Movie · 2006 · Drama, Adventure, Science Fiction, Romance · 1h 36m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 4.2/10 (416.3K ratings)
What if you could live forever?
Overview
Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.2/10
IMDb: 7.1/10
Letterboxd: 3.54/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 52%
Metacritic: 51
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
Darren Aronofsky
Production
Regency Enterprises, Protozoa Pictures, New Regency Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn, Mark Margolis, Stephen McHattie, Fernando Hernández, Cliff Curtis, Sean Patrick Thomas, Donna Murphy, Ethan Suplee, Richard McMillan, Lorne Brass, Abraham Aronofsky, Renee Asofsky, Anish Majumdar, Janique Kearns, Boyd Banks, Alex Bisping, Kevin Kelsall, Patrick Vandal
Curator Review
Verdict
A bold, divisive, and visually striking meditation on love, mortality, and transcendence. It can feel opaque or overblown, but its emotional ambition and imagery make it a memorable watch for viewers open to symbolic, mood-driven cinema.
Best for
viewers who like poetic, symbolic storytelling
fans of grief-and-love dramas with sci-fi or spiritual elements
people who value visual atmosphere over strict narrative clarity
Aronofsky completists and art-house sci-fi fans
Skip if
you want a straightforward plot
you dislike ambiguity or heavy symbolism
you prefer naturalistic dialogue and restrained emotion
you are allergic to earnest, high-concept melodrama
Overview
The Fountain is one of those films that announces its intentions at full volume: it wants to be about everything at once—love, death, faith, time, and the terror of losing someone. That ambition can be exhilarating or exhausting depending on your tolerance for symbolism and emotional maximalism. It is not a tidy film, and it does not really want to be one.
Worth noting
What lingers is the feeling of it: the gold-and-black visual design, the aching performances, the sense of a story trying to reach beyond ordinary language. Even when the narrative feels fragmented or self-serious, the movie commits so completely to its own vision that it becomes hard to dismiss. It is a work of sincere, sometimes overwhelming romantic grief.
Bottom line
If you connect with films that treat imagery as argument and emotion as structure, this can be deeply moving. If you need clarity first and poetry second, it may feel like a beautiful riddle with too many pieces missing. Either way, it is unmistakably singular.
Top Letterboxd reviews
cinemasauron (4★) · 1431 likes
It's about life. It's about death. It's about love. It's about loss. It's about desire. It's about obsession. It's about mortality. It's about eternity. It's about spirituality. It's about duality. It's philosophical. It's symbolic. It's artistic. It's pretentious. It's unique. It's flawed. No matter what your opinion about The Fountain is, there is no denying that it is a singularly stimulating experience.
On the surface, this sci-fi saga is a quest of one man's thousand years struggle to save the… more
DirkH (4★) · 1258 likes
There is a lot wrong with this film. Its script is unnecessarily convoluted and it confuses in order to hide a flawed narrative. It hops and skips too often and in doing so tries to over complicate the simplicity of the story.
And I could not care less about all that.
This is one of the most beautiful visual representations of loss, grief, spirituality and obsession I've ever seen. Aronofsky manages to find an impressive balance between subtle imagery and… more
Darren Carver-Balsiger (2★) · 744 likes
Mild spoilers, but the film isn't worth watching anyway.
Looking through my friend's ratings, I anticipate some people will disagree massively with my review. Sorry!
What a bunch of nonsense. The Fountain isn't even enjoyable nonsense, it's just overindulgent and boring. I'm not a fan of Darren Aronofsky's films, although I gave a few some generous ratings in my teenage years. Watching The Fountain just solidified my issues with his films. It thinks it's so deep, touching upon some universal truth… more
Ashton (3★) · 552 likes
Darren Aronofsky seems like the kind of friend that might ask you how you're doing and you could be having an off day and say "I'm a little depressed today, Darren" and he'd be like "ya, well I'm the MOST depressed today," and then just walk away.
Dan (4★) · 506 likes
this movie is very beautiful and I cried but I can't get over the fact that hugh jackman ate the tree of lifes nut? a freak