Word: fountains
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...history of movie romance is the story of beautiful people with terrible problems. That's The Fountain in a nutshell. Jackman is medical scientist Tom Creo, who's conducting experiments to "stop aging. Stop dying." He has been injecting Mayan medicine into the tumorous brain of a monkey named Donovan (a tribute to the 1953 surgical science-fiction movie Donovan's Brain) to find a cure for the cancer that threatens the life of his novelist wife Izzy, played by Weisz. That's one story. Another is the quest of a 16th-century conquistador, Tomas, to locate the Mayan Tree...
...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...
...Aronofsky?s movie. Ever. It?s a truism of the adventure film that audiences can take it seriously if it doesn?t take itself too seriously. Play the material lightheartedly and viewers can enter into its world; play it straight and solemn, and they?ll get the giggles. The Fountain, which with its opening chords announces its life-or-death theme (and life beyond death), has no time or inclination for comedy. Every line of dialogue, each special effect, all those portentous glances underline the desperate urgency of Tom?s enterprise: to find a way to stop Izzy from dying...
...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 length and sustained intensity...