Death as an Art of Creation: The Fountain

Death and being scared of death are scarcely portrayed in films where it is typically brutal and sensational rather than compassionate or thought-provoking. This time, death is something that frees humanity, as Aronofsky illustrates in The Fountain.

Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is a mystical film about death, the tree of life, the fountain of youth, and everlasting love. Aronofsky has interwoven three tales from three centuries in The Fountain and alternates between times.

The first story is based on a doctor named Tommy, in the twenty-first century, who is doing experimental surgery on monkeys in the hopes of finding a cure for his wife, Izzi, who has a brain tumor that is killing her. As he uses a substance harvested from an ancient tree, it brings the monkey youth. While Izzi has written a novel set in the sixteenth century about the Fountain of Youth, she needs Tommy to read it and complete the final line.

The second story relies on Queen Isabel's Spanish conquistador to discover the biblical Tree of Life, whose sap offers immortality. She is in danger at home from the Catholic Church's Inquisitor, who treats her as a heretic, a whore to paganism, and worthy of death. The conquistador faces mutiny among his men in New Spain's jungles, but he succeeds in his mission for the Queen. He meets a Mayan shaman who thinks death is only a passage; he refers to it as "the path to awe."

In the final story, Tom Creo, an astronomer, is floating in space with the Tree of Life in the twenty-sixth century, and we understand that three of the stories are connected, and there are more (his tattoos, a sign of how many times they have found each other). He is persuaded that Izzy is a member of the tree and will be reunited with her until he enters the Xibalba nebula, which the Mayans view as an underworld. In the lotus place, Tom levitates and relives mystical times with Izzy. Thomas continues to see death as anything more than an adversary to be overcome in his three roles as scientist, warrior, and adventurer.

Whenever he attempts to drive the river to perform miracles, he loses the love right before him. In many ways, Izzy is a mystical teacher who exemplifies a well-finished death for him. She is fearless and at ease with her death. Because she knows it is not the end and bodies are a form that traps souls. "Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Death frees every soul." Soon Tom realizes how eternity links to death.