Review: The Fountain

UK release date: 26th January

You wait years for a film about ancient Mayans and then, like proverbial buses, two movies come along at once. Like Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, The Fountain is one of the most original and extraordinary films of recent times — though a story that features not only ancient Mayans but also a bald man living on a little planet inside a snow globe with just a tree for company is bound to attract accusations of pretentiousness as well as claims of genius.

This third feature from director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) stars Hugh Jackman as a man on a thousand-year odyssey to save his beloved (Rachel Weisz, in multiple roles). In the 16th century, Jackman plays a conquistador searching for the fountain of youth in the Mayan Empire in order to save the Spanish queen from destruction. In modern-day America, Jackman seeks a cure for the cancer that’s killing his wife, and in the 26th century he sits like Buddha beneath his cosmic tree, trying to figure out what it all means.

Some of the audience may be doing the same, but those who stick with the movie will be rewarded with a profoundly rich experience about the meaning of life, death, love and immortality. The performances and music brilliantly complement Aronofsky’s philosophical musings in one of the most haunting, perplexing and visually stunning films since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Radio Times rating:

*****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 96mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

News: Darren Aronofsky

Since being acknowledged as some kind of directorial genius with 1998’s Pi, Aronofsky has only managed to get two more films to the screen – 2000’s oddball Requiem for a Dream, and this week’s equally unusual The Fountain. The Fountain itself almost never made it, after a much-troubled shoot, and umpteen other projects have fallen by the wayside.

As such it should come as no surprise that he’s got no definite directorial projects in the pipeline – he is, however, currently peening an adaptation of Lone Wolf and Cub, the cult Japanese manga series about a rogue samurai single father. It has already made it to the big screen as Shogun Assassin in 1980 – notably featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill – although that was merely a re-edit of the first two of a trilogy of Japanese films made from the comics in the early 1970s. A proper big screen adaptation could prove interesting, especially with someone like Aronofsky on writing duties.

News: Rachel Weisz

Brit lovely Rachel Weisz is just one of the big names in this week’s kids’ fantasy Eragon, though she’s only on voice duties. We’ll soon be seeing a lot more of her, however, with a number of big parts in big movies due over the next weeks, months and years.

Due in January, after a perhaps appropriately insanely long wait, is oddball director Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain – a much-delayed, hugely ambitious sci-fi/fantasy romance spanning 1,000 years and three separate, if linked, storylines revolving around Hugh Jackman’s efforts to find Weisz, his one true love. It has been slated at least as much as praised by those who have seen it so far, so could prove interesting.

Then will come more standard fare, with Weisz’s turn in the comedy/romance Definitely, Maybe, written and directed by the writer of Bridget Jones 2 and Wimbledon. But then it’s back to the experimental, with a role in cult director Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones as a woman taking a road trip across the US, and co-starring the likes of Jude Law, Tim Roth, Natalie Portman and Ed Harris. She’ll be teaming up with Wong Kar-Wai again in 2008 for a remake of Orson Welles’ classic The Lady From Shanghai, with Weisz set to take the Rita Hayworth role.

Before that, though, it’s back to comedy, with a part in the Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughan-starring festive bit of fun Fred Claus, due Christmas 2007, as well as another return to Africa following Weisz’s superb, Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardener. This time it’ll be a period piece, with Weisz playing the object of Colin Firth’s affections in the 19th century historical drama The Colossus,covering the final years of Cecil Rhodes’ regime in what is now Zimbabwe. Sir Ian McKellen will take on the role of the imperial hero/scoundrel.

News: Hugh Jackman

Though almost unknown when heended up as a last-minute replacement for Dougray Scott on the first X-Men film back in 2000, Hugh Jackman’s career is now in full-on overdrive, with his turn in this week’s The Prestige just the latest impressive addition to his film CV. With his own X-Men spin-off, Wolverine, due for 2008, this freshest Australian superstar is really churning them out,with lead roles alongside his The Prestige co-star Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen’s Scoop and Rachel Weisz in Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious The Fountain and voice work as a rat in Wallace and Grommit creators Aarman Animation’s Flushed Away and as a penguin in the much-anticipated Happy Feet already completed and ready for imminent release.

Of Jackman’s other upcoming projects, most interesting are likely to be The Tourist, where he’ll play a lawyer who leads Ewan McGregor into a hidden world of sex and kidnapping, genius Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai’s 1930s-set The Lady From Shanghai (again opposite Rachel Weisz), and weirdo Aussie director Baz Lurhmann’s as yet untitled next project, in which Jackman will star alongside fellow antipodean Nicole Kidman. And if that’s not enough, just this week another project has emerged, The Amateur, with Jackman playing a geeky CIA code cracker who turns himself into a killing machine when his wife is killed by terrorists.

At this rate, Jackman could soon see himself making a serious challenge to Russell Crowe and even Mel Gibson as Hollywood’s premiere Australian male – especially if Crowe keeps appearing in dross like A Good Year and Gibson keeps getting drunk and making sexist/racist remarks to police officers…