The Fountain (2006)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky / Written by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel

This movie is about death. Despite the gruesome-sounding subject, it is caressingly beautiful and not only visually, but also in terms of pacing, music and story. This, I believe, has been a conscious choice by the director to bring more emphasis to his perception of the theme – to show death is not not wholly gruesome even though it is mostly viewed as a bothersome necessity.

There was a juxtaposition between glorifying death and the fear of death, clearly presented and personalized through characters in the funeral scene: Lily speaking of death making us whole, and Tommy refusing to hear and stating he would find a cure for death. It is interesting how the one who actually dies, Izzy, seems to be neither, simply accepting death as it is.

When Izzy has already accepted she is going to die, her husband Tommy still holds on to hope and thus becomes blind to the last moments he could spend with her. His unwillingness to face and accept death is painful to watch as he is thus of no support to his wife who is already going through a process of letting go of fear and approaching death. This is an accurate description of what happens in relationships where one loses oneself for another: if you die, what will I be? Who am I without you? The only reason he worked was to save his wife instead of working for himself and his passion – and realizing there will be time for that after his wife's last moments have passed.

A choice I found pleasing was that neither the glorification or the fear of death was dubbed as a right answer. What matters is Life itself, because all we know of death is that it simply happens. All else is beyond us.

The movie fascinatingly introduces some death mythology. A legend of the Mayans is mentioned, where the “first father”, Adam, dies in order to create the world, and it is illustrated how his body became the roots and his soul the branches of the tree of life – and his head the underworld or life after death, which was believed to reside in a dying star behind a visible nebula in the night sky. To state that the afterlife is within a place that is dying is to me really interesting, as it could be interpreted our illusions of heaven and/or hell are to be evaporated – or the hope that there would be a place we could be “rescued” into.

This myth of Adam becoming the Tree of Life is dubbed as “death as an act of creation”, which I find an interesting thought. It is somewhat brutally illustrated how this happens whether you want this or not – there is no way to cheat death. The scene where the conquistador dies after drinking from the Tree of Life was a key element in this movie, nullifying all hopes of a “quick fix” that would allow us to not face death. The only way to be free, to “set Spain free” as the queen said, is to face death as it is.

Another detail I highly enjoyed was the Inquisitor as a symbol of the cancer tumor. Interesting links here and there. Also, there was an extra feature on the DVD related to “death as an act of creation” titled “Life on Ship”, where it is shown how the yoga-Tommy grows new fungi out of dead fungi. It was an interesting little video of its own, so I recommend to check it out if you have it on your disk.