The Fountain (2006) on Netflix
Conquistador Tomás Creo hunts the Mayan Tree of Life. Surgeon Tommy Creo fights to cure his dying wife Izzi. In a glass-domed craft through space, a traveler tends a tall tree.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb7.1/10259,608 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes52%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tommy Creo is a surgeon researching a cure built from samples of a tree found in Guatemala, tested against degenerative brain disease. His wife, Izzi, is dying of a brain tumor. She has made her peace with it; Tommy will not accept it, chasing a cure for her. Izzi has written an unfinished story called The Fountain, in which Queen Isabella sends the conquistador Tomás Creo into Mayan territory to find the Tree of Life, and she asks Tommy to finish it. Izzi holds the Mayan belief that souls meet in the golden nebula of Xibalba once the star there goes supernova. In a glass-domed craft crossing space, a traveler named Tom tends a tall tree.
Cast
- Fernando Hernandezas Lord of Xibalba
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Fountain (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Rather than rely on computer-generated imagery, the production used Peter Parks, a specialist in macro photography, who brewed chemicals and bacteria together to create reactions that were filmed in close-up; he generated all the footage for just $140,000.
- Hugh Jackman practiced tai chi for seven months to demonstrate it in a 30-second scene, and practiced yoga for over a year to achieve the lotus position for the scenes set in space, where he was immersed in a swimming pool and harnessed to a rig that rotated him 360 degrees.
- Brad Pitt abruptly left the project seven weeks before the first day of shooting when his requested screenplay revisions were not met, and went on to star as Achilles in Wolfgang Petersen's Troy.
- Aronofsky sent the script to Russell Crowe as a potential replacement for Pitt, but Crowe was worn out from recently completing Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and declined; production ceased, and sets built for the film, including a 10-story Mayan temple, were eventually auctioned off.
- The film had its world premiere at the 63rd Venice Film Festival, where several critics booed it at the press screening, while it received a 10-minute standing ovation at the public screening the following evening.
- In February 2004 Warner Bros. resurrected the project and courted Hugh Jackman to replace Pitt, greenlighting it a second time on a budget of $35 million, in part because of the director's willingness to leave costly set pieces out of the screenplay.
- The film was originally rated R for "some violence" by the MPAA, but Aronofsky successfully won the appeal for a PG-13 rating without any cuts.
