*** (out of ****)
and
SCOOP
**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Hugh Jackman
Also starring Rachel Weisz, Cliff Curtis, and Ellen Burstyn
Directed by Darren Aronofsky & written by Aronofsky and Ari Handel
2006
96 min PG13
Also starring Woody Allen, Scarlet Johansson, Ian McShane, Charles Dance, and Julian Glover
Directed & written by Woody Allen
2006
96 min PG13
“The Fountain” tells three parallel stories over a course of a thousand years, each featuring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. In the first, she’s the queen of Spain who sends him (a conquistador) to look for the Tree of Life in South America. In the second, they’re married and she’s dying of cancer while he frantically combs monkey brains for a cure. In the final, he’s encased in a bubble in deep space with the Tree of Life, traveling toward a dying star.
On the one hand I admire the sheer existence of this film, in which imagery usually associated with mindless sci-fi destruction is instead used as a rumination on death, time, and eternity. On the other hand, “The Fountain” is a too-shiny bauble, too slick to have what I call true art film credibility. It’s the kind of movie where swords and knives go “shink!” when you take them out. “The Fountain” is more “Fight Club” than “2001,” more “The Hours” than “Solaris.”
A nagging part of me wants to decry “The Fountain” as an “art film for everyone,” a movie that only plays at depth, intended to give multiplex crowds the feeling of having seen something serious. Symbolism is clear. The “weird bits” – transitions, scenes that will be explained later – are equally clear as “weird bits.” “The Fountain” simply isn’t as difficult as it’s been made out to be. Maybe part of me is irritated by the idea of casual moviegoers patting themselves on the back for decoding it. It kept me out the same way “Batman Begins” kept me a little out – sure, it’s good, but it’s so glossy!
Oh, but I’m being cynical and unbearably pretentious. These kinds of concepts rarely get mainstream play and if, yeah, they’re cleaned up and glossed up a bit, so what? My own preference is that for a movie to be properly snooty it can’t be too slick. And “The Fountain” is a good movie, too. I admire it’s gold outer space footage and its athletic, even overbearing visual strategy. Hugh Jackman throws himself into the role – like the movie itself, he’s cleaner and more accessible than this material usually gets. “The Fountain” succeeds in making me really, really not want to die, and I stuck around to the end of the credits to stay submerged in its atmosphere.
As for accusations of “The Fountain” being pretentious – only if you’re a movie-hating dullard.
Jackman also stars in “Scoop,” about a flaky journalist student (Scarlet Johansson) who is contacted from beyond the grave by a recently deceased journalist (Ian McShane) who is determined to give her his last scoop. He tells her that the son (Jackman) of a lord is a serial killer. Dragging along a neurotic magician (Woody), Sondra attempts to discover if the lord really is a killer. (“Hamlet,” anyone?) She falls in love with him, the idiot.
It’s a lesser Woody Allen film, but still an engaging, charming lark, with enough substance to last 60 minutes but not 90. It’s the comic mirror of Woody’s “Match Point,” in the way “Much Ado About Nothing” is a comic “Othello.” With his somewhat rubbery Muppet face, Jackman is at home as the charming and casually entitled son of a lord. There’s a scene with him on a boat that carries more genius than all of his sweating and grinding in “The Fountain;” it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen him do.
Like all of Allen’s films, even the larks are made with more care than strictly necessary. His framing and long takes are always interesting. Plenty of comic cheapies seem to think shoddiness is an asset. In its subtle way, “Scoop” is lit beautifully, with gold flecks of sunlight in the day, and especially how the killer is shadowed when using a telephone.
For his next movie, I hope Woody makes another mystery, with silent physical comedy mixed in. His movements now are just as goofy as they were when he was younger, but now he has the added pathos of being feeble and chicken-like. His features are sadder now and that makes them more endearing. As a detective in “Scoop,” he has good close-ups putting the clues together. As a comic, he has funny bits driving on the wrong side of the road (think of him attacking the adoption records in “Mighty Aphrodite”). In the same way that “Match Point,” with all its character study, makes an unlikely case for a terrific noir, Woody himself, so often talky and tangential, makes an interesting choice for an unlikely detective – the usually indirect man having to be direct.
But Woody talks too much in “Scoop.” He and Scarlet bicker a lot, and a little of that goes a long way. Some gold, some only sigh-worthy. Scarlet has fun as a bed-hopping ditz who “can’t wear contacts because I don’t like to put my finger on my eyeball.” Charles Dance makes a “tedious professorial lecture” (his words) in a cool cameo as a newspaperman giving Scarlet advice; Ian McShane and his gravelly, masculine smoker’s voice are a treat.
Finished Saturday, December 16th, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Friday & Saturday Night
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