The Fountain

"Death is a road to awe"

Therefore, the Lord God banished Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden and placed a flaming sword to protect the tree of life. - Genesis 3:24

Film critic Robert Roten,

"“The Fountain” is the most ambitious film I've seen in a long time, and one of the most beautiful to watch, too. It attempts to explain the meaning of life and death. This message is probably going to be lost on most people... 

The ideas presented in “The Fountain” are very familiar to Buddhists and those of us who have followed the writings of philosopher Joseph Campbell, and the many others who have followed similar spiritual journeys...

The structure of the film suggests an evolution in religious ideas, starting with Christianity in the time of the conquistadors (and the Spanish Inquisition), mingling with Mayan beliefs, and ending up with a Buddhist idea of non-ego consciousness. The philosopher Joseph Campbell argued that all religions have certain common core beliefs. Scientific studies have found that in their deepest meditative states, both Eastern and Western religious believers arrive at the same mental place, a place which seems to exist outside of space and time, where one's ego seems to disappear and the believer seemingly achieves a singularity with the source of all being. Although one can certainly argue “The Fountain” depicts a kind of religious evolution, it can also be argued that it depicts a nexus, a conjunction of various religious traditions at the point where they converge and merge. This film can be understood on multiple levels, and can be misunderstood on multiple levels. It certainly helps one's understanding of the film if you are versed in more than one religious tradition, if you are familiar with the works of philosophers such as Joseph Campbell or Dr. Wayne Dyer, or other similar philosophers. It also helps if you know some astronomy, some chemistry and biology. It also helps if you are a seeker of truths beyond those which you may currently embrace. It helps if you believe that human beings are vastly more similar than they are different. It helps if you believe there is a connection between everything, that things are not as separate as some people think they are. It helps if you believe our current level of existence is not the only one. It helps if you are a spiritual person. How you approach this film depends a lot on what you believe. As for what I believe. I believe this film rates an A."" Full review

Personal notes: I was blown away by this movie and even though I realise that I am very late in watching it and making this small tribute to it, it is still better late than never to firmly put it to my top all time movie list. Most of all I applaud the director Darren Aronofsky, who is one of my favourite directors ever since "Requiem for a Dream", for being one of the very few (yet for some reason cannot remember another one at all at the moment) film-makers to treat the subject of death in such a deep and sane manner. Of course it takes the main character an epic dramatic journey to reach the understanding of the unity of life and death, but he does reach it and the visual imagery accompanying his "becoming whole" is simply out-of-this-world. 

Also can't give enough credit to the amazingly talented Clint Mansell who composed the score, he simply stuns me every time!

You can find the history of the concept of the tree of life here and another article from www.sacredearth.com here. 

"The torrent pours from an invisible source the point of entry being the center of the symbolic circle of the universe, the immovable spot of the Buddha legend around which the world may be said to revolve. Beneath this spot is the earth supporting head of the cosmic serpent, the dragon, symbolical of the waters of the abyss, which are the divine life-creative energy and substance of the demiurge, the world generative aspect of immortal being. The Tree of Life, i.e. the universe itself grows from this point."
~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces)