The Fountain

If I could live forever, I would avoid ever seeing Requiem for a Dream again.

Darren Aronofsky has a reputation for making movies that mess with your head.  I will admit that I haven't been keeping up with his career (I'm seeing Black Swan this weekend, but I still haven't see The Wrestler), but this fits with my first-hand knowledge of his works.  I enjoyed his first film, Pi, because it was weird; I hate Requiem For a Dream because I found it pretentious and ridiculously depressing.  But the man is up for another Oscar nomination and is going to direct the X-Men spin-off, The Wolverine, so I thought I should check out the man's work.

Those with elephantine memories might recall The Fountain as one of those Hollywood projects that was destined to fail.  It had a big budget and some big name actors attached, but it never got made, even after Brad Pitt grew this fantastic beard for the lead role:

Beard tentacles!

Sadly, Pitt left the picture to star in Troy, which wasn't good, and Aronofsky was left back at square one.  But, being a determined man, he retooled the script, cut the budget in half, and convinced two fairly big name actors (Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz) to star in the film.  Even this didn't keep the movie from flopping in the box office, but with an auteur like Aronofsky, that doesn't necessarily indicate a bad movie.

The plot is difficult to summarize.  It is not told in a linear fashion, but that is not because the plot is trying to postpone a relevant twist until the end of the movie.  No, this movie is nonlinear for symbolic purposes.  There are actually three storylines.  The first involves a Spanish Conquistador searching for the fountain of youth for his queen, the second is about a modern-day scientist that is desperately trying to cure his wife's brain tumor, and the third is about a futuristic astronaut that is trying to reach a distant nebula.  Making things extra difficult, Hugh Jackman plays Tomas, Thomas, and Tom in the three storylines, respectively, and Rachel Weisz plays Isabel and Izzie, respectively.  Man, this is getting complicated even before I attempt to summarize it.

Here's the gist of the stories.  Tomas the Conquistador wants to save his queen from the Spanish Inquisition; she convinces him that the only way to do that is to find the fountain of life.  If he succeeds, she will become his wife.  The movie shows him being convinced by the queen and in the jungles of America on his search.  There are no Spanish accents to be found in this film, though.  Thomas is a talented neuroscientist whose wife, Izzy, is terminally ill.  Instead of accepting her death (as she has), he throws himself into his research, desperate for the breakthrough that she doesn't demand, but he so desperately needs.  Tom is inside a large bubble (who needs a spaceship in the future?) with only a few personal items and a dying tree (that might be Isabel?  Maybe?); his goal is to reach a nebula and be consumed by it, which will somehow give renewed life to the tree.

The three stories are mixed together so that they all climax at about the same time.  The obvious implication of the characters names is that they are the same people/souls, and all three stories are trying to find a way to come to terms with death.  Now, that is a pretty big issue --- does this movie have what it takes to handle it?

Not especially.  It's overly ambitious (do you really think they're going to come to a satisfying conclusion about eternal life here?), but that doesn't mean that the actors or director did a bad job assembling this movie.  Yes, I'm a little suspicious as to why Pitt had to grow such a massive beard but Jackman just grew a goatee, but that doesn't negate what was done on screen.  Since the movie is, essentially, divided into three distinct parts (regardless of how interconnected they may be), each part deserves a satisfying conclusion.  Do they get it?  Well...not so much.  What viewers do get is a few half-baked ideas about eternal life.  Does eternal life mean living as normal folks know it, or does it mean joining some other consciousness?  Is eternal life a good thing, or a curse?  Is it better to fight or accept death?

I don't know what to tell you.  You would think a movie that tackles such deep issues would take a definite stance on this, but I'm not seeing it.  Of course, Aronofsky could be making a singular point and is just obscuring it in metaphors.  Maybe.  But I think it is more likely that the confusion I felt while watching the movie is representative of the film's message.  Life and death are The Big Issues, and this movie is not nearly equipped to deal with them.

