Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world.
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He was a writer. He thought he wrote about the future but it really was the past. In his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while. Everyone who went there had the same ... See full summary »
A couple undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour, but it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with.
Director:
Michel Gondry
Stars:
Jim Carrey,
Kate Winslet,
Gerry Robert Byrne
A poet falls in love with an art student who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle -- and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.
A young man and woman meet on a train in Europe, and wind up spending one romantic evening together in Vienna. Unfortunately, both know that this will probably be their only night together.
A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.
Director:
Sam Mendes
Stars:
Kate Winslet,
Leonardo DiCaprio,
Christopher Fitzgerald
Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.
Three stories - one each from the past, present, and future - about men in pursuit of eternity with their love. A conquistador in Mayan country searches for the tree of life to free his captive queen; a medical researcher, working with various trees, looks for a cure that will save his dying wife; a space traveler, traveling with an aged tree encapsulated within a bubble, moves toward a dying star that's wrapped in a nebula; he seeks eternity with his love. The stories intersect and parallel; the quests fail and succeed. Written by
<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Warner Bros. refused to do a director's commentary for the DVD release, so Darren Aronofsky recorded one in his living room and released it on his web site. See more »
Goofs
The "Xibalba Nebula" in the movie is the Orion Nebula - which is not gold and does not contain dying stars, unlike in the movie. It is largely pink (from ionized hydrogen gas) and is a stellar nursery where young stars are forming. The first stars to die there will be massive and will not create nebulae first (they will supernova instead). See more »
The movie ends with a white out, which represents the Big Bang or creation of the Universe. Following that, the white areas behind the credits condense, which correlates with the condensation of matter and ultimate large sale structure of the universe. These devolve to black screen, the early "opaque" stage of the universe, when early particle were forming. From this, stars begin to form, one by one until the credits end with a universe full of stars and the story of our universe to the present, told behind the credits. See more »
This is not a film for any one public. Americans, often ignorant of philosophy and mythology (by and large) would stumble awkwardly through much of the film, wondering what the hell is going on. Others still would prefer to call the film pretentious and drenched in metaphysical bull----. Woe it is to the archetypes. No one knows how to reach the elemental, the archetypal arena of human experience anymore; a fact proved by so many other reviewers penchant for searching for the "realism" within the movie. (cf. Roger Ebert's review; this is a thoroughly stupid and ignorant way of viewing such a film...it seems that the Divine Comedy would be cast aside today, because Dante does not describe Paradise in a "realistic" fashion. Which of course is worse than nonsense...its f---ing stupid.)
The problem many people have with this film is that they see it as a story about two people, and not two archetypes that are elemental within human mythology (first man and first woman). It is interesting to note how Jackman becomes Western man (furious and daring, he hopes to reach beyond nature, to become a 'superman,' while not understanding that he is not simply a product of nature but very much a PART of nature) and Weisz becomes the embodiement of Eastern thought (her submission to the truth of nature (death) is not a submission, but an understanding of the tide of life, an understanding Tom, in all his embodiements, does not possess). I see a purity in the representation of first man and first woman, a purity that allows me to see the characters as archetypes that resemble the spiritual forces that have driven us for our eternity.
Ebert said that it is a standard critical practice not to create a fiction that was not implicit within the film; but with a film like The Fountain, there are so many interpretations and meanings...deep thoughts linger in me while I watch, an ocean of experiences that dwells inside me, calm and enveloping. Interpretaions can, in their own rights, be works of art, if what they interpret, in itself, is beautiful. I will not pretend that my interpretation is right, complete, or a work of art; but what I have seen and felt from this film has filled me with something I cannot describe--if the definition was not insufficient, I would call it God--yet so many pass by it with scorn and rolling eyes. I hope some will see in it what I have felt pass through so many times...or at least to understand, at the very least, that just because a movie doesn't touch you, it does not mean that your perception of the movie is, in itself, truth; it is merely an opinion like mine. On art there is no truth, except the pieces we craft ourselves.
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This is not a film for any one public. Americans, often ignorant of philosophy and mythology (by and large) would stumble awkwardly through much of the film, wondering what the hell is going on. Others still would prefer to call the film pretentious and drenched in metaphysical bull----. Woe it is to the archetypes. No one knows how to reach the elemental, the archetypal arena of human experience anymore; a fact proved by so many other reviewers penchant for searching for the "realism" within the movie. (cf. Roger Ebert's review; this is a thoroughly stupid and ignorant way of viewing such a film...it seems that the Divine Comedy would be cast aside today, because Dante does not describe Paradise in a "realistic" fashion. Which of course is worse than nonsense...its f---ing stupid.)
The problem many people have with this film is that they see it as a story about two people, and not two archetypes that are elemental within human mythology (first man and first woman). It is interesting to note how Jackman becomes Western man (furious and daring, he hopes to reach beyond nature, to become a 'superman,' while not understanding that he is not simply a product of nature but very much a PART of nature) and Weisz becomes the embodiement of Eastern thought (her submission to the truth of nature (death) is not a submission, but an understanding of the tide of life, an understanding Tom, in all his embodiements, does not possess). I see a purity in the representation of first man and first woman, a purity that allows me to see the characters as archetypes that resemble the spiritual forces that have driven us for our eternity.
Ebert said that it is a standard critical practice not to create a fiction that was not implicit within the film; but with a film like The Fountain, there are so many interpretations and meanings...deep thoughts linger in me while I watch, an ocean of experiences that dwells inside me, calm and enveloping. Interpretaions can, in their own rights, be works of art, if what they interpret, in itself, is beautiful. I will not pretend that my interpretation is right, complete, or a work of art; but what I have seen and felt from this film has filled me with something I cannot describe--if the definition was not insufficient, I would call it God--yet so many pass by it with scorn and rolling eyes. I hope some will see in it what I have felt pass through so many times...or at least to understand, at the very least, that just because a movie doesn't touch you, it does not mean that your perception of the movie is, in itself, truth; it is merely an opinion like mine. On art there is no truth, except the pieces we craft ourselves.