The Fountain
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Darren Aronofsky (screenplay), Darren Aronofsky & Ari Handel (story)
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn, and Sean Patrick Thomas

There are many movies that are so beautifully filmed that you could take almost any still-frame from it and hang it in your house.  Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain is one of these movies.  In fact, it may have been better off as individual frames in an art gallery instead of a movie.

This is a film where the filmmaking technique is serving a story that is almost as ambitious but not nearly as realized.  It follows Tommy (Hugh Jackman) a doctor who is trying to cure his terminally ill wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz).  That is the barebones of a story that dips back to ancient Spanish culture as well as travels hundreds of years into the future.  You’ll come to learn that Izzi wrote a book about Spanish conquistadors and the Tree of Life, and when Tommy starts reading it he envisions himself as one who is pursuing the Tree so that he can live forever with the queen (also played by Weisz).

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