If you go see Darren Aronofsky's new movie
The Fountain expecting a straightforward science fiction epic, you're going to be sorely disappointed. It's anything but straightforward and has more mythical/mystical elements than anything scientific.
If you've seen the commercials, you're probably vaguely aware that The Fountain's main conceit is that it tells three stories in three different time periods. The first, a story about a Spanish conquistador searching the jungles of New Spain for the mythical Tree of Life, whose existence is confirmed by Mayan myth as well as biblical fiat. The second, a story of two lovers, one (Rachel Weisz) dying of a deadly brain tumor, the other (Hugh Jackman) desperately trying to find a cure. The third, and the strangest, is Jackman's character floating through space in a bubble with the Tree of Life on an interstellar quest to reach the heart of a dying star.
Confused yet? You shouldn't be. It was never intended that these stories be told in a linear way, which is why the film intercuts between them throughout, and if you were to take any one of these stories out, you would destroy the entire meaning of the film.
Consider, for instance, that the "main" story, the "real" story, is the one about Rachel Weisz dying and her husband seeking a cure. It takes place in "real time," in the modern era. For lack of a better word, I'll call this the "reality" story. The characters are only fully alive in this story, and the situation they have to deal with provides the crux of the entire movie.
The story which opens the movie, the one about the conquistador, appears to be a product of fantasy, a novel Rachel Weisz's character is writing in her last days as her husband spends all of his time developing a cure. Based on history and myth, it's a vaguely allegorical account of how the Weisz character views her husband, the brave conquistador searching for the secret of eternal life out of love for his queen. With that said, this story isn't "historical" at all, and shouldn't be considered to have actually happened. It's allegory, it's myth, it's pure imagination, an alternate universe where alternate versions of the main characters work out issues of fear and courage and love and dedication.
The third story, the one that seems most fantastical, about the Tommy character floating through space in a huge bubble with a chunk of earth and the Tree of Life, is an extension of the "real" story, but it's the "mystical" aspect of it. Here we are confronted with blaring images of Tommy floating through a nebula in the lotus position, head shaved like a Shaolin monk. His mission: to become reborn in the heart of a dying star.
As the film jumps from story to story, these different aspects (reality, myth, and mysticism) collide in an explosion of meaning. Clues are dropped throughout to help us understand. The Tree of Life we realize isn't the tree of myth, where the Mayan First Father sacrificed himself to bring the world into existence. It's a strange species in Guatamala whose sap has anti-aging properties. The tree floating in Tommy's 26th century bubble isn't
the Tree of Life, it's one of these mysterious trees that Tommy had planted on Izzy's grave, which having been sustained by the decay of her mortal coil, takes on her spiritual essence.
So while 25th Century Tommy floats his way into the cataclysm of a nebula, we know that he's doing it to emulate First Father, whose death as a man and rebirth as the symbolic Tree of Life brought the world into existence.
I know, I know. It still doesn't make any sense! Of course not. Movies like this exist in a vacuum where "sense" doesn't exist. It's not an attempt to show us reality, what might happen if a man finds the secret to eternal life, but instead an artistic rumination on life and death, loss and the acceptance (or nonacceptance) of loss. And as such, it's a film like no other.
