Fountain of Love
Filmmaker Aronofsky Tackles Sci-Fi with Latest Idiosyncratic Opus

Anymore, it’s rare that I get overly intimidated walking into an interview. Apprehension? Nervousness? Shyness? Sure, I’m only human, and you try and stay calm when you’re entering a room with people like Jet Li or Viggo Mortensen sitting there with a big smile on their faces like you’re the absolute number one person in all of the world they have been waiting to talk to.

Granted, I’m not that person, but for a brief fifteen (sometimes even twenty or thirty) minute window they do a darn good job of making me feel like I might be, which is a very cool thing I have to admit. Yet, for all this intimacy I rarely get wowed or impressed by celebrity, and just because you’ve made a magnificent film or have an iconic cinematic track record that doesn’t mean you’re going to be all that more intelligent or exemplary than me. We’re all human beings after all, and when it’s all said and done just because they get to play with expensive toys up on a movie screen doesn’t mean they weren’t once a shy sarcastic slightly disheveled ragamuffin from time to time just like I am.

Walking into my interview with The Fountain writer/director Darren Aronofsky I felt intimidated. This was a movie, much like Metropolis, 2001 and Blade Runner, where I felt my spine tingle and my concepts in regards to cinematic science fiction morph into something completely new and different. This was a movie that made me sit up, take notice and revel in all of its intricacies. This was a complex, heartfelt, dynamic and highly intellectual motion picture, and pardon me if speaking with auteur behind it gave me more than my share of heart palpitations. Talking to him scared me, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to a case of sweaty palms before walking into his downtown Seattle hotel room.

Writer/Director Darren Aronofsky on the set of The Fountain.

I shouldn’t have been so worried. Quiet, unassuming, passionate yet still warm, genuine and extremely approachable, my short conversation with Aronofsky couldn’t have been any more of a dream had it been covered in whip cream and chocolate sauce. In fact, the only problem I had with the whole thing was that our interview was far too brief, The Fountain a motion picture worthy of hours of discussion, not an infinitesimal twelve-and-a-half measly little minutes.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Why this story? After the trials and tribulations it has taken you to bring it to the screen, what made The Fountain the picture you knew you had to make?

Darren Aronofsky: It’s something deep down in your stomach telling you not to give up or quit. It’s that voice screaming in your head keeping you awake at night. The story of The Fountain was one I believed in; one I spent so much time and effort on trying to get right. I couldn’t give up on it. Or, more to the point, the story wouldn’t let me give up on it.

It is interesting. This movie started out as a rough sketch on a restaurant napkin back in 1999. Since then it has been through numerous incarnations. The tribulations, as you say, we went through to make this picture I think allowed us to make an even better film. When you spend so much time working on the intricacies of something more often than not that just makes it even better and that is exactly how I feel about [The Fountain]. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and look at my stacks of research and think, ‘I have to make this film.’ In many ways it was in my blood.

SMF: For me, watching this I felt like there was always a gigantic discussion going on between a person’s ability to control their destiny and in their ability to accept it.

DA: That’s definitely a way to look at it. There is a tragic reality to the movie where the central protagonist keeps saying to himself, ‘I’m going to fix it.’ Not that it really matters what ‘it’ is, what matters is that he is going to go beyond the norm to try and solve the problem.

The desire to live forever runs very deep in our culture. Just look at the popularity of shows like Nip/Tuck or Extreme Makeover. Everyday people are doing whatever they can to try and look younger. They are denying that death is a part of life. They are trying to control their aging, control their destinies, prolong what nature has already given to them.

We’ve become so preoccupied [as a society] with sustaining the physical that we often forget to nurture or take care of the spirit. That’s one of the central themes I wanted to tackle with in the film: Does death make us human, and if we could live forever, would we lose our humanity in the doing so?

SMF: You do this using the three interlocking time periods revolving around Tomas, Tommy and Tom, the three characters played by Hugh Jackman who may – or may not – be one in the same person. How do you keep a handle on all the differing tangents so that it all hopefully makes sense by the time you come to the finish?

