Road To Awe

Rating: 10/10 (7 January 2008)

MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS OR QUOTES.
'What if you could live forever?'' The Fountain is one of the deepest movies I've ever had the pleasure to witness. If you follow it through to its conclusion and are open minded, a deep thinker then it becomes gratifyingly mind-blowing. As for the tree of life and Izzi's book, is it real? Is she the tree? Or maybe Tom and Izzi are both a combined element of the tree in the end, the Tree representing or being their eternal love in essence them.
Guess the main message is accepting death and its hard to lose a loved one. I could watch this film over and over, and still pick up different ideas from it. People will understand this film one day, maybe when were more evolved mentally, we've all closed our minds.
I think to the best of my ability I understand The Fountain now. I accept what other people think because end of the day I'm in awe of something that is unlike most material, that isn't afraid of being hated by a religious or material obsessed public. Always seems whatever card you play, the more stupid people become. The tree she is, he is, entwined in love. Some people think this film is about death or life, that it is sad, the truth is in between, death is the road to awe.
Death as a means of life, falls on deaf ears in todays zombie-like society. All in our little boxes or one track thoughts. We want a movie that has a basic plot, simple characters, that forever keep changing titles but in essence end up all the same. Well I don't want that, thats why Fountain is so special to me because it explores the whole notion of Death, Rebirth and Love, not to mention the difficult process of losing a loved one and how we would do anything to save them. In essence sometimes we can't change something that's destined to happen, which begs for the old acceptance and to let the river run its course which remains the real message. The Fountain is neither stereotypically happy or sad to me, in the end its resolute, a simple Zen-like fable bordering on rebirth and love eternal.
The parts played beautifully by Hugh Jackman and Rachael Weisz and the love they feel for each other is for me genuinely believable. One scene near the end where he is looking at her like an embodiment of memories, of realities where the Queen Isabella and Izzy merge, is wondrous to behold. Which begs me to wonder if the book Izzi writes isn't something made up from her imagination but one where she has remembered a previous life. Queen Isabella being one of he incarnations. Aztec beliefs also strangely mirror Buddhist ideas in a ''Death is the road to Awe'' sacrificial sense, underlining First Father and Rebirth. Which also makes me think the future Tom, is he not Tom at all or the embodiment of First Father. In essence is he First Father? Darren Aronofsky has a talent for looking at things that I think is so close to my own reflection and thoughts on higher things. Upon reflection Fountain is very similar to Requiem but does it in a more spiritual approach.
Darren's fascination with Mortality has always been there, just go back to Pi with the conversation at that Coffee Shop concerning the Tree Of life. The Fountain will cut Movie Lovers down the middle one half thinking it's cult inducing hippy trash about some bald guy in a bubble and the other half truly seeing it for the deep visual entrancing Journey of one man's struggle with Death, in a race against time to try to save his wife.
A masterpiece of Film Fountain belongs with 2001 and even Requiem for it's higher meaningful depictions. Each time I watch it there's always another piece, another juicy mesmerizing question raised that I didn't see before.