The one movie Darren Aronofsky had to make: “I realised it was deep in my blood”
If you’re looking for one of two specific types of movies, then Darren Aronofsky is your man. The Harvard graduate is known for his small, intimate dramas about ordinary people affected by extraordinary circumstances; The Whale, The Wrestler, and Black Swan are the prime examples. On the other end of the scale, he is capable of huge, surrealist pieces dripping with symbolism and overarching themes, such as Requiem for a Dream or the polarising Mother!
Perhaps the clearest example of the latter is his 2006 film The Fountain. Starring Hugh Jackman – who Aronofsky would almost direct again in The Wolverine – and Rachel Weisz, the story follows one couple connected across time and space. Their names and occupations may change, but their faces and their love for each other does not.
Things get super weird super quickly, culminating in a bonkers narrative that is told out of order, joined together with complex visual motifs and the sort of editing that would make an academic wet themselves with delight. It split critics and fans right down the middle. Some loved its outlandish expressionism, while others dismissed it as pompous, self-indulgence nonsense. According to Aronofsky, however, there was absolutely no way it wasn’t going to get made.
“I realised it was deep in my blood, and I just had to tell this story,” he told Eye for Film. “So I just started writing and I realised I didn’t have to write for a lead actor or for a studio, that I started out as a no-budget director and could write a no-budget version of this film. So I rewrote it and handed it to my producer, and he said, ‘You’ve turned it from a story into a poem, and we can make it for half what we’d originally planned.’”
Aronofsky is referring to the movie’s troubled production process. The original version of The Fountain was somehow even more ambitious, swallowing up its original $70million budget with expensive special effects and enormous battle sequences. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett were the original cast, but when the former pulled out, Warner Bros lost all faith in the project and pulled the plug. It wasn’t until the director made the rewrites mentioned above, which halved the original budget, that they got back on board.
According to the director, who co-wrote the movie with his frequent collaborator Ari Handel, he’d had the idea for the movie since 1999, having originally sketched out his idea on the back of a napkin. Once Requiem for a Dream made him a star, he decided to act on his long-standing thought. He’d wanted Blanchett so badly for the female lead that he’d actually postponed filming so she could give birth. Sadly, delays in filming led to the Australian departing the set. Luckily, he and Weisz were engaged at the time, so he just dropped her into the movie instead.
For every person who cannot stand The Fountain, there is another who absolutely loves it. Jackman considers it a real turning point in his career, as it allowed him to express himself in something other than a tightly controlled superhero adventure or a frivolous stage musical.
Almost two decades have passed since The Fountain hit our screens, and its wild production process is still unearthing stories and anecdotes. None of this would have happened had Aronofsky done the easy thing and given up on his dream.
