The Fountain (2006)
Screenplay by Darren Aronofsky; story by Darren Aronofsky & Ari Handel
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Warner Bros.
2006
Rating:


Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain" is a modern myth of creation, mortality, resurrection and love. Told with a wild abandon that some would call foolhardy, "The Fountain" is more accurately described as passionate; this is a romantic sci-fi fantasy that isn't ashamed to show its aching heart.

"The Fountain" ambitiously unfolds over the course of three parallel storylines. In 16th-century Spain, Queen Isabella (Rachel Weisz) sends conquistador Tomas (Hugh Jackman) in search of the Biblical Tree of Life, which is located in Guatemala and guarded by Mayans. In the present, neuroscientist Tommy Creo (Jackman) desperately searches for a cure for his dying wife Izzi (Weisz) and may have found it in the bark from a Guatemalan tree. Tommy's research comes at the expense of being at his wife's side as her illness grows worse. Izzi calls Tommy her conquistador, but what she really wants (to borrow a phrase from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") is a "comfortador." Near death, Izzi has begun work on a novel called "The Fountain" that begins with a conquistador's search for the Fountain of Youth and ends at a star named Xibalba where the Mayans believed souls went when they died. Knowing she doesn't have much time left, Izzi asks Tommy to finish the book for her. And in the 26th century, Zen Buddhist monk Tom (Jackman) travels in an ecospheric spacecraft transporting the Tree of Life while being haunted by the ghost of Izzi.

Many will laugh at "The Fountain's" bold sincerity, sneer at its melodrama and dismiss its metaphysics. There's no denying this an eccentric creation, but to so unceremoniously disregard Aronofsky's creation is a refusal to intellectually and emotionally engage with cinema.

In the past Aronofsky has been compared to Stanley Kubrick for his attention to detail and revolutionary use of film grammar in such films as the paranoid thriller "Pi" and the heroin nightmare of "Requiem for a Dream." So there's something ironic about the fact that in making a Kubrick-ian film comparable to "2001: A Space Odyssey" Aronofsky displays a humanistic quality Kubrick's films lack.

Yet Aronofksy's meticulousness has never before been so pronounced or in the service of such a grandiose form of storytelling. Aronofksy, cinematographer Matthew Libatique, production designer James Chinlund, costume designer Renιe April and editor Jay Rabinowitz work diligently to connect the three time periods in subtle ways, whether it's through the repetition of camera movements or a design that appears on Isabella's gown and Izzi's blanket. The most miraculous echoes are the candles in a Spanish church hung to look stars. Later, Tommy looks at cells through a microscope and, in a nod to how the effects were made by taking 3-D photos of chemical reactions, he sees the nebula Tom is floated in. This is a film scrupulously designed so that everything unfolds in a cyclical nature like a Mayan calendar, emphasizing the appearance of wedding bands, the rings of a tree, the circular marking of time on an arm, Tom's vessel, Xibalba -- even Izzi's name is a palindrome.

"The Fountain" is a Russian nesting doll of symbolism and unlocking each piece reveals the true depth of Aronofsky's vision. Few works since "The Waste Land" have worked so thoroughly to combine Judeo-Christian, Muslim, Kabbalah, Jainism, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan, Norse and Jungian imagery into a coherent work that's like "The Golden Bough" brought to life.

One of the more complex symbols is The Tree of Life. The tree at once represents the tree that would have granted Adam and Eve everlasting life in the Garden of Eden; the Sephirot diagram that's the cosmology of Kabbalah; the sacred fig tree under which Siddhartha attained enlightenment and became Buddha; the Sidrat al-Muntaha that in Islam marks the end of the seventh heaven; and the Norse Yggdrasil, which Odin hanged himself from in order to achieve wisdom. All of these connect the three incarnations of Thomas to the tree, especially in Tommy's pursuit of knowledge, but the Yggdrasil myth seems to especially be of significance since Tom's tree-filled spacecraft looks like the Nordic interpretation of the world. According to myth the first humans were made from the Yggdrasil, and the tree is tellingly said to protect the last man and woman when the world ends. Most wonderfully of all, the Mayan Tree of Life is the Milky Way, where Xibalba is located and Tom journeys. Just as the Tree of Life connects "The Fountain's" triptych, Mayans used trees to symbolize the connection between the Earth, the sky and the afterlife.