My problem with The Fountain could have been with its pretentiousness.  It certainly is full of itself, but I'm okay with that when a movie is trying to make a big statement about important things.  No, my problem is with its execution.  There are three storylines in this movie; there only needs to be one.  I actually liked the modern day story; the acting was good, it had the most believable characters, and it had the most depth.  The other two story lines are just weird.  Do we need a Conquistador that literally turns into flowers?  That seems doubtful.  How about a tai chi practitioner that eats tree/woman bark to sustain his life?  Unlikely.  Both of those storylines were beyond odd to watch and, in the end, they left me speechless.  That's not a good thing.  I was only rendered speechless because I don't like to curse out loud when I'm home alone.

Why is this tree hairy?  ***sound of head exploding***

The film's biggest crime is not even its WTF moments.  It wants to be an important talking piece about death, but it falls so short of its goals; this movie isn't bad because it aimed for the stars, but because it fell so short.  By cut-and-pasting the three narratives together, The Fountain succeeds in drawing parallels between its three Toms and their situations.  That same process cheapens the emotional impact of modern-day Thomas' story; his Izzie has warmth and depth and is genuinely interesting, but the subtlety of Rachel Weisz's performance is lost when it is edited to parallel a bizarre space bubble riding, tree-eating cosmonaut.

The Fountain is what many critics might call an "interesting failure."  That sounds a little pompous to me, but there is some truth to it.  There is no denying that Darren Aronofsky is a talented director.  His movies are always visually imaginative.  He gets some very good performances from his actors, even in unusual roles.  I didn't like the story lines of Christmases past or future here, but the primary storyline had some very good acting.  Rachel Weisz was excellent as Izzie, Hugh Jackman was good as Thomas (less good as Tom and Tomas, though), and the supporting cast was solid.  Ellen Burstyn, Ethan Suplee, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mark Margolis, and Stephen McHattie all make appearances in this movie, although only Burstyn has the opportunity to act much.  Now, if Aronofsky could just make a movie that isn't miserable to watch, he'd be great.

Despite the impressive visuals and the occasionally impressive acting, The Fountain is still a narrative mess.  There's a small voice in the back of my head that keeps suggesting that maybe I don't get it, but I think I do --- and I'm not impressed.  What is the lesson here?  Maybe the bigger the central idea, the less convoluted it needs to be.

Constantine

"Demons, angels, and chain-smoking, oh my!"  That's probably what the tag line for this movie should have been; I don't know how accurate the whole "Hell wants him.  Heaven won't have him.  Earth needs him." is to the overall feel of the film.  After finishing up the greatest movie trilogy ever in 2003 (The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, and Something's Gotta Give), Keanu Reeves was looking for a new way to aggravate nerdy fanboys.  After the disappointment of the Matrix sequels, the obvious choice was for him to star in a comic book movie.  Constantine is the film adaptation of the long-running Hellblazer series, where the main character, John Constantine, wanders around London as kind of a blue-collar warlock with a bad attitude and a habit for getting into trouble.  Why wasn't the movie called Hellblazer?  So it wouldn't get confused for the Hellraiser series, obviously.  I'm serious, that was their reason.  With the affirmation that the filmmakers assume their audience is stupid, let's take a look at Keanu Constantine.

John Constantine is a smart-ass, but he's a tough smart-ass.  When he's not smoking and drinking his life away in a trench coat that looks like it could walk itself home,  he is busy performing all sorts of magical trickery.  You see, John can sense when angels or demons are nearby.  Well, that's not entirely accurate; he can sense when they have possessed a host, which makes them part-human and part-whatever.  John likes to play on the side of angels, when he can, and sends any misbehaving demons back to Hell.  When Angela's (Rachel Weisz) crazy and crazy-religious twin sister committed suicide, Angela doesn't believe it.  When she watches a video of her sister just before jumping to her death, she thinks she hears her sister say "Constantine."  Naturally, she assumes that her sister saw John Constantine on the roof, where she jumped looks for and finds John, who she randomly met the day before, and asks for his help.  John reluctantly agrees, but only because he feels like something nasty is on the horizon, and Angela's sister appears to be the key.  What do you know?  He's right!  But can even the infamous John Constantine battle against the nastiest that Hell has to offer?

