Urban legend has it that during an LA screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, an audience member rose to his feet at the film’s conclusion, ran down an aisle and crashed through the screen, shouting, “It’s God! It’s God!” One wonders what the same man, or, by now, his grandchild, would make of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2-Disc Platinum Series, $34.98, 5 stars) and Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain ($27.95, 3 stars), both of which effectively merge mind-blowing fantasy, fairy tales, romance, hallucinogenic visions, sci-fi, horror and other spiritual musings in the service of stories that suggest alternate universes not only exist, but can be found right under our noses. Of the two, Pan’s Labyrinth is the more successful. Set in Franco’s Spain, in 1944, del Toro’s strictly adult Gothic fairy tale describes one darling little girl’s struggle to overcome the cruelty of her new father-in-law, a captain in Franco’s ruthless Civil Guard, by allowing herself to be absorbed into an underground realm inhabited by fairies, satyrs, enchanted flora and fauna and benevolent monarchs. Ofelia is tested mightily by the guardians of both worlds, but her faith in the existence of a magical kingdom is far more likely to be rewarded than the hopes of Republican guerrillas who expect Allied forces to restore democracy to Spain after they’re done with Hitler and Mussolini.
For reasons owing more to budget cuts than blurred creative vision, The Fountain fails to convince us of love’s power to transcend time and death. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz are at the center of Aronofsky’s epic love story, playing characters whose bloodlines can be traced from 16th Century Europe, through the Spanish conquest of the Americas, today’s world of miracle cures and enlightened science, space travel in the 26th century and on to the Godhead itself. As such, with its irresistibly far-out fantasy sequences and often spectacular visual effects, The Fountain could easily serve as a feature-length music video for the Moody Blues’ trippy “In Search of the Lost Chord.” Somewhere in space, the mortal remains of Timothy Leary are smiling.