NOTE: This thread may contain spoilers.
Just got home from seeing “The Fountain.”
[spoiler] My initial reaction was that it was…tiresome. I can appreciate poetic distillation, but I felt it suffered from lack of plot and character development.
I feel that I “got it” - they more or less beat you over the head with the theme. I can give it points for being unlike anything else playing at the concrete bunker at the end of the mall. However, overall it was a major disappointment.
Am I totally off base here? I read somewhere that the original budget had been cut way back. Could it have been better if it was 45-60 minutes longer?
Can someone who really loved it please tell me what you found redeeming? [/spoiler]
The movie for me was shoe in. I loved Pi and Requiem. To say “The Fountain” is not heavy duty… is to do it a great disservice.
Aronofsky had an interview in the AJC. In it he claimed that he made the movie exactly how he wanted to make it, wanted it to be “out there”, and knows that roughly half of the people will flat out not get it.
Mom saw it with me, and implied she wanted a refund.
I countered and said, if any movie can incite conversation afterwards, it is a good movie.
Did I want “The Fountain” to be better? Yes.
Am I glad I saw it anyway? Yes.
Do I think that [for what Aronofsky wanted done] the movie was good? Yes.
Will I see it again? The timelines of the movie are so well done, that it is like Memento, you need to see it again.
I think this will be an intellectual cult film, from day one.
As per your spoiler. He wanted it to be … a struggle to get at. If all was spelled out, no one would pay attention. (Aronofsky’s own arguement, slightly paraphrased)
The entire theme of Circles peremate, and how circles (like life, as argued in the movie) do not end / die.