Now, when looking at the plot's framework, you might assume that this movie has kind of a suspense/thriller tone.  Nope.  This is an action movie.  I guess that explains Keanu's participation, but with heavy Bible and occult references, this seems like a poor choice for an action movie.

The acting is generally pretty mediocre, which is what you should expect in a Keanu Reeves vehicle.  Keanu manages to not say "whoa" even once (I think), but that's about the best thing I can say about his performance.  His character is sarcastic and world-weary, and should have a more gravelly voice from all the cigarettes he smokes, but Keanu doesn't quite convey these complexities.  I don't know if that is his fault, the director's or maybe whoever cast Keanu Freakin' Reeves as a clever, sarcastic, British bastard --- Reeves would have had a better chance starring in an Alf biopic than pulling off this character.  Rachel Weisz, as the I-don't-believe-in-demons-and-angels-on-Earth character, was surprisingly boring.  I normally like Weisz, but I felt like she was playing down to Keanu's level.  Shia LaBeouf has a small role as Constantine's aspiring apprentice, and he was okay.  SPOILER: He dies like a chump, though.  I liked Djimon Hounsou as the almost pimp-like owner of a angel/demon neutral club.  His part is pretty one-dimensional, but it had some flair.  Gavin Rossdale, of all people, was cast as a minor demon, and he is wretched.  If he had to be in the movie, I would have preferred it if he just read the lyrics to "Machinehead" aloud, instead of trying to emote.  On the bright side, Rossdale makes Reeves look positively professional by comparison.

Gavin Rossdale in Constantine

The best actors were the most powerful characters in the film.  Tilda Swinton played the archangel Gabriel, and her not-quite-human looks worked well with the character.  It was also an interesting idea to have an angel that was actually kind of evil at times.  Peter Stormare, as Satan, was only on-camera for a few minutes late in the movie, but I thought he did a great job.  It was an interesting take on the character, maybe not what I would have done, but Stormare is great at playing slimy characters and, really, is there a slimier character than lounge-suit Satan?

Tilda Swinton will eat your face off, humans.

Since this is an action movie, perhaps it is unfair to focus so much on the acting.  Perhaps.  Well, the action is actually pretty decent.  It's not fabulous, but the special effects look pretty good, for the most part, and the script managed to find ways for Keanu to fight demons and not get killed.  In these scenes, in particular, I thought the script was decently clever.  Most of the action and special effects were just there to make things seem more exciting than they actually were, though.  This film could have been made for half the cost if it didn't choose to use cool-looking, but unimportant, visual effects. 

This was director Francis Lawrence's first feature film after years of directing music videos, and his affinity for fantastic visuals in three-minute chunks is apparent in this movie.  Just as apparent is Lawrence's inexperience with coaching dialogue from his performers.  Gavin Rossdale and Keanu Reeves I can understand reciting lines like rote repetition, but too many supporting characters seemed under-inspired, and that's the director's fault.

Still, this movie does look pretty cool.  There are some stupid things --- a weird foot fetish-esque scene, Hell looks like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and someone slices their wrists and cuts across the veins --- but the general idea of angels and demons possessing people is a cool one.  So how far do good looks and a nice idea take you?  A long way, actually, unless your movie is sabotaged by poor acting.

I almost gave this 5.5 or 6 stars, but I remembered just how terribly they mangled this premise.  I've read the Hellblazer comic for a few years now, and the stories that they based this movie on are soooo much better than this!  So, here's my pitch: remake this movie, Hollywood!  Cast someone British this time, maybe James Marsters or Paul Bettany, as long as they can deliver truly funny-mean dialogue.  This time, though, instead of trying to win Heaven's favor, Constantine just wants to stay out of Hell.  In the comic, when John discovered that he had lung cancer, he sold his soul to three different demons.  When they realized that they would have to tear Hell apart in a massive battle when John died, they cured him.  Of course, pissing off demons isn't good in the long run.  Right there, you have the first third of a movie.  Second act is building tension toward demons getting even, third act has the Rossdale hitting the fan.  As long as Constantine survives by hit wits and still pays a price, it would be awesome.  And completely unmarketable, I know.

