More Fountain Stuff

Aside from Clint Mansell's magnificent score, which I had the privalege of hearing before I saw the film, the unique nature of the f/x in the film was one of the factors that peaked my interest and got me excited and interested in the Fountain. Aronofsky stated that CGI, such as that used in (every film made following) the Matrix, can quickly look dated, whereas a film like Kubrik's 2001: a Space Odyssey still looks stunning and timeless. Like 2001, the Fountain is not a conventional sci-fi film, nor is Aronofsky a 'sci-fi' director, if there is such a thing. Both films tell us about ourselves and how we ought to live now. 2001 examined our relationship, as human beings, with technology, and the Fountain explores our fear of death. Eastern religion and philosophy, particularly Buddhism, is, in my opinion, much more open and healthy in their understanding of life and death, and in that way more advanced. Our basic value systems in 'the West' revolve around a fear of death; we indulge in our vanity and seek to live longer (although we have stopped trying to better ourselves and focus only and having and possessing material objects, facts, bodies, etc. ) Point being that Aronofsky and his colaborators found a way to make the Fountain look unique, in additon to embracing a style of f/x that is in harmony with the message of the film and the philsophy of the production team. The principles which govern the universe, whether you call it logos, the Tao, physics, or God, work on the infinite just as it works on the infintesimal.

"... Aronofsky's team discovered the work of Peter Parks, a marine biologist and photographer who lives in a 400-year-old cowshed west of London. Parks and his son run a home f/x shop based on a device they call the microzoom optical bench. Bristling with digital and film cameras, lenses, and Victorian prisms, their contraption can magnify a microliter of water up to 500,000 times or fill an Imax screen with the period at the end of this sentence. Into water they sprinkle yeast, dyes, solvents, and baby oil, along with other ingredients they decline to divulge. The secret of Parks' technique is an odd law of fluid dynamics: The less fluid you have, the more it behaves like a solid. The upshot is that Parks can make a dash of curry powder cascading toward the lens look like an onslaught of flaming meteorites. "When these images are projected on a big screen, you feel like you're looking at infinity," he says. "That's because the same forces at work in the water – gravitational effects, settlement, refractive indices – are happening in outer space." Read more, from an article in Wired