The road to awe. . .mazement

Rating: 10/10 (28 February 2007)

I was in Chandler, AZ in November of '06 on a business trip with my best friend. The only thing we did was go to see the movie The Fountain. A friend of his had recommended it and he trusted her judgment. We drove to the mall, only after getting lost a bit, and got our tickets and food and went to our theater.
Little did we know we were in for an almost overwhelming visual treat. The first half of the film I almost cried because I had never seen anything so beautiful. I thought all the effects were CGI induced but later found out Aronofsky chose to do the special effects for the film by using micro-photography of chemical reactions on tiny petri dishes. He has said that CGI would take away from the timelessness of the film and that he wants the film to stand the test of time. We had watched the trailer before hand and it gave me chills, I was rather excited to see this.
I keep reading reviews that say the movie dragged on, it wasn't good, didn't make sense or the like. Every moment held me in my seat, until that is people in the theater wouldn't stop talking and I had to alert someone. I am not a fan of Rachel Weisz by any means but in this movie I feel she really gave some substance to the role. I love Hugh Jackman, I always have. Aside from his action roles I believe him to be a great dramatic actor. From both of these actors I never knew they could inspire with so much feeling. I have never seen either of them so good in a role.
The movie plot itself appealed to me and seeing it for myself just made it all the more great. Who on this earth hasn't battled with thoughts and awareness of their own mortality? A theme Aronofsky craft fully spun into a mesmerizing and meaningful movie.
I am not totally unaware of the film maker. I have seen his moving movie about heroine addiction, Requiem for a Dream. He too cast Ellen Burstyn as Dr. Lillian Guzetti, Tom Verde's superior and friend. I believe her to be one of America's great actresses with a career spanning decades.
In this movie there are three periods of time we visit. Time of the Spanish Inquisition, present day, and somewhere in the future, with all stories intertwining in the last.
Izzi (Weisz) has inoperable brain cancer and her husband Tom (Jackman) tires by any means necessary to cure her. He says, "Death is a disease, it's like any other. And there's a cure. A cure - and I will find it." Working day in and day out, testing on animals, to save his wife. A story of a desperate man and a dying woman that is handled gracefully and poetically in the hands of Jackman and Weisz.
In the future Tom is haunted by the vision of his dead wife, ultimately losing the battle to save her in the past. His only company, a large tree. When she had died he planted a seed on her grave, something akin to a story she had told him, and it grew into this tree. The story she told him was of a Mayan guide, Moses Morales, from a trip she had taken. He said that if they dug his father's body up, it would be gone. They planted a seed over his grave. The seed became a tree. Moses said his father became a part of that tree. He grew into the wood, into the bloom. And when a sparrow ate the tree's fruit, his father flew with the birds. He said... death was his father's road to awe. That's what he called it. The road to awe.
His wife keeps haunting him about finishing the last chapter in the book she was writing just before her death. She couldn't finish it and asked him to complete the task. Riddled with strife and grief he fights and relishes these memories and her ghost. Unable to let go, until the end, sacrificing himself.
Accepting what has happened he joins her in Xibalba (pronounced "shibalba", where they are reunited. The pervasive theme in Aronofsy's film.
Quite truthfully it's one of the best movies I have ever seen and it has haunted me ever since, striking a deep chord within my own spirit with my own questions about life and death.