The Fountain: visual compositions

A few days ago, I allready wrote something about The Fountain from Darren Aranofsky, but this time I would like to show and tell you something more about the visual compositions of the movie.

Patterns
The film contains three time lines that all tell, more or less, the same story. Past, present and future. The shots in the fountain are usually very photographic and lineair and the major use of patterns in these shots are one way in the film of bringing the same story through the timelines together in a visually way. Have a look at the following screenshots I made of the movie to see what I mean.

Organic and lineair forms
When the story focusses mainly on Hugh Jackman, the paterns are more based on lineair lines in the various backgrounds. This symbolizes his side of the story. All he wants is to save the life of his loved one, by all means nesescary. It’s all he is focused on. A single point of view, just like the lines in background.

When the shots are more focussed on Rachel Weisz, or when you are seeing things from her perspective, you get more of an organic and vivid feeling to the film. The organic forms in the shots symbolize her view on things. Much more open minded and broader than Hugh Jacksons. Things are more easier linked together for her instead of his lineair ‘one point of view’ vision in the film.

Time Change
Another way to combine the three time lines into one story visually is to actually use parts of one certain part in time in another part of time. For example: in the future Hugh Jackman is bold and living in a sphere with the tree in it that is heading towards Xibalba. But in the present he’s got quite long hair. So what they did is, for just one single shot in a scene, place a bolded future Hugh Jackman in the present time. Yeah, I know it sounds really ridiculous like that, doens’t it? But this actually creates confusion in the beginning, but in the end everything falls into place.

Sometimes the viewer sees a transission in the movie, for example from the tree branch that changes into Rachel’s skin when taking the bath. This is also a time change, but it’s even more than that. The tree in the movie is a methaphore to Rachel. By showing that in  this way, the viewer gets a first glance of that idea, probably without even realizing it. A great element for a film.

Same shot, different time
Yet another way, and this will be my final shot analysis of this movie (otherwise I’ll go on fore many more pages to come) is to use the exact same shot in the three different times. In the picture below you will find two of the timelines. The first two images are the past. The second two pictures or in the present.