The Fountain

The Fountain (2006) tells one story in three periods with the same two actors: the sixteenth century, the present, and a distant future. In the present Tommy is a medical researcher and his wife Izzi has a brain tumour. He works in the laboratory night and day; she asks him to read a book she has written and to write its final chapter. In the book a conquistador searches for the Tree of Life for his queen. In the future a man travels through space in a sphere containing a tree. The three are readings of the same story: the difference between trying to defeat death and accepting it. The film gives a clear answer in the end, and it is what the character has to accept. The production story matches the subject. Aronofsky prepared it at a budget of around seventy million with Brad Pitt in the lead. Sets were built, then Pitt left and the studio cancelled the shoot. Years later Aronofsky rebuilt it at half the budget with Hugh Jackman. The reduced budget produced a visual solution. No computer graphics were used for the space sequences; chemical reactions in petri dishes were filmed through macro lenses and enlarged. That is why the images have not dated. Rachel Weisz stars; she was Aronofsky's partner at the time. Clint Mansell's score was recorded with the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai. It lost money and split the critics. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: visual cinema, films about death, and Aronofsky. Less good for: the narrative is deliberately unclear and the connection between the three strands may not land on one viewing.