DA: It’s a lot of homework and preparation. You can’t just pull it out of your bum the day of shooting.

When you arrive on the set each day you know what you need to do and it is imperative that you stay in the moment and not get distracted. That’s the big thing. It all starts with the research and the planning and then if you’ve done those things correctly you shouldn’t have too big of a problem. That was what was so imperative on this film. If [co-story writer Ari Handel] and I hadn’t done the work in the beginning than making the movie would have been impossible. But we did, and with all the time we ended up being able to spend on getting it just right the shooting wasn’t as difficult as you would assume.

It is [hard] to tell a story about the quest for immortality in the present alone. That’s why our story takes place in the 16th, 21st, and 26th centuries. That doesn’t mean The Fountain is a time travel movie in any sort of a traditional way. It’s more like three interlocking time periods, just as you mentioned, where the characters embody three different parts of the same person.

SMF: Talk about casting. You’ve gone through a few different stars in the varying stages of this production. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett were once attached, while Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz were the ones who turned out to be the eventual stars.

DA: Things work out for a reason. Those others weren’t meant to be in the film, Hugh and Rachel were. In the end I couldn’t be happier about having them. I think what they both do here is wonderful.

SMF: Jackman has been having quite a diverse year what with this film and The Prestige coming out one right after the other. What led you to him?

DA: It wasn’t X-Men, if that is what you were thinking. It was his performance in The Boy from Oz on Broadway that did it. Hugh had so much charisma and presence in that show. He is such a big personality and that really shows through on the stage. His charisma, power and passion are undeniable, so one night I gave him the script for [this] backstage after a show. He called the very next day saying he wanted to do the film. He connected to it right away. I knew quite quickly he was going to be perfect.

Hugh was willing to give us everything he had inside of him to bring this character to life. There was nothing he wouldn’t do. Yet, for the story to really succeed you have to believe that Tommy and Izzi love each other completely. As good as Hugh is, that would not be possible had Rachel not been able to match him.

SMF: You had to be a bit apprehensive about casting your wife in such a central role. What was your working relationship like?

DA: I just had to treat her like any other actor, and she, in turn, treat me like any other director. That really seemed to work for us as I think [Rachel] is absolutely splendid in the film.

We all wish we could face death the way Izzi faces it in the film. She’s young and in the prime of her life and she’s going to have to face this unimaginable event and leave everyone she loves behind, yet somehow she manages to do so with grace. I was so touched by what Rachel was able to accomplish. I think she really tapped into this very feeling we were [trying] to create.

SMF: For me, The Fountain impacted me much the same way 2001 did on my first viewing. I really felt like this picture was science fiction at its finest, most complex. Do you think about the lasting impact your films could make at all?

DA: 2001 is a very inspirational film and has lasted the test of time. To even be remotely compared to it is an honor, but one I don’t really feel is apt. Our film really hits into that cult arena. It’s a puzzle and mystery and there are multiple solutions to the mysteries going on inside of it. There are lots of ways to discuss what is going on. But it has not had the opportunity to stand the test of time as Kubrick’s has. If fifty years from now people [are] still asking me questions about The Fountain than I guess we can talk about the comparison.

SMF: I just meant that The Fountain made me feel many of the same sensations as when I saw 2001 for the first time. At their core, however, they really are far different motion pictures.

DA: Yes, they are. This one is very different from the markers or viewpoints of that other. The Fountain is a love story at its core. It is a story that is both tragic and enlightening, and sometimes – hopefully – even funny. It is visually stimulating and intellectually challenging and my hope is that it will touch people.

This movie has been my heart and soul for the past six years. It is a culmination of so many ideas and a lot of research. Personally, I like to be taken somewhere when I go see films. I like to be transported. My hope is that The Fountain takes people to places they’ve never seen, but most of all I hope they leave the theater entertained. Everything else after that is just a bonus.