The Fountain

[Mr Films]

I've never been more unsure of what I think of a movie. I think I liked it, though.

[abcdefz]

Tell me more, please. Without spoiling anything.


I really hope this doesn't suck.

Some of the images look incredibly beautiful. But this things wears pretension on its sleeve, and that's hard to pull off.

[Mr Films]

it looks fucking gorgeous.

my problem with it is that it's a really really really simple movie (man can't come to terms with his wife's impending death) wrapped up in this really over the top package.

I like it more and more the more I think more about it (more).

I plan to see it again soon.

[abcdefz]

I see it Saturday or Sunday if I'm done coughing all over everything.(y)

[ET]

The graphic novel is pretty nice, I hear. I'm going to have to catch it.

[b-grrrlie]

I was gonna see it tomorrow, but I'm still too ill to make it outdoors :(
Here I worked for free for the Filmfestival and now I'm gonna miss half of it... :mad:

[abcdefz]

I wound up really liking this one, but I can totally imagine really not liking it, either. It's the sort of movie that, if you're not sort of "on board" or something happens in it that you just can't buy, the whole thing derails into a screaming catastrophe.

-- but I don't think you can say it's a mess; it's very, very sure-footed and looks like there was complete command in getting what he wanted onscreen. Jackman does a good job with a hard, hard role, because what his character goes off-the-charts obsessive about makes you just want to throttle the guy.

But it's kind of a shorthand, the characterizations. It's sort of fable-like, and the characters are all pretty one-dimensional, but they make it work. I don't know what the literary term would be for this, but it's definitely a stylized sort of storytelling.

The movie's pretty haunting. There's an act of vegetation that's never going to leave me, I bet. The images are just amazing at times, and the last few minutes are literally an explosion of unforgettable visuals.

I think the philosophy is probably about 75% bullshit and about 40% right on. Figure that one out. And yet the hokum doesn't put me off. It's a deeply felt, pretty sincerely spiritual picture.

B (y)

[King PSYZ]

I really didn't like it... heavy spoilers



So I was really supper psyched to see this movie with all the great early press it got and I was nothing... NOTHING but underwhelmed.

I went in knowing it was going to be surreal and looked forward to that, I mean in away 2001 is surreal but also has a forward momentum and a climax. Instead I was treated to the new millenium's 'The Wall', a movie full of weird and/or disturbingly surreal images with a loose connection great for taking copious ammounts of hallucinagenics.

Say what you want about 'The Wall', but it's pretty pretentious, and this movie follow that suit to a t. Darren Atrocity has presented us with a 2 hour acid trip about... well I'm not sure. I know that it has something to do with a woman coming to grips with her death through a novel about eternal life from the tree of life (yet titles the fucking manuscript the fountin...) whilst her husband is going bat shit crazy trying to battle time to find a cure to brain tumors and stumbles on a sample of *gasp* the tree of life or so we're led to belive.

Somewhere in this after bad things happen he focuses on the breakthrough of reversing the detriments of aging. We then assume that the bald Jackman we see is Tommy thousands of years from now or more in some kind of mind bubble terrarium with the dying tree of life while he has hallucinations of his wife.

He takes the whole thing into a soon to explode star and nebula hoping to life forever and give new life to the tree of life. (Maybe he missed the part where HE HAD ALREADY BEEN ALIVE FOR WHO KNOWS HOW THE FUCK LONG...) Anyways he somehow comes to grips with his wife's death thousands of years later while sitting indian style and finishes the story she wrote by the guy somehow surviving a blow from a flaming sword to drink from the tree of life only to have it consume him.

I am guessing this revelation he finds for the character in the story his wife started thousands of years prior was his way of realising he let the tree of life consume his existance.

Now granted, it took me since last night at 12 to figure this much out, the movie lays none of this out for you and frankly that's just lazy film making. I can collect alot of losely connected pretty pictures and call it $35 million worth of art and my vision, but I'm not a pretentious twat, so don't expect Justin Rogers' "The Vaugely Realted Object to the Central Theme of the Film" anytime soon.

