The Fountain

‘The Fountain’ gaat over de hartstochtelijke strijd van een man die zijn geliefde wil redden. Wetenschapper Tommy Creo (Hugh Jackman) is wanhopig op zoek naar een geneesmiddel tegen de ziekte waar zijn geliefde vrouw Isabel (Rachel Weisz) aan lijdt. Hij kan zich niet verzoenen met het feit dat hij haar voorgoed kwijt zou kunnen raken. Tommy wordt zo meegesleept door zijn eigen zoektocht dat hij vergeet haar lief te hebben, nu het nog kan, terwijl Isabel hem er op haar manier van probeert te overtuigen dat ze elkaar ooit weer terug zullen zien.

Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky switches gears from drug-induced urban malaise to abstract science fiction with this time-tripping symbolic tale of a man’s thousand-year quest to save the woman he loves. Moving between representational stories and images, this meditation on life and death focuses on the concept of the mythical Tree of Life that is said to bestow immortality to all who drink of its sap. In one of the film’s allegorical timelines, a 16th-century Spanish conquistador played by Hugh Jackman sets out to find the tree in order to save his queen (Rachel Weisz) from the Inquisition. Another conceptual story finds Jackman centuries later, struggling with mortality as a modern-day scientist desperately searching for the medical breakthrough that will save the life of his cancer-stricken wife, Izzi. The third and most abstract concept finds Jackman as a different incarnation of the same character idea, this time questing for eternal life within the confines of a floating sphere transporting the aged Tree of Life through the depths of space. Even more avant-garde than his breakthrough film Pi, The Fountain finds Aronofsky almost completely abandoning conventional story structure in favor of something more cinematically abstract. Though the film was originally slapped with an R by the MPAA, Aronofsky and co. re-edited it to conform to a PG-13 rating.

This film is part of our program Requiem For Aronofsky.