On 08.12.12, I watched The Fountain — a truly rare gem of a film! Through a unique story, the film recounts the protagonist’s eternal love for his wife, and reveals the meaning of life and the value of death.
If you go into this film thinking it’s about humanity’s search for immortality, you’ll definitely be disappointed — you might even despise it and write it off as a bad movie. In fact, the film ranges from Genesis in the Bible to Mayan civilization, touching on Zen, Buddhism, enlightenment, and wisdom. The plot follows one man’s journey from an almost mad desire to find a way to save his deeply beloved, terminally ill wife, and his fear of death, to his realization that the true meaning of death is to give birth to new life.
The deeper you love someone, the deeper your fear of losing her. The protagonist researches day and night, searching for the hope of conquering cancer and achieving immortality. He throws himself fully into his research, growing more and more agitated, obsessed with creating a miracle on earth, yet he doesn’t spend his time with his wife through her final days. “Come take a walk with me,” “The first snow has fallen”… To these final requests, he can only keep apologizing, leaving his wife behind for one experiment after another. Although the experiments make remarkable progress, he still can’t save his beloved in time. Finally, death arrives…
How is the unfinished final chapter to be completed? How can humanity escape the fear of death? “But I don’t know how it ends,” “You do know. You will know,” “Finish it”… He finally reaches the Tree of Life, plunges in a knife, and fresh sap of life flows out; he drinks it frantically. When he pulls out the ring and is about to put it on, every cell in his body is transforming; plants grow out from within him, devouring him… He finally attains enlightenment. “Come take a walk with me,” “The first snow has fallen” — he hesitates for a moment, and instead of choosing the lab, he rushes toward his wife in the snow. He walks out of the “crystal ball” alone, and in the explosion he and the tree turn into dust in the cosmos. He breaks through his inner demons and finds the answer — the final chapter: “I finished it.” “Is everything all right?” “Yes, everything is all right.”
“You may have love, but do not cling to it, for separation is inevitable.” “When you let go, that is when you have no more troubles.”
On mtime I came across a very powerful interpretation; the author, Shunxi Tianya, offers a complete and incisive appreciation of the film:
I’d very much like to call it a conceptual film. Director Aronofsky uses a visual language full of metaphor and symbol, along with interwoven, psychedelic montage, to provide the audience with an open text. The mysterious tone of Mayan mythology, the cosmic thinking reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the love and pain of earthly life, and the philosophical reflections on death, eternity, rebirth, reincarnation, redemption, faith, meaning, and much more — all of this makes it seem as though behind every frame of the film lurks some kind of revelation and meditation. It’s like a marvelous Rubik’s cube: although the film itself has only one structure, it lets you understand, through different paths, those intricate hidden messages concealed behind the structure — and what’s here is merely one of many possible realities or illusions.
(1) Narrative Through a parallel, intercutting narrative, the film fuses three stories set in different times and spaces — the Spanish conquistador, the pharmacological scientist, and the space traveler — around the common themes of love and death, forming a kind of science-fiction visual style. In my view, the pharmacologist Tommy did not actually embark on a millennia-spanning odyssey, and neither the conquistador Tomás nor the space traveler Tom are simply fictional characters in Izzi’s book modeled on her husband. What the film really wants to tell is the process Tommy goes through as he faces his wife’s impending death — from pain and fear and frenzy to eventual enlightenment. Here, the conquistador is the plot described in Izzi’s book, while the space traveler symbolizes Tommy’s inner world. The true starting point of the story is the year 2001. Tommy, who deeply loves his wife, is afraid of losing Izzi, who is already in the late stages of brain cancer, so he leads his research team in conducting drug experiments with near madness, longing to save his wife’s life through a miracle. But in reality, the ever-changing nature of her condition and the death that could come at any moment make Tommy more and more anxious and more and more afraid. He is fixated on his experiments and neglects the last chance to be with and care for Izzi. Of course, all of this is entirely out of love for his wife, out of that