Open Forum Friday: The Fountain… Masterpiece or Overrated?
This weekend marks the release of what may be one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year (no, I’m not talking about Deck The Halls). The production of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain has been an arduous 5 year struggle, and after the success of his first two critically acclaimed films Pi and Requiem For A Dream, a lot of people are expecting big things from it. On the other hand, there is a growing group of voices who are accusing The Fountain of being a big pretentious pile of crap, ever since it got booed at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year. The question is… who’s right?
As it turns out, The Fountain isn’t even playing in St. Catharines this weekend so I doubt I’ll be seeing it anytime soon, but I have read the graphic novel and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what to expect. At its core, it’s a trippy yet sappy love story that spans 3 time periods. I’m guessing it’s something in the vein of Solaris, that is, a science-fiction film without any action, which severely limits any commercial appeal it might have. Will impressive visuals be enough to carry a movie of this sort? Probably not.
Yes, even though this is all pure speculation on my part, I’m leaning more towards the pretentious camp right now, although I’m still interested in seeing it based on Aronofsky’s credentials alone. Currently sitting at 48% on Rotten Tomatoes; I think it could end up being one of the most divisive movies of the year. Are you planning to see The Fountain? And if you already have seen it, did it live up to your expectations? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.
Comments (8)
The love story is only on the surface of the film. There’s a lot more to it than that. I’ve seen it and though I’m not sure it’s worthy of the title of ‘masterpiece’ it’s certainly better than most of the stuff to come out over the last few years.
What surprised me is how humble Aronofsky is. I’ve liked his other movies but never given him much thought beyond that but I recently heard an excellent interview with him which was posted on /Film (link below) and I was surprised to hear how everyone at the roundtable took their own thing from it and Aronofsky never once took credit for soliciting those ideas. He’s very candid about the fact that he had a vision for it and he’s not trying to take credit for stuff people take from it.
If nothing else, it’s a great movie to see and discuss and there’s lots to discuss both technically and intellectually.
I don’t think it’s over rated at all.
Posted by Marina on November 24th, 2006Oops. I forgot the link. Here it is:
http://www.slashfilm.com/article.php/20061121darrenpodcast
Posted by Marina on November 24th, 2006I will see it as I think that Aronofsky is super talented, how ever I suspect the good reviews from web critics are based on an attempt to say they “get it” where old school critics don’t. I must admit since seeing the trailers and reading the synopsis, other than the way it looks it does not appeal to me as much as I had hoped a new project from him would. Still as I have yet to see it, I will have to reserve judgement until I do.
Posted by leigh on November 24th, 2006Pretty indifferent about this movie… Will probably never see it. It’s the sort of thing I would make an effort to see if it had gotten great reviews, but I’m not that interested in this.
The period piece aspects of it would interest me, how the sorroundings and current society would affect the relationship etc, but from what I hear it seems it became more about flashy imagery than the characters.
Posted by Henrik on November 24th, 2006If I may shill for a second:
http://www.eclecticgamer.com/2006/11/100_days_of_snark_day_82_the_f.php
The movie is years ahead of its time. It will not make much money now because the gen pop will not understand it for what it is. It is easily one of the best science fiction movies I have ever seen. Don’t call it sci-fi, which is what you get when you have action and/or boobs.
Posted by Dave on November 24th, 2006I’m definitely gonna see it when it is released in Australia. Requiem For A Dream was awesome. The guy is clearly a talented filmmaker and even if The Fountain turns out to be flawed, I’m happy to throw my money his way because there aren’t many ambitious, visionary directors around these days.
Posted by thesnowleopard on November 24th, 2006I will see The Fountain, but I’m not caught up in the hype. To be honest I never really thought about this film. If it’s good, it’s good, if it’s bad, it’s bad.
Posted by wolf on November 25th, 2006I was really thrown by this movie right from the beginning, which I can’t say has really happened before. I was really getting into it right up to the last 15-30 minutes where the audio track seemed to be edited poorly resulting in numerous cracks changing the audio quality (like the difference between Dolby, DTS, THX, and a run of the mill car stereo) every few seconds making the last part of the film (the ending scenes, and the credits) quite unwatchable. For the first few seconds I wasn’t sure if it was poor editing (like a misshape by some machinery) or intentional but after several scenes it became so annoying I could not see any possible logic in any director doing so on purpose.
Did anyone else’s film have distorted audio?
Posted by Aaron on November 25th, 2006Leave a Reply