Word: epical
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...Throughout, Aronofsky pursued his own epic, The Fountain, about a man who will do anything to save his critically ailing wife. The film was to cost near $100 million and to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The original financiers dropped The Fountain when those two bowed out. (They later reunited to make Babel, in which they played virtually the same roles.) Aronofsky slimmed down the budget to $35 million, cast Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz in the main roles, and made the damn movie. The whole trip, with all its frustrating detours, took six years. Then the Cannes Film...
...Venice, the bubble popped, and neither star could save The Fountain from a death sentence of boos at both the critics' and the public screenings. The film was dismissed as an expensive waste of time (although another high-IQ sci-fi epic shown at Venice, Alfonso Cuaron's dystopic City of Men, was reported to have cost between $80 million and $150 million). Weisz, who earlier this year received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Constant Gardener and became a mother, seemed equally maternal in defense of her new movie. "I think it's wonderful that this film...
...Unlike every modern epic from Star Wars to Harry Potter, this one isn?t spurred by revenge (you killed my father, so I must wipe out your civilization). Here, love is the driving force (I will do anything to keep you alive), making The Fountain the rare quest film with a hero as selfless as he is besotted. Izzy calls Tom ?my conquistador!? and she?s not kidding...
...minimize the importance of overthrowing the Galactic Empire or dumping The Ring in Mount Doom, but shouldn?t there be a place in the canon of epic films for a story about a man trying to keep his dying beloved alive? Kids, who think they?ll live forever, might not hook up to this trope, but adults should. They?ve certainly seen it before: Armand trying to breathe life into the dying Marguerite Gautier, or Romeo trying to shake the poison out of Juliet, or Isolde going operatic over Tristan. The Fountain is essentially a classic deathbed scene, at feature...
...Impossible to pin down or pigeonhole, as full of contradictions as his movies, Altman became a specialist in both two movie forms: epic and the intimate. Nashville, a Doomsday kaleidoscope set to country music, splashed the whole South with his wily cynicism; Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson said that American history was a lie dressed up in showbiz frills; and A Wedding, his black spray-paint on a four-tier nuptial cake, contained 48 characters, for no better reason than that Nashville had had 24. But there was a quieter, artsier side to Altman...