Monday, December 11, 2006

Movie Review: The Fountain

The word "trippy" was made for this movie.
There's three intermixed stories in this movie and how they intermingle, or if they do at all, is left as an exercise for the viewer.

In the Garden of Eden there were two trees. The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. We ate from the Tree of Knowledge and were banished while the Tree of Life was hidden in a Mayan temple.

Hugh Jackman serves in the court of Queen Isabella (Rachel Weisz). One of her priests discovered the Tree of Life while exploring New Spain. She sends Hugh to go get some sap from the tree so that she may banish death from Spain and she and he can live together forever.

Hugh Jackman is a doctor married to Rachel Weisz. She is dying from brain cancer. He's trying to find a cure. The most promising results are from a sample of a tree they found in Guatamala.
She's writing a book about the Mayans and how Isabella sent someone to find the Tree of Life. Their creation myth includes the creator's head become a nebula that they think is heaven.

Hugh Jackman is in a interstellar snow globe taking the Tree of Life... or maybe it's his wife... to a nebula where it will be reborn. He's haunted by visions of Rachel Weisz in the form of the doctor's wife and Queen Isabella.

Good movie but it's hard to figure out. Check the comments to see why or go see it yourself.







Comments:
The flashbacks and visions can lead one to think that these are the same people throughout history but that all gets screwed up when Hugh the Conquistador drinks the sap from the Tree of Life and gets consumed from the inside by flowers.

1 comment:

Carrie M said...

I thought it was really weird, and not in a good way. It's the interstellar snow globe that tripped me out the most. I could get on board with the queen/conquistador and doctor/wife stories and their lives linking together. But not enough seemed to happen, nothing was really solved for me.

However, it was a beautiful film. Best cinematography I've seen all year.