The Constant Gardener

 Most of the time, when I finish a movie, I know how I feel about it right away.  I'm pretty good at articulating my responses, so when I find myself at a loss, it's noteworthy (to me, at least).  I guess that makes The Constant Gardener noteworthy, then.

The film is based on a novel by John le Carre, author of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, which I haven't read.  I'll be honest, I'm more of a Robert Ludlum type of guy than a le Carre fan, but for those that are unfamiliar with him, he writes spy novels filled with lots of subtle moments instead of big action.  So, despite the presence of a gun on the movie poster, I assure you that this is not an action packed spy film.  Instead, it is a love story...in the middle of a deadly conspiracy.

Ralph Fiennes is married to Rachel Weisz; he is a British diplomat and she is an activist.  They are in Nairobi for his job when Rachel's character is murdered, reportedly by her friend.  When Fiennes starts to investigate the murder on his own, he realizes that his wife had uncovered a corporate cover-up.  I don't want to spoil anything (the plot is very detail-driven), but the cover-up risks billions of dollars, which always leads to important people trying to cover their assets (see what I did just there?  I'm so clever).

While this film is plot heavy, it is a more character-driven piece than any other conspiracy or spy movie I have seen.  That's partly what makes this an odd film for me.  Most of the time, in a movie like this, you have a spy that is a total bad-ass as the main character.  Or you can go the other way, and have an every day guy  thrust into extraordinary circumstances.  This, though, does not feel extraordinary; it feels all too plausible.  Fiennes' character is the prototypical uptight British man; he tends to repress his emotions and is very understated.  This makes for a realistic portrayal, but it bored the crap out of me.  Fiennes' acting really saved the film for me.  He was able to show a wide of emotions range with limited source material; Ralph Fiennes needs to be cast in bigger movies because he has a ton of talent, but has been using it in too many bit roles lately.  Rachel Weisz, on the other hand, plays a very over-the-top character and brings her down to earth.  Weisz absolutely deserved the Oscar she won for this performance; she should have been nominated for the lead acting role instead of supporting, because she totally could have beaten Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line.  The juxtaposition of the uber-emotional Weisz and the anti-emotional Fiennes is interesting to watch because the characters show their love in different, subtle ways.  Yes, Weisz is dead as the film begins, but this movie is really about their romance and Fiennes' realization of its importance once she is gone.


Danny Huston was good as a back-stabbing scoundrel, although I barely recognized him...apparently, this is his normal appearance, not how he looked in 30 Days of Night.  Silly me.  This is also the best dramatic work I've seen from Bill Nighy, a very capable comedic actor, but a dreadful action star (ugh...Underworld...).  In fact, if the two lead roles were not played so capably, Nighy's work would have been the standout for this film.

The acting is very noteworthy, but the film style is quite unusual, too.  The film proceeds in a dual-linear chronological fashion.  In other words, the plot proceeds chronologically, but frequently cuts to an extended series of flashbacks for Fiennes' character that also occur chronologically; for example, when Fiennes identifies Weisz's body, he has a flashback to the moment they met and as he deals with his loss in the present, his flashbacks proceed in time from that first moment they shared together. Most of the time, when a movie has flashbacks, they are usually just one or two important scenes that add background to a character's history.  The rest of the time, the film is edited so that the chronology is out of order, but there is a sense of thematic unity closure (like Pulp Fiction or Memento).  While not unprecedented (Slumdog Millionaire and the director's City of God have also used this device), telling the story this way made it interesting to watch, for a change.  These two characters should not have liked each other, but the flashbacks show how important Weisz was to Fiennes, which made his actions in the present seem more logical and have more meaning.

Okay, so far it all sounds pretty good.  Why was this a difficult movie for me to respond to?  Well, as technically impressive as this film is, and the acting and editing show how much director Fernando Meirelles did, I had a hard time caring.  Is this a good movie?  Yes, but I don't think I'll watch it again for a long time.  My problem lies with Fiennes' character.  Since he is the focal point of the movie, he needs to be interesting and he is not.  Fiennes is capable of so much charisma on screen, so it's frustrating for me to watch and appreciate his work here and still not enjoy it.  Really, the plot is good, the acting and directing are great, but when the main character is painfully and deliberately plain, it's hard to overcome.