Hello from Mary
Thank you Aronofsky!
by Mary A. Burns
Darren Aronofsky, the visually poetic director for "The Fountain,” chooses the right form to pour his work into, but in doing so, mentally challenges his audience to find the threads of the cosmos that connect the seemingly separate narratives. Let me just say first of all, “The Fountain” does not follow the plotline or any of the reviews I have read so far. I can understand why the film would be difficult to follow, if you are trying to see the three narratives in separate segments of past, present, and future. I think as an audience member, it is important to approach the film with a poetic mind. Visually, the film practically begs its viewers to interact with the film as a piece of art. And as with any good piece of art, the form is as important as its content. Aronofsky appears to know this intuitively because he has poured his work into the best possible vessel, which happens to be science fiction, to achieve a multitude of intentions.
Science fiction is the best genre, best form for Aronofsky’s film for so many reasons. Viewers of science fiction accept the fact that its content will be futuristic and fantasy-like, which the film is indeed. Aronofsky needs this kind of platform to work with to visually display how the mind moves in non-linear patterns. Without this effect, the viewers won’t experience the kind of disorientation that is happening within the central character. Many films attempt to peer into the mind or inner workings of its central characters by focusing on what is happening externally around them. In this case, Aronofsky takes it a step further by offering stunningly visual images that explore what is going on inside the main character internally. By not presenting the sequence of events in chronological order, Aronofsky develops a form that we experience first-hand. The viewer becomes privy to the central character’s mind and how his mind is processing the loss of his wife and the loss of his life with her. Everything we witness in terms of actual events has already happened. However, the futuristic sequence is actually where the central character is trapped emotionally. The viewer is given an opportunity to empathize more intimately with the central character’s struggle when he is in that space. The film does indeed follow a well-organized and connected series of events that only seem obvious once the viewer realizes that the narrative is driven by the unconscious and conscious mind of its central character. The final scene ties all of the parts together when the central character has a breakthrough. Most science-fiction pieces address some kind of political view covertly by offering some distance from reality; Aronofsky utilizes this form in a similar way.
The central character, Tom (played by Hugh Jackman) is a scientist/doctor who is searching for a cure that will hopefully save his wife, Isabel (played by Rachel Weisz). Isabel is dying because she has a tumor. As the plot gestures, her cancer was once in remission but has come back even stronger. The interactions between Tom and Isabel allude to the fact that she has been sick for a while and needs to find a way to be at peace with the fact that she is dying. Isabel becomes enamored with the Mayan history and starts a book that she wants Tom to finish. Her connection to the Mayans is deeply rooted in her need to see beauty in death and life after death. She makes a connection to the Mayans when she discovers that the future of the Mayans is hidden in a dying star, which is to say that new life will be created in the mist of what is dying. Because Tom cannot accept her death although his life is consumed by it, she knows intuitively that when she is gone, it will be important for Tom to finish her book. She wants him to have a way of participating in her death, to offer an opportunity for completion, closure of some kind. By asking him to finish writing the last chapter of her book, she is in a way, giving him an opportunity to replace one kind of "conquering" gesture for another. Although he cannot save her, he can pick up the pen and finish what she started, which is a way of continuing life after death. Although some viewers might understand the spiritual and symbol gesture of this act, most writers know intuitively that physically writing a story becomes a part of you.
Comprehending the film's internal conflict and making it cohesive seems dependent on seeing how the images are connected by gestures. So many gestures are made throughout the film, Isabel's unfinished book being one of them. It's very important to take into account the gestures that are being made; otherwise, the film’s disorientation becomes too confusing. In present day, we see that Isabel and Tom love each other. We see that Tom is so focused on saving Isabel because he can't accept that she is indeed dying. Only, it's not really present day, as in, the present moment has already passed. From the minute the film begins, we enter into Tom's subconscious mind. He is recounting all that has already happened. He is replaying the memory of when Isabel was alive and he is trying to "finish it," finish her story. When we encounter 16th-century Spain, Tom is Tomas, the conquistador who is dispatched to the New World by his beloved Queen to hunt for the Fountain of Youth. In fact, our first encounter with Tom is as the conquistador. He needs to find the tree of life, which is the foundation of youth that offers eternity. It seems rather obvious that from this perspective, Tom, Isabel's husband, is interacting with her book mentally and emotionally. It may not be obvious from the opening scene of the film that Tom is vicarously living through the stories in Isabel's book, but I think it's fairly easy to make that connection. When he picks up Isabel's book (The Foundation) to read it, the perspective shifts to 16th century Spain. Tom emotionally enters the book she was writing about the Mayan's history. He becomes the conquistador because internally he feels connected to this 16th century man. There is even a scene in which Isabel calls Tom her "conquistador.” What they both have in common is a driving passion to fight for what they love and a desire to disapprove