Sitges Film Festival - 'The Fountain' feature

Nigel Floyd finds Darren Aronofsky in unrepentant mood at the fantasy film fest.

Oct 12 2006

As I write this despatch from the Sitges International Film Festival, a Spanish TV crew is interviewing Darren Aronofsky – the director of 'The Fountain' – in the garden below my hotel room balcony. If I lean forward, I can see him, perched on the trunk of a gnarled olive tree in the sunny garden. It's an obvious but effective reference to his film's 'Tree of Life' imagery. This scene is in marked contrast to the dark clouds and loud thunder that, earlier today, forced his al fresco photo-call to be moved inside. Aronofsky's ambitious cinematic parable caused similar rumblings at this year's Venice Film Festival, where the first press showing allegedly was greeted by booing.

Despite these gloomy meteorological portents and past critical brickbats, a packed press conference saw Aronofsky in no mood to apologise: 'I've always made divisive films,' he declared, 'so I'm used to making things that make people angry. The film is not for cynics; it's a very earnest movie about death, life and the afterlife. And some audiences are not open to the idea of a film that shakes their own perceptions about those things.' While accepting the critics' right to take issue with the film's big spiritual themes, he was disappointed by their failure to acknowledge the contributions of his technical collaborators: Matthew Labitique's eye-ravishing cinematography, Clint Mansell's plaintive soundtrack, and the fine work of a small army of special effects wizards.

So the third film from the creator of 'Pi' and 'Requiem for a Dream' has, like its predecessors, divided both critics and audiences. Quel surprise. Far more surprising is the fact that Twentieth Century Fox risked millions of dollars on an ambitious, uncompromising project that spans three time zones – the 16th century, the present day and the 26th century. A film Aronofsky's producer called 'a love poem to death'. After all, neither 'Pi' nor 'Requiem for a Dream' could be construed as mainstream films, and Aronofsky has previously been attached to, and subsequently detached from, two major studio projects: 'Batman Begins' and 'Watchmen'.

If 'The Fountain' is to find an appreciative, if select, audience, it may be genre film festivals like Sitges that pave the way. Spanish reactions to what they call 'La Fuente de la Vida' ('The Fountain of Life') have been far more positive than those in Venice. Not that the film is an easy sell. It eschews non-linear narrative and interleaves a historical tale about Queen Isabel (Rachel Weisz), a 16th century Spanish conquistador (Hugh Jackman) and Mayan mythology with a present-day love story about a surgeon's race to find a cure for his wife's life-threatening brain tumour. Not to mention a futuristic projection in which the bald, cross-legged Creo floats in a glass sphere near the Xibelba nebula and a dying star.

Aronofsky remains unrepentant. Since 9/11 and the reorientation of moral and spiritual values that ensued, he insists there is a need to move away from the superficialities of Paris Hilton-style celebrity culture. 'The film has a very simple message,' he says. 'It's just ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We're all part of the renewing fountain of matter. It's about reconnecting to the circle of life.'