Aronofsky's Fountain Booed!

Well you boys will all be pleased to know that I was in the theatre in Venice last week when the film was booed and I've been trawling the internet waiting for more reviews to surface since. Personally, I loved it. I couldn't believe it when they all started booing... i was still sitting on the edge of my seat with my jaw hanging open.
It's the most ambitious project I've seen for ages. Aronofsky's direction is incredible. If you see a better visual spectacle this year I will be amazed. But it's not only visual, I don't want to spoil it but the way he tackles such a sensitive issue is mind blowing - i get the impression it was quite a theraputic project for him and that certainly comes across. It's probably also the reason why it was badly received. He seems to have made the film he wanted to make from the off, instead of compromising it so that it would be easier for studios and critics to swallow.
If you try to do something innovative but don't package it in a way that the stickinthemud critics are used to then, instead of trying to find away to understand it, they simply turn their noses up at it. Sure there are a few scenes that could have been left out and the parallel stories could have been slightly closer together to help those without an imagination, but on the whole the direction, performances, editing, score are all brilliant.

However, you need an imagination that I'm afraid was lacking in quite a lot of the Venice crowd that day. They loved films like 'The Black Dahlia', Verhoven's 'Black Book', 'The Queen' and 'World Trade Centre'. All of which I thought were pretty poor. Unfotunately, I think The Fountain was just too good for the audience on the day. I can't wait to go see it again.

Hope this helps.

Well you will all be pleased to know that I was in the theatre in Venice last week when the film was booed and I've been trawling the internet waiting for more reviews to surface since. Personally, I loved it. I couldn't believe it when they all started booing... i was still sitting on the edge of my seat with my jaw hanging open.
It's the most ambitious project I've seen for ages. Aronofsky's direction is incredible. If you see a better visual spectacle this year I will be amazed. But it's not only visual, I don't want to spoil it but the way he tackles such a sensitive issue is mind blowing - i get the impression it was quite a theraputic project for him and that certainly comes across. It's probably also the reason why it was badly received. He seems to have made the film he wanted to make from the off, instead of compromising it so that it would be easier for studios and critics to swallow.
If you try to do something innovative but don't package it in a way that the stickinthemud critics are used to then, instead of trying to find away to understand it, they often turn their noses up at it. Sure there are a few scenes that could have been left out and things that could have been tighter, but on the whole the direction, performances, editing, score are all brilliant. And considering the ambition of the project, to have produced something that very nearly succeeds is a real achievement and it is a shame that instead of sparking critical debate in Venice the film was simply booed.

However, you need an imagination that I'm afraid was lacking in quite a lot of the Venice crowd that day. They loved films like 'The Black Dahlia', Verhoven's 'Black Book' and 'World Trade Centre'. All of which I thought were pretty unambitious and unimaginative in comparison. Unfotunately, I think The Fountain was just too good for the audience on the day. I can't wait to go see it again.

Hope this helps.

Helen Mirren's rather boorish looking The Queen???
no no you've got that wrong! This film must be good as it got a 5 minute standing ovation and rave reviews! Helen Mirren is an acting goddess and this film is going to be brillaint!!!

I find it quite extraordinary that the impassioned and rather unintelligent, clearly rather biased heckling at Venice, from people who HAVE seen the film, should attract such self-righteous -- and impassioned, unintelligent, and clearly rather biased -- scorn from a group of people who HAVEN'T.

As much as admirer/fan/obsessive of Aronofsky's work as I am, surely nobody on this page is in any way qualified to pass any kind of judgment on a film they haven't yet watched?

And I really sincerely hope the guy who wrote that article isn't getting paid for it, since the belief that Stephen Frears' THE QUEEN is "very likely to be a retread of the same costume drama crap we've seen over and over and over again" can be easily dispelled by a quick Google search and the subsequent discovery that the story is, in fact, set in 1997. Or perhaps it might simply be better -- once again -- to actually watch the damn film before expressing such extraordinarily unqualified distaste for it.

As easy as it is to denounce hecklers in Venice as moronic idiots having a -- regardless of the actual quality of the film -- mindless, uncivilised and very public response to a film they didn't understand, I fear that it's the kind of adolescent, nonsensical bellyaching from the type of "critic" given a voice by websites like this that actually do more in the long run to drag down the general level of discussion about film. Uninformed stupidity like that expressed in the above article simply lowers cinema to something about which anyone who's watched Star Wars fifty times can automatically position themselves as an expert, as someone with an opinion of sufficiently above-average relevance to justify their authoring of articles to express it publicly.

It's not the dumbing down of Hollywood we should be afraid of; it's the declining standard of its audience.

And YOU can all go to hell.

Keep in mind that Venice is a non public festival like Cannes unlike small festivals like Locarno, so the people who booed this are all from the cinema industry in a way or another.

And yeah, the french from Venice Beach, Minnesota, can go to hell...

It's Venice, Italy.
Still looking forward to this though. I loved Aranofsky's other works.

Bullshit. This is gonna be the best movie of the year and the french can go to hell.