While I sat in the theater taking in The Fountain, I became aware of a vast and discomforting silence. Throughout the film, music by The Kronos Quartet and Mogwai accompanied the imagery, while the various instances of Thomas, the man who strives to defeat death, wrestled and fought with his opponent with vocal determination. How can I be feeling this dark infinity wrapping itself around my awareness, I wondered, while this intensely visual film is playing out in front of me? The dichotomy became so insistent, I actually found myself questioning my impressions of the film, as if I was watching it "incorrectly", approaching it in the wrong state of mind.
Yet I was so taken by the images, it was hard to think about anything at all. A golden ring in the dirty palm of a man who has traveled far from everything he knows and loves; a man nursing a tree as he sails through the gaseous folds of a nebula; the way cracks between panels in an elevator car converge with implicit yet evasive meaning. Image followed image, and while part of me tried to piece it all together the way that so much other cinema has taught me to do, another part of me was content to take it in, like a breath, or a drink of water.
Days later, I am still thinking about some of the symbols in the film: the rings and bands that the future Thomas has tattooed up and down his arms, like the ones that mark the age of a tree; the candles that surround Tomas and Queen Isabel like stars in the galactic belly; the white sap that pours from the Tree of Life in viscous clots like semen. And then there is the symmetry between different instances of time and possibility: the white light that gives present Tommy his inspiration is the same white light that Tomas sees after tasting the Tree of life, which is the same light that future Tom beholds as he travels into a nebula, in search of a Mayan god – and in every one of these instances, Tomas/Tommy/Tom is searching, looking for the secret that unlocks immortality.
Still, as I was lead to make these connections without conscious intent, I was confounded by a growing silence that was starting to intrude upon it all. Even as the film climaxed, and Aronofsky threw a gestalt of incredible images at the screen, and the strings and guitar swelled with noise, and Thomas welcomed his fate with ecstasy – there was still this part of me that, like him, was waiting, wondering, searching, feeling its way through darkness for . . . what? What was I missing?
It was the final scene that revealed it to me. I won't describe it here, because it is one of the very last things you will see in The Fountain, but suffice to say that Aronofsky creates a huge, blank canvas, in the center of which stands Tommy. There he does something, and says something, that attached every one of my senses to the film with a totality that was heretofore missing. This is not to say that the film "suddenly made sense", or that I "got it"; rather, I understood where my feelings were at: I was awed; I was scared; I was sad; I was small and significant at the same time; I was lonely and I was in love. The discomforting silence I had sensed was the inevitable, a smothering nothingness bigger than measure, a shade of death projected upon the tangible world.
After years of waiting to see this film, I was expecting an epic story that trolled heavy themes like love and death and came up with precious treasure, an experience that was going to rock my senses, and change the way I think about everything; instead, I was confronted with meditations and images that confirmed the fears and anxieties that have trailed my mind ever since I realized my own mortality. I didn't get the sense that Aronofsky wanted to say something new, but that he wanted to use image and symbol to share as much of his own thoughts as he could; to inspire feelings with such intensity, you have no choice but to reflect upon them. He is successful in this effort.
I'm surprised by the negative reactions to this film that I've read. The biggest criticism seems to be that the film is pretentious; it is not. What is so pretentious about loving someone so much, you want them to live forever? Or mixing narratives, and drawing comparisons between myth, science, and spirituality? I wonder if this estimation is due to all of the advanced praise that lauded Aronofsky as a genius, a visionary, the next Kubrick, etc – before people saw the opening scene. Maybe people were expecting too much, and were surprised to see a film that has been stripped down to its constituent parts. Even Aronofsky's signature style is muted; the rapid edits and repetitive cuts that characterize his earlier work are largely missing, and what remains is something much more deliberate and assured.
If anything, The Fountain is a daring film, because it is so uncompromising that you either agree to watch it, or you don't. If you make the latter decision while you're sitting in the theater, then you will not enjoy it; should you make the former, then you will witness a film that captures the director's state of mind, and imparts his feelings about big questions that are as old as storytelling itself. Personally, The Fountain was unlike anything I've experienced before, and it's stuck with me since. I hope that you give it a chance, and see it for yourself.
11/26/06
