David Aronofsky's The Fountain

The Fountain has been getting some good press. Sean at Deep Surface gave it a mixed review, however, feeling that despite the fantastic visuals it just didn't suck him in. Reviewer Kim Voyner wanted to love it and didn't -- maybe because of high expectations.

I loved Pi many years back, and I also enjoyed Requiem for a Dream.

The trailer for The Fountain is visually stunning -- and this is the kind of movie I'm drawn to -- so I am still hoping that I will like this film more than those who have only been moderately satisfied with it.

Here is the trailer:



Here is part of an interview with Aronofsky from The Nerve Film Lounge:

While making this film, you lost two stars [Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett] and had to slash your budget. How did that change your concept?
The old conception of the film is captured forever as the graphic novel that we released through Vertigo Comics. That shows you where the story is different, and you can see, it really hasn't changed that much. The part that changed wasn't the movie itself but how to execute the movie — how to bring it to life. It was the first time my collaborators and I were really playing the studio game. The film was conceived as a studio picture. But we didn't know what we were doing; we had to learn that whole process. When we had to change things around, we were able to figure out how to make it more streamlined and pure. Having an extra couple of years in pre-production allowed us to figure out what the core story was — just what it was exactly we wanted to tell. And, of course, how to tell it in a way that was financially smarter as well.

I was surprised to hear that you initially resisted casting [Aronofsky's fiancée] Rachel Weisz in the film. The whole film feels like a love song to her.
Well, for starters, the script and the film existed in a pretty strong form before she ended up with me. But life and art do end up coming together in a strange way. I became conscious of these connections after the film was done, when I looked at it and started to think, "Uh oh, people are gonna read things into this." That said, I would have shot any actress as beautifully as we shot Rachel — although Rachel is pretty easy to shoot well.

I was also surprised by how consistent The Fountain seemed to be with your other films. All your characters seem to exist in these obsessive loops — they do the same things over and over again, in different ways, rather than progressing in conventional narrative ways.
Some writers I've talked to say they don't see any connections between my films, but I personally think there are a lot. There's certainly nothing conscious about it — that's just the way it happens for me. I write my characters the way I think they would act, and they come out in this pretty distinct way. I think all my films have something pretty simple at their heart.

Read the rest.

Tags: David Aronofsky, The Fountain, Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, immortality