intense desire to be together forever. Izzi, who loves her husband just as deeply, fully understands what Tommy is feeling at this moment; she can’t bear to stop him, nor does she have the strength to, from chasing that last glimmer of hope. But she knows she will eventually leave this world. To help Tommy accept this cruel fact and pull himself together to go on living bravely, she adopts something like a philosophical form of enlightenment: she expresses her expectations — her dying wish — through the form of a novel. She prepares pen and ink for Tommy, hoping he will help her finish the story’s final ending. When Tommy says, “But I don’t know what the ending is,” she tells him, “You do know. You will know.” At first, Tommy clearly cannot grasp his wife’s intention, blinded by his own fear and avoidance, but after a difficult odyssey of the soul, he finally understands Izzi’s good intentions and the feelings about life and death she has been telling him about all along. You can see that the film’s cross-cutting narration of the three stories appears chaotic on the surface but is in fact logical. After Tommy’s story is told for the first time, the narratives about the conquistador and the space traveler are closely tied to Tommy’s real-life situation. The transition from the real-world scenes to the Spanish setting is bridged by the act of reading a book; the text that flashes quickly across the screen and gradually fades out indicates to us that the story set in Spain is a set of interpretive codes for the personal philosophical dialogue between Tommy and Izzi. The conquistador Tomás is the symbolic counterpart of the Tommy who is immersed in experiments in reality; like Tommy, he takes risks to save his beloved and to be with the queen of his heart forever. To fulfill his promise, Tomás kills his rebellious subordinates, and the priest who guides him along the road to the Tree of Life also dies in the rebellion; while in reality, Tommy, disregarding the drug protocol, tests a formula derived from the mystical tree on a macaque. Both of them encounter all kinds of resistance from those around them, and both rush headlong toward their goals regardless of everything. And the macaque, as a de facto helper, faces the threat of death just like the priest. But the queen in the Spanish story is not constructed by Izzi with herself as the prototype; she is the queen imagined in Tommy’s (Tomás’s) mind — beautiful and noble, yet fragile and helpless, in need of someone to save her. In fact, she is a mental image of Izzi in his eyes, because Tommy always believes that once he accepts that ring representing true love, he has a responsibility to guard her and protect her; and when an external enemy (a virus) invades and threatens her life, finding that Tree of Life that can grant immortality is the only way. Compared with the Spanish plot, the story set deep in the galaxy is even more closely linked to Tommy’s state of mind. Tom always quietly guards the great tree, feeling her life force, and keeps telling her, “Don’t worry, we’ll be all right,” “I’ll stay by your side forever.” The director repeatedly links the scenes of reality and the space world through symbolic continuous montage — for example, through the flickering changes of light and shadow, the gently stroked tree trunk in the frame becomes Izzi’s smooth body; the tree whiskers on the trunk become the fine hairs on her skin; the golden flowing nebula becomes the circular pattern on the hospital floor; and the similar bodily movements of Tommy and Tom — turning the head, looking up, wailing — are also frequently juxtaposed in the transitions between shots. At first, the great tree’s life force is “still very strong”; after Izzi faints in the museum, the tree’s whiskers begin to droop downward; and when Izzi finally dies after resuscitation fails, the great tree also withers and dies. Obviously, the great tree here is a metaphor for Izzi’s physical condition, while the glass-ball-like star body is a metaphor for Tommy’s state of mind and thoughts. Here, Izzi seems always to be by Tom’s side, yet she never truly appears. Tom is afraid to face Izzi’s apparition, afraid that she will repeatedly remind him to finish the novel’s ending; what he has been doing all along is studying the nebula and studying how to keep the great tree alive. After the real Izzi dies, the nebula begins to gather, and the apparition beside Tom becomes Queen Isabella; like Izzi, she tells Tom, “You can free a new Spain from bondage, you can do it.” This time, Tom heeds Izzi’s words — “Let’s finish it” — and he finally leaves the sphere he has guarded for so many years to complete the final ending of his wife’s novel. And Tom vanishes into the cosmos with the great explosion of the nebula. Seen this way, the film begins with the