OK. Here I go. So about Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain": To the filthy hippies who brainwashed the maker of pi; shame on you! The Fountain sucked so hard it created a vacuum. What happened to the Aronofsky with potential? The Aronofsky whose movies interested me as a teenager, who used images and content in a really neat symbiotic way where some of the images were the content, who could shock and surprise me and make me feel stuff? I mean, sure, as a film maker he had a lot of flaws, but he had some pretty good, er, OK, some ideas. But the fountain is so empty of meaning and infused with obnoxious new-age self indulgent self important shit it makes me want to punch the next hippy I see in the face. It's so empty of meaning that even the mechanics of the film are empty gestures; sure, you made all that stuff happen on film without using a computer, but I couldn't tell. My buddy who watched the movie with me couldn't tell. Basically, you blew god knows how much money in some kind of new age film-snob revolt against digital animation techniques for no good reason. There are a million instances where there is a good reason NOT to use CGI, for example, if you are representing fire. Fire cannot be CGI. I don't care how good you think you are at it, you're not, just don't do it. But that hippy shit in the fountain? I thought it was CGI until I read otherwise. So, good job of not disrupting the flow and feel of the movie by not using CGI, it really made a difference. Idiot.
Also, a whole movie and all that overblown drama about some chick who dies of cancer? (Yeah, she dies, now you know the end so you don't have to see it.) Big deal. Something sadder happened to me on my walk to the bus this morning and you don't see me making a movie about it, especially not one in which I become some kind of ascetic who makes out with trees in the sky for eternity because of it. Also, brain surgery? In a drug trial? With results that are worth something in days? Whoever did the research for that aspect of the story deserves to be shot in the knees, because my kid sister could tell you that drugs enter the brain through the blood-brain barrier and drug trials last no less than 5 years. If you're developing a drug that requires direct access to the brain you're probably in Nazi Germany, and it's probably not a drug. My kid sister is pre-med, but my point still stands.
In conclusion: Return Darren Aronofsky to us, you filthy filthy hippies, and I will give each one of you a brand new filthy sleeping bag and some used dread wax. Seems fair to me.
Available: doesn't matter, don't see it.
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Hi all. I'm just a movie nerd who loves to write, think, and talk about movies. I have a particular soft spot in my heart for B-movies and forgotten movies. I have an undergraduate degree in film but am now pursuing my real dream and getting a PhD in neuroscience, and as such now need an outlet for my thoughts about film. I hope that maybe something I write will inspire someone to go out and watch something worthwhile.
1 comment:
Good to have you back.
And good grief, girl, you do like your vitriol. To be fair, I recall reviewing movies in this way too, so I feel your rage, believe me.
In particular, I directed a good deal of bile at that stupid 100-minute music video Requiem For A Dream, otherwise known as the "DRUGS BAD, DRUGS REALLY REALLY BAD" movie.
When I wasn't laughing at Aronofsky's unintentionally campy guignol, or regretting his waste of a great actress in a completely caricatured performance, or wanting the whole damn thing to just be over already, I was enjoying watching Jennifer Connelly fuck plastic with her ass.
Oh wait, that was one scene.
But Pi was good.
Student film, but good.
As for The Fountain, yes, it's an extremely arrogant, failed experiment in self-indulgence, but I'd argue every one of Darren's films is. That doesn't make me want him to stop trying.
Honestly, I was shocked at the "obviousness" of Fountain's imagery (hair on the neck, hair on the tree; sap of eternal life as cum; the rings of tattoos an analog for tree rings on an aging, ascending spire, etc.). I was also disappointed the film gives up before trying at anything resembling a...decision.
But the performances held me. How any man could not fall in love with Rachel Weisz is beyond me. Also, how any man couldn't identify with Hugh Jackman's singular, tunnel-visioned, relentless pursuit of his particular Grail, all extraneous concerns be damned. It's the very definition of masculinity, taken to its utmost, maniacal extreme.
I think the movie is more remarkable for where it falls short than for where it marginally succeeds. It's so personal, so OF Darren Aronofsky (faults and all), that it merits attention among other cold, disaffected, groupthink committee-films that aren't aiming for anything other than to make back their investment.
Give me an obsessive, years-long crusade that ends in shambles and ignominy, over a corporately-funded button-pusher that hits all its marks and lets us leave the theater anything but dazed, elated, rattled or infuriated. The only undesirable reaction is indifference, Lilla! And you weren't indifferent to this.
I'll close by suggesting you've got a more interesting lump of jelly in your noggin than Aronofsky does, which you brought to the first two films (and his palette of images, too). What The Fountain seems to tell me is, he desperately wants to be a deep thinker, but he's only touching early edges of the self-awareness he needs to pull it off.
He shouldn't let that stop him.
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