conventional beliefs. Tom has come face to face with the "gate keeper" in his own life. As the conquistador, he is unable to get past the “gate keeper” and access the tree of life and as Tom, he fails Isabel, unable to give her more time, more life. The conflict within him is so great and unresolved that we need a third perspective to visually understand. As far as the Tom in so-called 26th present-day America and outer space circa 2500 (as the plotline refers to it), I see this perspective more from a soul perspective, what is happening to Tom on a soul level. It's not just his imagination climbing into Isabel's book about the Mayans, but seeing a meditative Tom in some infinite space that exists somewhere in the abyss allows the audience to see, to visualize the internal works of his soul and what is happening to him in the process, where he is going mentally and emotionally. Tom is trapped inside a bubble, like a glass menagerie. It's a beautiful metaphor and a beautiful image when one considers how two people in love can create their own little bubble, their own world separate from the rest of the world. In Tom and Isabel's case, their world closes in on them because their lives become centered around her death. Without Isabel, Tom is confined in a bubble floating through a metaphorical space, which visually does a fantastic job of communication the alienation that he feels. The images within this so-called future are made up solely of the present day Tom's life with Isabel. There is a dying tree, which is meant to represent the biblical tree in Isabel's book and possibly the tree that offered a possible cure for her tumor, a calligraphy set, which Isabel gave to Tom and images of Isabel when she was sick and dying on a hospital bed. Now, you call that a future? Am I to believe that the future exists only of these gestures?
If the audience approaches the images presented in this futuristic bubble from a poetic perspective, the gestures seem to add up. Consider the gestures: hair on the dying tree to the intimate camera shot of the hair on Isabel's arm when Tom is remembering being intimate with her. The calligraphy pen, the ink, the myths around the biblical tree that Isabel shares with Tom are played out visually. The tree, the pen, the book have become emotionally charged symbol, just like his wedding band that he loses before he lose Izzy. There are gestures that repeat themselves as well, such as Tom replaying the last time Izzy asked him to go for a walk in the snow. We witness a meditating Tom that utters to himself or to someone (Isabel) that he doesn't know how to "finish it," then the film sequences back to present day time which is merely Tom replaying the same scene of Isabel asking him to take a walk with him because it is the first snow. They always take a walk together on the first snow but this day Tom didn't. He had too much work. He was too preoccupied. The repetition of this image and Tom's need to "finish it" as Isabel had asked him is all happening within his psychic. Aronofsky, the director, does a very inventive and difficult task of offering a third perspective that works like a reflection, Tom's reflection. In seeing Tom's reflection, much like seeing our shadow, we need the light. The futuristic perspective is that light. Otherwise, the viewer would be limited with a Tom who is merely using Isabel's book to process. The director wants to show more than that. I think the director wants to show that it might as well be the future because it's all connected. If you want to heal the past you have to heal in the present moment. And the past will keep coming back up again to be healed in the present moment. And that is how I interpret the futuristic Tom in a bubble. When he is in that space, he is trying to conquer something within himself. He is trying to move past understanding into acceptance. His isolation is a reminder that each death is singular and our journey is our own. I think it's really important to understand that the film is really not so much a love story but Tom's story about his love for Isabel and how he is struggling with the loss of that love. The love they have shared and the loss of it is forcing him to break open. The sad and beautiful repetitive image Tom keeps reliving is effective in communicating that he is trying to work through his loss. He is trying to forgive himself for withholding love, for not being there for Izzy in her last few days. Why else would he keep replaying that in his mind until he is finally able to walk out to her in the snow, until he is finally able to find the tree of life and discover that it cannot be consumed, The tree of life is far bigger than we are and consumes us. . . . the image of the conquistador engulfing the milk from the tree of life is so symbolic and so heartbreaking. Sometimes we want so badly to heal ourselves, to change our lives, to bring back that which has been lost, we will sit in our own mind, create a home there, until we exhaust ourself and finally surrender. Tom traveling through the cosmos and traveling through 16th century Spain is just that. Haven't we all at one time in our life connected to another time and place as a way to have distance from the present moment because we needed that distance to process what was all too near? Tom finally has a break through and the film ends with the image of Isabel in the snow giving him a seed from a tree. Tom receives the seed and Isabel fades away. The film closes with Tom standing over Isabel’s grave as he utters “goodbye Izzy” and plants the seed in the snow. The last gesture symbolizes his acceptance that she is gone. His life with her is gone but what she has given him is an opportunity to see and embrace that life has meaning, even if it all comes to an end. Aronofsky poetically reminds his viewers that love has a life of its own and the only way to hold onto that life is to let it go. No one can show us how it works. No one can do the work for us. It seems to be a process that happens in its own time. But to be in the struggle, to shorten the distance between one’s mind and heart through forgiveness, is half the battle and sometimes, it’s everything.
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