Spanish and space plots as a kind of flashback technique, but it is more than just a narrative device. In fact, the predicaments of Tomás and Tom described at the beginning of the film are exactly the dilemma Tommy faces in reality. After enduring many hardships, Tomás finds the road to the Tree of Life, but he is stabbed by the Mayan warrior guarding the way and is at death’s door. This is the final plot point in Izzi’s novel, and also a riddle-like code she set for her husband: how it ends — whether it stops here, or he continues searching despite his wounds, or something else — is entirely for Tommy to complete. In Tom’s world, there are several voices: one is Tom’s own, saying to the great tree, “You can do it, I don’t want you to die”; another is his wife’s voice from memory, saying, “Come take a walk with me,” “The first snow has fallen”; and the third is the voice of the wife’s apparition hovering around him, saying, “Finish it!” These three voices intertwine, representing Tommy’s painful and conflicted state of mind. He longs for a miracle to happen, longs to find a cure for cancer. Yet he knows how slim that hope is; he “doesn’t know how to finish it.” He is distraught at not being able to accompany his wife to see the snow. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault” — again and again he can only express apology and guilt this way. He also wants to help his wife fulfill that dying wish. He looks at the tattoo on his finger: “All right, I believe you. Take me, guide me.” Unfortunately, Izzi left without leaving any guidance; he still has to figure it all out himself. At the end of the film, Tommy gives up the pursuit of eternity and accepts the death that humanity must inevitably face, and thus finally liberates himself from the fear of death.
(2) Themes “So he drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, and placed there the cherubim and a flaming sword turning in all directions, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.” This is the passage from Genesis in the Bible quoted at the beginning of the film; while hinting at the plot, it also tells us the main subject the film wants to discuss. From the moment Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the “tree of knowledge” (tree of knowledge, or tree of good and evil), humanity began living in a world of binary opposites: life and death, poverty and wealth, sorrow and joy, good and evil… What exactly is the meaning of life? If they had chosen not the “tree of knowledge” but the “tree of life,” what would things be like? What sets us apart from the Creator, and what makes us special? Perhaps all of this is just a process from the present to eternity. At the end of the film, Tommy finally gains the ability to conceive the novel’s ending. The guardian of the Tree of Life, at the moment he strikes, sees Adam, the “father of mankind,” and lays down the flaming sword in his hand, willing to die for his sins. Tomás gets his wish and sees the Tree of Life, yet he does not become immortal because of it; when he drinks the resin that represents infinite life force, he falls to the ground in agony, and green grass and flowers burst out from his body, burying him beside the great tree. And Tom calmly crosses the nebula to reach the center of Shibalba, turning into a speck of dust in the cosmos as the star body explodes. Judging from the story and its ending, The Fountain mainly seeks to explore views on death, and from there extends to reflections on the meaning of life. Tommy finally breaks out of that glass sphere filled with fear and avoidance, achieving a kind of spiritual transcendence. Accompanied by bright, spectacular images and fast, melodious drum music, the space traveler Tom peacefully explodes and perishes together with the Shibalba nebula; this scene, akin to a religious nirvana, actually expresses the spiritual pleasure of being forever freed from fear. And what helps Tommy achieve this liberation is precisely a renewed understanding of love and the meaning of life. At first, Tommy is fragile and sensitive inside; he doesn’t want Izzi to talk with him about anything involving death — in fact, he is afraid of losing her. So he declares war on fate, wanting to “stop aging, stop death.” He believes that to escape pain, he must conquer death; “death is a disease, and like any other disease, there is a cure,” and he wants to find it. But this defiance, or contempt, is not born of a Sisyphus-like simple perseverance and joy; it comes from subconscious helplessness and despair. As the Mayan guardian says, for him, “death is the road to fear.” Unlike Tommy, Izzi, who has suffered from illness for years, has an aestheticist interpretation of and identification with death. She tells Tommy that the golden nebula is actually a gathering of stars about to