Obfuscation is not a synonym for 'brilliant': A review of The Fountain.

Given a purely visual sequence, Darren Aronofsky presents a stream of images and music, stunning and imaginative. His eye for design is remarkable and new, and his ear for composition is breathtaking. His narrative, however, is something quite different. Not only trite and boorish, but yet another example of careless ineptitude, with regards to key elements of story-telling. Much like Aronofsky's "breakthrough" film, Pi, The Fountain appears overly-pretentious, cliché, and utterly annoying. While in the theater, I remember thinking more about what I was going to do after seeing the film, than the film itself.

I've often found that many people are too quick to judge an inescapably mundane film some sort of artistic achievement, purely due to its deviation from the norm. If you don't understand it, it's probably smart; right? In the case of The Fountain, I found myself wishing I didn't understand the film; that way, at least I could play ignorant. At least then I could leave the theater with some sense of wonder. Instead, I left completely unchanged. Aronofsky had done the same thing again: he'd created something workaday, yet packaged it in something grand.

For all its mesmerizing visuality and hypnotic harmony, The Fountain merely toys with the Big Questions, and never really gives any insight. Aronofsky really cuts off his nose to spite his face with all of his hack-editing and repetitive sequences. Issues like 'love conquering science,' 'man questioning God,' and the 'acceptance of death' are strewn together and mixed widely without any forethought or strategy. The great tragedy of this film rests solely in those who have faith in it: as noted throughout, the soundtrack is phenomenal and the cinematography is right-on; the acting is superb; and the passion is without question, dignified. Unfortunately, these virtues seem wasted given the shallowness of the film as a whole.