My Favorite Closing Shots: Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America and Danny Boyle's Trainspotting

Bjork On The Fountain

While I am attempting to formulate a halfway intelligent post on THE FOUNTAIN I thought I would share a couple of quotes from Bjork on the film. I came across these on a great discussion going on about the film over at the Criterion forum. One is from a Stylus magazine feature and another is from an interview with Aronofsky at The Guardian. Links for both interviews will be provided below. Apparently Bjork really took the film to heart and it influenced her newest album, the very fine and exciting VOLTA.

Question (Stylus): "You’re clearly an “artist” as much as a musician—what are some of the more affecting pieces of artwork or film or design or theater you’ve seen in the past few years that might’ve given Volta some of its shading?"

Answer (Bjork) "I was really impressed with [Darren Aronofsky’s film] The Fountain. It was refreshing to see someone expressing visually their inner spirituality without it being full of organized religion. There was more personal spirituality, which is how I feel we are all on the inside."

Then the added thoughts from The Guardian:

Björk says: "With Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, maybe it was a relief to see him portray a spiritual world that was so idiosyncratic at a time when I feel so overwhelmed by religion. It's so strange that the inner- most secret place in a person is their spiritual belief, and something as mass-produced as organised religion can just storm in there. The Fountain is not Christian or Jewish or Muslim -it's areligious; not against or with it. It's just alternative."

...
The spirituality in THE FOUNTAIN is one of the main things I respond to so it was really nice to see an artist I respect as much as Bjork express these thoughts.

Finally in an interview with New York magazine Aronofsky listed his own personal influences in making THE FOUNTAIN. They are:

David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”

Comic artist Moebius’s 40 Days in the Desert

The Popol Vuh (The Mayan sacred text)

Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s The Conquest of New Spain

Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano’s “Memory of Fire” trilogy

Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain

Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America

Early hip-hop group E.S.G.’s “U.F.O.”

Diego Velázquez

Regular readers of this blog will no doubt recognize some of my favorites are on there. THE HOLY MOUNTAIN connection seems pretty obvious but I was very thankful to see ONCE UPON IN AMERICA pop up. This isn't a connection I would have made but the structures of the films are similar in the way that the past, present and future are all closely connected, plus the main characters sense of guilt and memories of a lost love.
I hope to be posting my own thoughts of THE FOUNTAIN soon, it is a film that I am feeling very close to so I don't want to throw out just a casual post on it.

The discussion at the Criterion forum shows perfectly just how much this film is dividing people and it is extremely interesting reading.

Here are the Stylus and Guardian links:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2065823,00.html
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/interview/bjork.htm


Bjork's new album is now available and is a fine addition to one of the most innovative catalogues in popular music.

Sergio Leone's Last Great Discovery

ONCE UPON IN AMERICA (1984) is my favorite Sergio Leone film and, to go even further, is one of the finest films I have ever seen. It is a film that has become more and more rewarding with each passing year and I can't imagine ever getting tired of its complex nature and narrative.
I love every aspect of the film but I think might my favorite scenes might be the remarkable moments where we are transported back in time to see Noodles and his gang as children. Cinematically these moments are handled in such an exquisite way, and they remain some of the only scenes in any film that actually feels like memory. For whatever reason, whether it is the way Leone and Tonino Delli Colli shot these moments or the way that Ennio Morricone's unmatchable and beautiful score is aligned with them, these shots remain some of the most profound and personal that I have ever seen.

Of course this section of the film also introduced us to the wonder that is Jennifer Connelly. Discovered by Leone just after her 13th birthday (she only had one small television credit at that point) and hired on to play the key role of the young Deborah after successfully auditioning with Robert De Niro himself, Connelly is unforgettable in the handful of scenes she appears in. I would argue that it is these moments between her and the young Noodles that more than anything else gives the film the devastating emotional impact it has.

The film, Leone's last and Jennifer's first, is every bit as good to me as THE GODFATHER or any other great epic gangster film you'd care to name. Jennifer would follow up the film working for another great Italian legend, but more on that later this week.
Here is a clip of Jennifer talking about Leone. Unfortunately James Lipton cuts her off before she is able to say a lot, but the experience obviously remains a special one to her. I have a feeling she wanted to speak a lot more on it.