Darren Aronofsky talks to Nigel Floyd on Time Out’s Movie Blog (TOMB) about The Fountain, which has taken several years to complete plus an extra couple of months for British audiences to wait to see it after the US release. Reaction on finally opening in the US and also previously at film festivals has been mixed at best. Aronofsky commented in the article that, “people are used to more linear storytelling, do find ‘The Fountain’ challenging. But there’s nothing that original about braiding together a tapestry of themes and telling a story in a poetic, circular fashion. The important thing for audiences to know is that ‘The Fountain’ is more of an experience than a movie.”
Hmmm, personally that kind of comment always makes me a bit wary of a movie, almost as if someone is making excuses in advance for it (and, arguably, all movies, linear plot or otherwise, are a form of ‘experience’). However, I love the graphic novel interpretation (and it is an interpretation as opposed to a straight comics adaptation), although strangely Time Out makes no reference to this ‘director’s cut’ comic version at all of The Fountain. And Aronofsky’s Indy breakthrough Pi was a brilliantly disturbing piece of no-budget cinema walking a line between hard mathematical science, SF, reality and mental equalibrium, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt until I can see it myself; the movie is released in the UK on January 26th and the graphic novel is out now in paperback.
Thu, Jan 18, 2007
Film, TV and radio