Revisiting "The Fountain" Through Analysis

I guess it would have been almost a year ago that I went and saw Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain" at a second-run movie theater. I knew nothing about the movie, except that it was supposed to be fairly "trippy." Of course, if you've seen the film, you probably know that the term "trippy" doesn't even begin to describe layered, difficult piece of cinema. I remember leaving the theater struggling to grasp what I had just seen, and yet strangely enjoying it. Only now am I actually beginning to understand the film, thanks to a flurry of new articles written about it.

It all started with Nathin Rabin's blog on the Onion's AV Club. Rabin featured the movie in his "Year of Flops" blog series, which addresses movies that were commercial failures. Rabin got me thinking about the movie again with his review, which talked mainly about the film's production history and the imagery Aronofsky uses:

It's a film suffused with vaginal and birth imagery, full of womb-like dark spaces and protective circles. It's a waking dream of a movie as painfully earnest and unashamedly romantic as a high school sophomore's love letters. As in his previous films, Aronofsky completely eschews protective irony: as far I could tell, there isn't a single joke in the entire film. There's something incredibly refreshing about the film's heroic earnestness. Aronofsky is a true romantic in an age ruled by cynicism and doubt.

It was only a start, however, as the review didn't lend itself to much analysis of the film's structure (which is arguably the most confusing aspect of the film).

Just a day later I discovered a new review of "The Fountain" by Roger Ebert. Apparently Ebert is catching up on a lot of movies that he missed while he was fighting cancer. It's great to see him back in rare form writing like he used to. His review addresses the movie's initial critical failures, since it currently only has a 51% rating on Metacritic. He suggested that people didn't initially take to the movie because you can't really get it on the first go-around:

Can a typical aud[ience] member be expected to do the heavy parsing that would figure all this out? I doubt it. Most movies, you like to have them all parsed before you buy the ticket. Did I have it figured out? It didn't take me long, and here was my thinking: Since there is not a single element in the film claiming that the same man is alive in all three time periods, he obviously is not. There is a critical belief that you should not bring story elements to fiction that cannot be found there.

But it was only through his article did I discover the best analysis of the film yet. He posted another article on his website written by JoBlo.com columnist Matt Withers, who wrote a simple and convincing argument about the movie. After reading his article, I feel like I have at least a basic understanding of what this movie was all about... and it only took me a year.

Now, this blog entry probably doesn't make much sense to people who haven't seen the movie, and I've purposely left out any sort of synopsis about "The Fountain" so as not to give anything away. All I can say is that if you haven't seen the movie, I would certainly recommend it. I've only seen a few films that have been so complex that I still ponder their meaning months after seeing them. "The Fountain" is one of those films.