Review: The Fountain (Movie, January 2007)

Three stars out of five.

"The Fountain" had potential to be a great movie. Only something got lost somewhere between the screenwriters' imagination and the movie-goers eyes. The movie's theme and message was very good. But the creative execution -- multiple timelines and flashbacks / flashforwards / multiple realities -- only gave rise to confusion. Instead of making a brilliant idea come alive, the movie's choice of storytelling made it much more ambiguous. The directing and acting we're just right, but not at all memorable. Here, the creative execution is again to blame. It forced you to focus more on figuring out what was happening, versus seeing how well the actors did justice to their written characters.

My advice - watch the movie, but lower your expectations. And don't worry if you can't make sense of the ending.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A brief summary of the movie follows. For those who have been 'spoiled' enough by what I said above, and still want to watch the film, don't read ahead. For everyone else, caveat emptor and read on.

The year is 2000 A.D. - the present. Tommy (Hugh Jackman) plays a medical scientist in search of a cure for brain tumor (a kind the movie does not delight in specifying). He has a personal stake in it, since his wife Izzie (Rachel Weisz) has been diagnosed and will eventually die from said brain tumor in the near future. He discovers a promising cure -- ingredients from some 'tree in South America'. Meanwhile, Izzie's condition worsens, and she is hospitalized. Despite his efforts, Tommy is unable to make a cure from his recent discovery. Beaten, he decides to spend time with Izzie in the hospital. She dies a few hours later, despite Tommy's protests against it. Fate and life chose to take spite on Tommy as well, because then his experiments give him the results he needed to save Izzie. Tormented by the powers that be, he goes back to his experiments. But now his new goal is to find a cure for death.

In her last days, Izzie writes a book -- The Fountain. Set in the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the book is about a conquistador (named Tomas) on a mission from the Queen of Spain (Queen Isabel). The mission: go to South America, among the Mayan country, and find the 'Tree of Life', beleived to give eternal life from drinking its tree sap. Before dying, she leaves Tommy with one last request - to finish writing the last chapter of her book. The book is the second story timeline of the movie.

The third, and most confusing story timeline, takes place in 2500 A.D. and in space. We see the same Tommy as we saw in 2000 A.D., but we are to infer he discovered the secret to eternal life. With him is a dying tree, who I beleive is Izzie (the tree having been planted on top of her grave, and in Mayan beliefs the tree is her re-created life). They journey towards a nebula wrapped around a dying star -- what Mayans beleive to be Shebalba. Shebalba is the underworld where death creates new life. Tommy is hoping to bring the tree and himself to Shebalba, both to be recreated.

As he journeys closer to the tree, he is tormented by Izzie's memory - reminding him to finish the last chapter of her book. He refuses, and clings to his hope of reaching Shebalba before the tree dies. And for the second time, Izzie (in the form of the tree) dies, before they could both reach Shebalba. Tommy's new grief along with Izzie's final request, convinces him to finish the book. He finishes the conquistador's story by letting Tomas find the Tree of Life and letting him drink from its sap. But in doing so, Tomas dies at the foot of the Tree of Life, with a hundred new flowers growing from his body. Tommy then realizes what he must do, as the pursuit of new life only begins with death. Tommy acts to push himself into the dying star, bringing about his own death.

In one final moment to confuse the movie-goer, the movie flashes back to a critical moment in 2000 A.D., when Tommy is about to begin the work that leads to his discovery (of the tree, of eternal life). Only this time instead of beginning his work, he abandons it to spend time with Izzie instead.

---
The idea behind the plot was inspired -- death as the beginning of creation. Not because death opens the door to eternal life (it may very well do, but that is not the point of the movie). But because death creates life. Not continues it (think "Constantine", "Sixth Sense", or "The Five People You Meet in Heaven"). But creates it.

Unfortunately, that message was lost in the movie's desperate attempt to both communicate a complex idea and to do it by using a non-linear timeline. Actually this approach has been done before (think "The Lakehouse"). The error here was in not explaining if and which of the time periods were real or not, and how the 'not so real' ones related to the 'real' ones. We do not know if the 1500 AD story (Tomas and Queen Isabel) were Tommy and Izzie's "previous lives", or were they simply Izzie's work of fiction that coincidentally symbolized what happened both in 2000 AD in their own lives. We are also puzzled in how real the 2500 AD story was -- with Tommy and a tree floating in space. Did he discover the secret to eternal life? If so, how did the tree survive 500 years as well? Did they leave Earth to pursue this nebula? Or did the Earth die, with both of them being the only survivors because of the secret of eternal life? The ending also compounded confusion -- since if he did not pursue his work on discovering the secret to eternal life, then the story taking place in 2500 AD would have been meaningless.

The Fountain aspired to be a movie with a deep meaning in a challenging creative execution. It fell short of its mark, and no points are awarded for simply just trying. Unmanaged complexity was its pitfall. You almost have to be Mayan to understand the better part of it.