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An odyssey about one man's thousand-year struggle to save
the woman he loves. The Fountain follows Thomas as
he feverishly travels through three distinct eras - as a 16th
century conquistador battling a fierce Mayan army, a present-day
scientist searching for a cure for his wife's mortal disease,
and a future explorer seeking to uncover the secrets of a
dying star...
The
Fountain
is, according to the blurb on the back of this graphic novel:
"An epic love story so grand that one medium cannot contain
it. The Fountain graphic novel is a sister-project
to the film, using the same story as its seed, but stretched
upon the limitless storytelling canvas of the comics medium.
Already earning Kent Williams the Eisner nomination for Best
Painter."
No,
I'm sorry, but that is just about the biggest load of cobblers
I've ever read. The truth is that the graphic novel was made
because the original large budget movie ground to a halt and
Darren Aronofsky wanted to tell his "story" any
way possible. The graphic novel was the easiest way. He then
decided he'd try and get a low budget movie off the ground.
So maybe a more apt description would be: "An epic love
story so pretentious that the Hollywood machine saw 'Turkey'
written all over it, so it was released as a comic."
I
had a major problem with this tale. It was so up itself that
one could be forgiven for thinking it was a fine arts student's
first project. I
really can't believe that Williams was nominated for an Eisner
award for Best Painter. It's pretty poor, on the whole. Most
of the pages look like someone in a rush to meet deadlines.
But its the dull story that really lets everything down. It
tries so hard to be deep and thought provoking. Yet the only
elements of this release which could have been beautiful,
the sad modern day relationship between Tommy and Isabel,
is ruined by Williams's insistence on slapping the paint all
over the place.
To
be honest I didn't feel for the characters in the slightest
and had no interest in what happened to them. In
fact, I became so disillusioned with it that I was pretty
sure that Aronofsky was going to conclude the whole thing
by showing the tree of life and the tree of knowledge being
pulped to print his wonderful, breathing work of art! Thankfully
he stooped just short of being that pretentious. And, because
I found
it to be a pretentious piece of crap, I'm going to have to
give it a big number two out of ten.
Nick
Smithson
Buy
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£8.48
(Amazon.co.uk) |
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£8.48
(Waterstones.com) |
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£16.99
(WHSmith.co.uk) |
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£16.99
(Play.com) |
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£13.00
(HMV.co.uk) |
All prices correct at time of going to press.
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