The use of Maya is one of "The Fountain's" most resounding symbols and extends far beyond the Mesoamerican culture. The film is drenched in Libatique's golden hues so that Thomas is trapped in a sort of amber. The conquistadors raided Mayan lands in search of the precious metal, but the search is futile, just like Tommy's quest for immortality. In an interview with About.com, Aronofsky said, "When you see gold it represents materialism and wealth and these things that distract us from the true journey that we're on." Deepening the symbol is the fact that "maya" in Hindu is the illusion that one is separate from the universe. Seeing through this illusion is the key to escaping the cycle of reincarnation and, by extension, death. The Great Maya goddess has the power to both cause this delusion and be the source of liberation -- just like Izzi connects Tommy to the material world and his acceptance of her words and death can free him from it.

Carl Jung once used the term "maya" to describe the power woman has over man, and Jung's theories on the "anima" and the "animus" influence the conception of the three versions of Thomas and Isabel.

The Tomas and Isabella section of the story, though it works on its own real terms, is a fiction created by Izzi and read and supposedly finished by Tom. Just how far Izzi has gotten in this story is up for dispute, but Izzi at least creates the characters and sets them in motion. Tommy is portrayed as a conquistador sent out by Izzi herself to save her, even though Izzi would rather Tommy play in the first snow with her than dedicate himself to a cure. In some ways this can be read as Izzi letting Tommy off the hook for his choice. But it makes more sense to view Tomas in terms of her Jungian animus, her inner masculine side, as she comes to accept her death. The animus develops in four stages, beginning as a warrior who, in the second stage, provides her with self-sufficiency, becomes an embodiment of personal enlightenment as represented by a symbolic clergyman in dreams who, in the fourth level, helps her achieve spiritual meaning.

This understanding of the animus validates the idea that the Tom section is also part of Izzi's story since Tommy, through three stories and even in just the present one, becomes all four versions of Izzi's animus. The Tom section is also interpreted as a future Tommy traveling to Xibalba, but he belongs in Izzi's "The Fountain" because Izzi says her story ends at the star. Tommy may even write this part of the story: wracked with grief he can only see himself as an ascetic monk drifting until he reaches Izzi's foretold final destination. This doesn't contradict the animus theory: at least as a character, if not in Izzi's subconscious "reality," Tommy still undergoes the four stages of her animus.

Izzi, too, fulfills the role of Tom's anima, his inner feminine side. The anima works somewhat differently from the animus. The first level is Eve and represents sexual desire; the second level Helen, named for Helen of Troy, represents seeing a woman as intellectual and independent; in the third level Mary, as in the Virgin Mary, the man sees a woman as virtuous; and in the final stage of Sophia qualities that are at once earthly and pure can be possessed by the same woman. This certainly happens to Tom as his view of Izzi evolves until, in flashbacks, she becomes an attainable, true woman. The purpose of anima development is in "opening up" the male to emotion. In all three stories Tom becomes opened up by Izzi. During the abstract finale that's worthy of "2001" and the anime "Akira," this sometimes happens literally. In the case of Tom, named for a character in the David Bowie song "Space Oddity," he becomes Jung's vision of the Cosmic Man, literally becoming part of the universe.

More touchingly, the couple also represents the Jungian archetype of syzygy, the "Divine Couple." For Jung, syzygy is when two entities combine to form a single whole without either being losing its identity. There is no finer expression of the definition of a perfect marriage. Because Aronofsky is skilled at building symbols within symbols, syzygy is also an astronomy term used to describe the alignment of three celestial bodies.

None of this would work if the characters weren't allowed to be more than the symbols they've been assigned. Especially in the present-set scenes, these characters bleed. Their love and loss is real, grounding the film's heavy themes with real human emotions. Nothing is quite as heartbreaking as the climactic scene in which Thomas and Isabel realize the only thing that can escape death is love. The force of that discovery causes nothing less than a supernova. "The Fountain" has a similar effect, devastating with its heartache, audacity, and furious poetry.

Posted Saturday, January 20, 2007

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/fountain.2006