die; one day they will explode and perish, giving birth to a new star. And she has found her own place, called Shibalba, a world where dead souls can be reborn. She also tells him that, according to the Mayan creation myth, life was created by the human ancestor Adam with his own body: his body became the trunk of the great tree reaching into the earth, his soul became the branches spreading toward the sky, and Shibalba was created by his children in heaven. Of course, at the time Tommy is obsessed with the treatment and pays no attention to what his wife says. But Izzi keeps using her religious, fantastical way to help Tommy understand that life exists in more than one form, and that we are all just a tiny part of the universe. After Izzi’s condition worsens, she tells Tommy another story that a Mayan tour guide told her: after the guide’s father died, a seed was buried in his grave and grew into a great tree. The guide said his father became part of the tree, and his soul flew far away with the birds foraging for food. The film doesn’t mention the guide’s situation or the source of the story, but it’s clear that Izzi is always trying to enlighten Tommy with a cosmic way of thinking that transcends outward forms, trying to make him understand that death is not an end but a new beginning. In fact, Tommy’s final realization and transcendence come precisely from comprehending this truth. He arranges a death ending for Tomás; Tomás’s body becomes grass and flowers, but in reality he is reborn in another form. And Tom finally reaches the center of Shibalba, the place Izzi said was hers; there the nebula gathers and explodes as described before, transforming into another star, and the Tree of Life is revived. It can be said that Tommy accepts Izzi’s view of life in his mind, and thus Tom — who represents confusion and avoidance — disappears along with the rebirth of Izzi’s soul. Of course, Tommy’s realization is still the result of the true love between him and Izzi. Before Tom finally decides to break out of that glass sphere, his wife’s image keeps appearing, and Queen Isabella, who symbolizes the mirror image of Tommy’s inner self, finally stands together with Izzi’s image. It is her (their) love and trust that give Tommy the courage and strength to “finish it.” And so, when the scene that recurs throughout the film — his wife inviting him out for a walk — appears once again, he doesn’t walk toward the lab; instead he runs toward that snowy field, toward his wife, toward the “heart” of Shibalba. There, he finds the lost wedding ring and puts it on his middle finger, covering the tattooed ring carved there out of pain and out of the longing for eternity. He no longer needs to eat the bark of the great tree to overcome his fear, nor does he need to carve tree rings on his arm to travel through the pain of time, because he knows Izzi has not truly left — she will be with him forever. On the snow-white grave, we see Tommy bury a warm seed, and we believe that before long a lush great tree will surely grow there. “Farewell, Izzi.” “I’ve finished it for you.” “Are you all right?” “Yes, everything is all right.”
(3) Visual Language The director conveys the theme of Tommy’s fear of death through the shifting colors of the shots. In the film, we can see the images in the shots constantly shifting between color and black-and-white, darkness and brightness. This color change is tied to the protagonist’s circumstances and state of mind. Among them, the scenes involving Tommy, Tomás, and Tom are basically shot in gloom, only bursting into bright white at the very end. And each time the shot transitions from color to black-and-white, the protagonist is almost always in a state of confusion, anxiety, or pain — for example, when Tommy returns home looking for Izzi; when the priest appears to lead Tomás on his quest for the Tree of Life; when Tommy walks from the hospital to the lab after Izzi faints; when Tom feels the great tree’s vitality declining; when Tom holds the withered tree and weeps bitterly… and so on. In contrast, the scenes involving the queen, Izzi, and her apparitions are mostly shot in fairly saturated light, and each time the male and female protagonists appear on screen together, the character played by Rachel Weisz always occupies the bright part of the frame, and the close-ups of her face are always given a soft, bright glow. Such an arrangement is obviously not arbitrary; it distinguishes two different states — on one side optimism and composure, on the other sorrow and conflict; on one side serenity and peace, on the other bewilderment and helplessness. Finally, when the two together present a dazzling brightness, it actually represents their ultimate transformation from confinement to openness, from dimness to light, from fantasy to reality.