The Fountain

Song of the Day: Halfway / Hammel On Trial Word of the Day: Gravidate / Impregnate This week on Integral Naked, Stuart Davis has an exclusive dialogue with Darren Aronofsky, director of The Fountian. This review is an addendum to that talk. The Cure For Altitude Sickness... Let's imagine we administered salvia divinorum an entheogenic drug, to three different people. Same drug, same dose, same exact conditions, but given to three different people, each one coming from a different developmental station, or altitude of awareness. The first person, a fundamentalist Christian, reports seeing Jesus Christ. Jesus speaks directly to this person, and the vision confirms the ultimate and literal truth of the Bible. The second person, a brain surgeon, takes the drug and spontaneously acquires the capacity to see the circuitry and systems of the body on a microbiotic scale. Suddenly, biological life is revealed to her in stunning detail, magnified a hundred fold. But the third person takes the drug and reports the strangest experience of all: Theirs is a Kosmic Paradox. They experience the Reality behind the appearances. Their own nature is unbounded, ineffable. They are at a loss to communicate it, but pressed to describe it, they say Reality... has no opposite. Same drug, same setting, same circumstances, three different altitudes of awareness. Each one of them is right, for their particular altitude. But they are not equal. Some interpretations are deeper than others. And this is why The Fountain is not getting a fair shake in the media. It's being reviewed by critics who are out of their altitude in judging it. Like many great films with deeper, enigmatic dimensions (Mulholland Drive, Thin Red Line, Dancer In The Dark, I Heart Huckabees, The Matrix), The Fountain's trans-rational features have been mistaken by some as merely ir-rational fodder. This phenomenon, in which symbols from higher altitudes of awareness are filtered through lower (more limited) perspectives, induces what I will call "altitude sickness". In such instances, a viewer anchored in a rational center of gravity gets interpretive vertigo when they encounter something from beyond or above their register. The subject often dismisses the U.F.O (or unidentifiable freaky ontology) as extraneous non-sense. We know better. Each altitude has its own epistemologies, or ways of knowing. A movie like The Fountain is not just a flat, monochromatic "it" with a right or wrong interpretation to be had. There are varying depths of perspective it can be viewed from, and indeed a film feels very different depending upon the altitude of the subject interpreting it. A brief survey of reviews of The Fountain from major papers illustrates the point. Take for example, this jaded bit of bile from Ray Bennett of the Hollywood Reporter. And I quote: " Early in "The Fountain," writer-director Darren Aronofsky's flatulent dissertation on the benefits of dying, someone says, "Death is the path to awe." Aw, shucks, isn't that what suicide bombers are led to believe? Aronofsky wants us to believe in a story about seeking the fountain of youth that covers three incarnations from the days of Spanish conquistadors to the present day and forward to the 26th century..." End quote. I said earlier that no perspective is wrong, just partial. But Ray Bennett comes as close to getting it wrong as you can. Aronofsky doesn't want us to "believe" anything. The Fountain is not dogma, it's a painting, a poem, a prismatic reflection of Mystery, and our opportunity is to engage it, dialogue with it. In the scheme of things, what's more outrageous, The Fountain's triune narrative, or the fact that a Mr. Yuck Face like Ray Bennett gets to critique it? Ray. You're not qualified. Here's some thoughts from Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times, quote: "As pretentious as it is silly, "The Fountain" is just the type of impenetrable indulgence that gives the concept of personal artistic visions a bad name." How about this review from Meredith Brody of the Chicago Reader, who calls the Fountain, quote: "A pretentious, unfocused, and fussy mess, in which director Darren Aronofsky manages to make Hugh Jackman unattractive and unsympathetic... Even fans of Aronofsky's incoherent, flashy Pi and somewhat more coherent, flashy Requiem for a Dream will be scratching their heads." Really Meredith? Are you sure? Because I AM that fan you speak of, I loved Pi, and Requiem For A Dream, and I was not scratching my head while I watched The Fountain, I was drying my eyes. I have found all three of Aronofsky's films moving and enigmatic in the best sense. It's crude and lazy readings like yours, Meredith, that have me scratching my head. In the toxic climate of these reviewers cynicism, even the critics who love the film have to apologize for it, as is the case with Richard Corliss of Time Magazine, who's headline reads: "I Admit it: I Liked The Fountain." A few critics demonstrate some insight and openness though, as with William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who writes: "In an era in which even the so-called independent cinema chases formulas and is ruled by a cowardly herd instinct, you really have to admire Aronofsky's guts for making such a risky, uncompromising, spiritual-minded film." Too few and far between are the reviewers like Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle whose review deserves to be cited at length: QUOTE "Before contemplating the sublime metaphysical head trip called The Fountain, it's best to remove your shoes and socks. Shave your head. Assume the lotus position. Exhale slowly. Ommmm. The Fountain, is a film that defies description, summation, expectation or any other -tion. Exquisitely beautiful and almost unbearably sad, it is also — no way around this — truly strange. The Fountain is cinema as poetry; romance as revelation; science fiction as prayer. It ponders death, and not as some pale Bergman chess master, but death as a form of ecstasy. As a writer and director, Darren Aronofsky has never been one to shy from either the morbid or the ecstatic, and he's yet to make a conventional film of any kind. In Aronofsky's movies, the path to enlightenment — that "road to awe" — isn't lined with wildflowers, unless they're sprouting violently from someone's midriff. Here I'm compelled to say two things. First: This is one outlandish film, and many viewers will hate it. Hate. It. Second: It's nevertheless a transcendent work of art, a vision of undying love that finds hope in grief, epiphany in death and life in the loss of Eden. I, for one, was transfixed: eyes wide open, awed." END QUOTE Bravo, Amy! The cure for Altitude sickness is moving our base camp higher up the mountain. Passively opening to Agape is only half the story. We also have to enact our own Eros. We rarely consider the possibility that just maybe when a film perplexes us, WE have not sufficiently accessed our own depths. I guess that's why I have to suffer a person like Roeper maligning The Fountain, because it's easier for someone like him to roll his eyes in the presence of a kaleidoscopic wonder than it is to DIE INTO IT. That's what The Fountain asks of us. Aronofsky dares to make this invitation with utter sincerity. He assumes the best in us, that we will expand into bigger ways of knowing. We won't get The Fountain if we insist that it come together like the soothing analgesics we've stupidly conflated with story-telling. The greatest story-telling is the kind that undoes our story, dissolves the decoy of our small identity. The Fountain wants us to use senses we may not believe we have. Are we up it? Aronofsky is. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz are. They conspire to put us at the Point of All Places. It's up to us not to freak out and flee at the first sign of the Absolute. Admittedly, just because a film is trans-rational doesn't mean it's engaging. Just because it's fluent in perspectives, doesn't mean it will come together and detonate our Deity. But for me, The Fountain delivers big. As with Thin Red Line, Magnolia, Mullholland Drive, Dancer In The Dark, The Matrix, The Founatin ushers inner Revelation through a masterful dance of dimensions (imagery, cinematography, visual poetry). Some of us may not instantly recognize it, because we are estranged to our own higher Self. As the film says, Death is the road to awe. And there is much to be in awe of here. Let's not shrink away from it.