If you like LSD, or Magic Mushrooms then grab a handful and go see The Fountain. If you want to see a movie with a plot that you can follow without a migraine, go see anything else.

[abcdefz]

NOT REALLY SPOILERY BUT JUST IN CASE:




Yeah, I can see why you didn't like it. But some of what you said up there is -- not misinterpreted, but I think you just missed some stuff.

The movie wasn't about the wife coming to grips with death -- a character even points out with what remarkable grace she comported herself about that. She's maybe trying to help her husband come to grips with her death; yeah, I'd buy that.

She's writing a book called The Fountain because of the double meaning -- the fountain of youth her novel's character searches for, and also the tree of life (and the sort of assimilation and re-creation of life) being a font, a wellspring, an ongoing, on-cycling thing.

I think these things are objectively part of the fabric of the movie; about 96% sure.

[abcdefz]

Yay. The cinema is giving me a copy of The Fountain poster (http://www.thecinemasource.com/moviesdb/images/The_Fountain%20-%20Poster.jpg). I guess I'll start rotating my movie posters in my office or something.

Such a beautiful poster.

[ToucanSpam]

When I saw the preview for this movie I was not sure what to think; without spoiling, what genre would it be classified under?


Also, the whole time thing was strange in the preview, I guess I should just go see it to get it.

[abcdefz]

NOT SPOILERS, TRUST ME:

It's getting lumped in as sci-fi, and it's not. He's a scientist, there's a lab, there's an experiment or two, but it's not sci-fi.

More like.... obsessive/delusional quest picture. A man is so "in love" with his wife that, when she gets diagnosed with cancer, he spends all his time trying to find a cure (despite her really wanting him to just shut the fuck up and be with her). She accepts death-as-voyage, he doesn't.

There are really a lot of strikes against it -- not too likable main characters, quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo -- but I really bought into it and thought it was haunting. There's some imagery in there that you'll probably never forget.

If you're going to see it at all, see it in a theater; give the thing a chance on a big old big screen. 'Cause it's beautiful.

No CGI, supposedly. A lot of the special effects were done by shooting things through microscopes and stripping them in. Beautiful stuff.

[ToucanSpam]

So, its not sci fi, it kind of sounds similar to the butterfly effect in terms of obsession with not accepting reality.

I'm okay with CGI if there is any, I'm not sure about the microscope thing...


Bah, I'll just go see it friday and hope that it's worthwhile.

[abcdefz]

The no-CGI thing just gives it a more organic look. It's great.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure you'll like it. Not sure I'd like it if my antenna hadn't been set just right; my bullshit detector was threatening to go off pretty often, but for some reason, I went with it.

But if it starts pissing you off, you can maybe just sit there and look at the pretty things while the cellos are sawing away. (y)

[ToucanSpam]

If I go see this and it turns out to be bullshit, I can just spend the remainder of the time making jokes about Wolverine and how soft he is in the movie.

My friends and I did that with the Prestige, keeping track of the score between Batman and Wolverine.

[abcdefz]

Ah. Well, there ya go.

Dude -- if you didn't buy into The Prestige, you're just throwing away money on The Fountain.

Though Hugh does cry a lot more.

[ToucanSpam]

I did like the Prestige, but it just seemed like it was sloowww sloowwwwwww slooooooooooooooooowwwwwww then near thend about a dozen things happened and before I knew it the climax had happened and youre out the door thinking, did I get all of it?

I'm actually not a big fan of Hugh. Van Hesling was a disgrace and although Wolverine was alright in the X Men movies, I don't think I've ever seen him take on a 'serious' role.

[abcdefz]

I did like the Prestige, but it just seemed like it was sloowww sloowwwwwww slooooooooooooooooowwwwwww then near thend about a dozen things happened and before I knew it the climax had happened and youre out the door thinking, did I get all of it?

I'm actually not a big fan of Hugh. Van Hesling was a disgrace and although Wolverine was alright in the X Men movies, I don't think I've ever seen him take on a 'serious' role.


I think he's good. He was good in The Fountain, for what he had to do, and I thought he was really good in The Prestige.

David Bowie was really good in it. Dang. And that's probably my favorite Christian Bale performance now.