Death is the Road to Awe

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2007)

This is not a film for any one public. Americans, often ignorant of philosophy and mythology (by and large) would stumble awkwardly through much of the film, wondering what the hell is going on. Others still would prefer to call the film pretentious and drenched in metaphysical bull----. Woe it is to the archetypes. No one knows how to reach the elemental, the archetypal arena of human experience anymore; a fact proved by so many other reviewers penchant for searching for the "realism" within the movie. (cf. Roger Ebert's review; this is a thoroughly stupid and ignorant way of viewing such a film...it seems that the Divine Comedy would be cast aside today, because Dante does not describe Paradise in a "realistic" fashion. Which of course is worse than nonsense...its f---ing stupid.)
The problem many people have with this film is that they see it as a story about two people, and not two archetypes that are elemental within human mythology (first man and first woman). It is interesting to note how Jackman becomes Western man (furious and daring, he hopes to reach beyond nature, to become a 'superman,' while not understanding that he is not simply a product of nature but very much a PART of nature) and Weisz becomes the embodiement of Eastern thought (her submission to the truth of nature (death) is not a submission, but an understanding of the tide of life, an understanding Tom, in all his embodiements, does not possess). I see a purity in the representation of first man and first woman, a purity that allows me to see the characters as archetypes that resemble the spiritual forces that have driven us for our eternity.
Ebert said that it is a standard critical practice not to create a fiction that was not implicit within the film; but with a film like The Fountain, there are so many interpretations and meanings...deep thoughts linger in me while I watch, an ocean of experiences that dwells inside me, calm and enveloping. Interpretaions can, in their own rights, be works of art, if what they interpret, in itself, is beautiful. I will not pretend that my interpretation is right, complete, or a work of art; but what I have seen and felt from this film has filled me with something I cannot describe--if the definition was not insufficient, I would call it God--yet so many pass by it with scorn and rolling eyes. I hope some will see in it what I have felt pass through so many times...or at least to understand, at the very least, that just because a movie doesn't touch you, it does not mean that your perception of the movie is, in itself, truth; it is merely an opinion like mine. On art there is no truth, except the pieces we craft ourselves.