cynical individual incapable of absorbing beauty. That is not to say that those who saw beauty and were awed at the film are better than you, they just have less restrictions on their sensual conscious.
All well! OHM SUCKERS! hahah...ohm
(I love you)
Man I was furious at the dude behind me who was eating his popcorn too loud during the silent scenes. You would have been even worse.
I KISS YOU!
Not so much.
Sounds good.
However...
If I view this movie as a poem, and I enjoy reading poetry, but I find that I don't like all poems (for whatever reason; there are bad poems--do you like all poems?), then I conclude that any given person who doesn't like this film, even if it is viewed as a poem, isn't someone who is cynical or incapable of absorbing beauty.
Again, people are capable of getting the point with any work of art, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to like it.
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