Since october, I've been watching writer/director Darren Aronofsky's films after discovering the Fountain. Soon, he became my favorite director because of how Human his films are and how the movies need to be processed to understand them. Even 2 months after seeing The Fountain, I'm still processing it. He just recently released Black Swan, which I think was the best movie to come out all year. I recommend it to everyone.
List of his movies:
Pi:
Pi is about a number theorist named Max Cohen who is trying to find a simple means to explain the entire universe through numbers. Because of an experience during childhood in which he stared into the sun and was left temporarily blind. After he recovered, he began having extreme headaches and hallucinations. He spends his time locked up in his apartment searching for patterns in pi that can predict the flow and ebb of stocks and by extension, the future. Because he has an extreme fear of social interaction(It's never stated what he has, But I'm sure it's Asperger's, since he's so intelligent that he graduated at 16 and can solve complex problems instantaneously), the only person he talks to is his former college mentor, with who he regularly plays go. One day, he finds a 216 digit number in Pi that does exactly what he wants, and soon becomes of interest of a group of haddistic Jews who think it is the name of god and a Wall Street strategy firm that wants to use the number for material gain.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQYYGwYTPuY&feature=related[/youtube]
Requiem For a Dream:
Requiem is about the lives of 4 individuals who are trying to chase their dreams with the use of drugs and inevitably become locked in a world of delusion and harsh reality. Sara Golfarb is an elderly woman who is obsessed with the glamor of television. When she's told she will be on a game show, she begins abusing dietary pills in an attempt to make herself look younger. Her son Harry is a heroine addict who, along with his best friend Tyrone and his girlfreind Marion, attempts to get rich by getting involved in the Coney Island drug trade.
Requiem For A Dream is very well known for it's theme song which is extremely overused in film and on youtube videos. I used to hate it because of that. However, after becoming a fan of Clint Mansell and his music(he scored every single Aronofsky film and the movie moon, which is another of my favorite movies of all time) I've come to appreciate him. His soundtrack in Moon inspired me to play piano, and my compositions are greatly inspired by his usual style.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6gPvY_ZYr4&feature=related[/youtube]
The Fountain:
The Fountain was the first movie of his that I was exposed to and still my favorite of them. It's also his only flop, and I've never really understood why. It's a movie about death and thanatophobia--the fear of death. It covers a span of a thousand years with a variety of settings, 1500's Spain and Latin America, present day America, and space/ Orion Nebula. In the 1500's, a conquistador named Tomas Verde heads into the heart of the Mayan Empire in search of the Tree of Life fed by the fountain of youth, by order of Queen Isabella, who is threatened with death by the rogue head of the inquisition. She promises to become Tomas's lover in immortality. In the present day, Tom Creo is a cancer researcher obsessed with finding a cure for his wife Izzy, who is battling brain cancer. Izzy and Tom's coworkers express worry that Tom works to much and should spend time at home taking care of his wife, but Tom refuses, believing he's close to finding the cure. At home, in her free time, Izzy writes a fairy tale/parable which is identical to the Spain story arc and like Tom, she too is close to finishing. In the future, a now immortal Tom travels in a spaceship with a large tree, the dying tree of life, to the Orion Nebula. He is haunted by visions of his wife, now long dead.
The soundtrack of The Fountain and the visual style enhance an already perfect film. The soundtrack, by Clint Mansell, is the only one to have made me cry. And the movie was shot in a very unique way. There is an extensive use of gold and white lighting, and instead of cgi, Darren decided to use macrophotography of protists and bacteria in combination with gold light and mirrors to represent the Orion Nebula. There is only one instance of cgi in this movie and it's very brief. Thus, the Fountain has the prettiest visuals I have ever seen.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDp-F3Y97ZQ&feature=related[/youtube]
*While watching the trailer before copy-pasting, I started crying a little again. This unfortunately does that to me. Infectious crying...
The Wrestler:
The Wrestler is about Randy, a former famous wrestler who can't let go of his career even though he's now old and fragile. It is the spiritual companion to Black Swan.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61-GFxjTyV0[/youtube]
Last edited by ShenLong on 27 Dec 2010, 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
27 Dec 2010, 1:07 pm
