[.ca] Fountain, The (ISBN 1401200583)

Clashing fountain:
Before Darren Aronofsky turned "The Fountain" into a beautiful movie, this exquisite story of life, death and love was made into a graphic novel. But the graphic novel is a stumbling experience, whose beautiful dialogue and heartrending situations are The story follows three intertwined storylines -- a conquistador named Tomas, who is battling the Mayans, and thinking of Queen Isabella back in Spain. Then there's a doctor named Tom in the present, who is struggling to save his dying wife from a brain tumor, by using an extract from a strange tree. But death cannot be pushed away, and Izzy succumbs to her cancer -- but Tom won't accept it. It the future, Tom is transporting the tree to a distant nebula, struggling to defeat death once and for all. But is death an end, "nothing"? Or will he fulfil Izzy's last request and finish her book about Tomas the conquistador, and the Tree of Life? It's an exquisite story, full of moving emotion and mystical connections -- everything from Christianity's story of the tree of good and evil to Mayan myths show up in Tom's journey. This is illustrated through the rings in each story -- tattooed, gifted and wedding -- and the eerie, surreally beautiful climax. And Aronofsky tackles the ultimate question of life -- is death an end, or a beginning? Does the existance of death give us greater life? And can love reach out beyond the grave? Unfortunately, Kent Williams' artwork simply doesn't measure up to the exquisite storyline. It feels like a bunch of your basic graphic artists were collaborating in their different styles, only to hit a deadline and turn in the unfinished work. He captures delicate moments -- such as Tomas kissing Isabella's ring -- but the rest of the time, I felt it lacked. Sometimes there's no background, just aqua splashes or colorless sketched figures. Some of the characters look like photographs cut-and-pasted, and with tacky surroundings merely added in, while at other times they are fully sketched and detailed. And worst of all, it's hard to follow the story because the characters never look the same. Every few pages, they change appearance radically -- Izzy even changes ethnicity for a few panels. "The Fountain" has a brilliant story, but Kent Williams wasn't up to the task of bringing Darren Aronofsky's beautiful story to life. Too bad, because the story itself is full of bittersweet purity.