Jackman² + Angst² = Movie²
So emo, it hurts...I managed to catch both of Hugh Jackman's recent big releases. Both have things in common, but...wow, talk about different outcomes! Lemme drop some knowledge...
First up, we have The Prestige. This is probably the best movie about stage magicians that I've ever seen. Okay, it's also the ONLY movie I've ever seen about stage magicians, but that's beside the point. It's still really good. Hugh Jackman plays an angst-ridden magician who is deeply obsessed with outdoing and destroying his equally fixated arch-rival, played by Christian Bale. Very often you'll see movie advertisements that throw around the word "obsession" all higglety-pigglety, when the movie really has nothing to do with that. This is a rare movie that could actually lay claim to that term, but doesn't. Jackman and Bale are both pitch perfect and it's a good thing too, because with the constant one-upsmanship and venom spitting going on, things could turn melodramatic and silly very easily. It's a testament to the intensity and focus of these guys that they can sustain this kind of dramatic tension for over two hours and not kill the momentum by the end of things. Jackman plays a character so passionate and single-minded in his pursuit of his personal obsessions that he is willing to cross nearly incomprehensible boundaries to get what he wants. The story (which I'm deliberately avoiding discussing...trust me, you'd rather be surprised) just builds and builds and builds, constantly raising the stakes, until you think it can't really proceed any further, but then makes this insane leap of faith that propels it to an entirely different plane of being. There are a couple of moments along the way that require more than a little suspension of disbelief and it isn't terribly hard to guess at what's coming around the bend, but fortunately I was wrapped up enough that it didn't bother me. Aside from Jackman and Bale, the other force you always feel on-screen is director Chris Nolan, who first gained widespread notoriety with Memento. This film, like that one, is a fiendishly plotted story about men so deeply wounded that they can't heal, being driven to the point of madness by needs they can never truly satisfy. I don't think it's for everyone, but it was definitely for me. Very very good stuff...
Review Scores for The Prestige:
STORYPLOTTING = Insidiously clever
ACTING = Uniformly excellent
VISUALS/ART DIRECTION = Immersive and interesting
ANGST LEVEL = 83% (alone in the arctic circle with a complete collection of Morrissey CD's)
THEMATIC MATERIAL = Provocative and fully-formed
OVERALL RATING: 3.6554 stars out of 4.129
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Next is The Fountain. Here, we have another offering from a highly regarded director, full of ideas and rife with opportunities for Hugh Jackman to show off his superior brow-furrowing skills. Unfortunately, where The Prestige was successful as a thoughtful and meticulously crafted drama, The Fountain is a plodding, confused, melodramatic and occasionally masturbatory descent into navel-gazing. Hugh Jackman plays a medical researcher on a desperate and obsessed quest to find a cure for his wife's cancer. Well, that doesn't sound entirely without promise, right? Oh, but of course that isn't all there is to it... He's also a Spanish conquistador on a desperate and obsessed quest to find the mythical The Tree Of Life, which the queen will use to fight The Spanish Inquisition. Aha! No one ever expects The Spanish Inquisition! Ah well, there might be some interesting ideas to mine from this story thread, right? OH! But of course that isn't it either! He's also some sort of futuristic Zen/Yoga/Tae-Bo psychedelic astronaut rocketing through space in a big golden bubble with a dying tree that evidently is the embodiment of his aforementioned dying wife. I'm sorry, but at this point the balance has been irrevocably tipped. Houston, we have too much shit in the movie. And that's the ultimate source of the movie's failing. The subject matter is universal in its interest, the performances are quite good, there is a deeply affecting grandeur and poetry to the visuals and score, and the director and all parties involved in the film obviously share a deep, abiding and sincere care about what they're making...BUT...the story spends so much time jumping around between seemingly unfinished narrative threads and half-baked ideas that it doesn't have time to explore any of them in a satisfactory way. The whole things unravels into a plodding, meandering, overwrought, hand-wringing mess. And about that hand-wringing...I don't know that I've ever seen a movie character more over-the-top and single-minded in his pursuit of consternated moping. Jackman is given more scenes than I could even begin to count just silently crying, scowling, flipping out, and looking generally tormented. His performance, like all the others, is quite good, but so persistent in sounding that same single note over and over that the whole thing inevitably topples into silly melodrama. I think Darren Aronofsky is one of the most talented directors coming up in cinema these days and I really wish he would have spent more time distilling his story and ideas down to a more elemental state. As it is, The Fountain has deep existential questions at its core, the same way as Pi, and creates beautiful poetry with images, the same way as Requiem For A Dream, but the whole thing just totally lacks focus, coherent vision and, finally, a meaningful point. I don't regret seeing it. Yes, at the end of the day it's a failure, but it's a big glorious supernova of a failure. I'd rather this than the safe, color-by-numbers bullshit you usually get at the megaplexes.
Review Scores for The Fountain:
STORYPLOTTING = Ambitious, but seriously all over the place
ACTING = Sincere and believable in the face of silliness
VISUALS/ART DIRECTION = Poetic and deeply arresting
ANGST LEVEL = 2,349,672% (deliberate, self-inflicted ball torture)
THEMATIC MATERIAL = Interesting, but simultaneously ham-fisted and half-baked
OVERALL RATING: 2.1118 stars out of 4.036
