So last night I saw The Fountain. I was looking for a certain kind of vibe and visual experience and couldn’t find anything that would fit that criteria. But after going back and forth with ChatGPT for two days, I finally settled on this movie. But what an experience man.
So there are two ways to understand the story. One is the way in which the movie itself tries to explain the plot, and the other way which I think is much easier to understand.
So we have three timelines playing simultaneously in the movie (not technically). One timeline is the current timeline in which our scientist Tommy is trying to find a cure for his wife Izzy’s cancer. The second timeline is a future timeline in which another version (Tom) is also trying to save his wife who has turned into a tree and is trying to take her and himself in a biosphere bubble to the dying star called Xibalba. The third timeline is from the past. Now it could be a real timeline, but most of it is told from the perspective of Izzi’s book. That timeline is in New Spain during the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the Maya, and that version (Tomás) is trying to save the queen by finding the tree of life, a tree whose sap gives you immortality.
The movie itself is an audio-visual experience and has these sad pieces that are very artistic. Every scene looks like it comes out of a painting and there are a lot of visual motifs. The background music is also very sad and hopeful at the same time. It evokes a certain kind of melancholia inside you.
The movie leaves you with a bittersweet kind of ending. I can tell you the ending but it still won’t be a spoiler because it is very hard to understand the movie. Plus I don’t think there’s a single interpretation. Everyone will have their own idea of the story and plot. I don’t even think the movie tries to really tell a story. Rather, it tries to convey a message by this artistic feeling. It’s like if a painting started moving. That’s what this movie is like, and you have to extract your own meaning from it the same way you do with paintings.
The message I got from the movie is that death is an inevitable experience that we all must be willing to enjoy. It is not the end but the start of another book, which can only start one you happily finish the last chapter of the previous one. (the final chapter motif). Once you die, your atoms become part of the universe, which will then be used to create new life. In that way, you never actually die.
Hugh Jackman has one of the best performances in this movie. Instead of all the onscreen angry rage he’s known for, you actually get a crying Jackman, a contemplating Jackman, and just a general sadboi Jackman. And it all looks natural. You actually forget he’s Wolverine and view him as this normal doctor-husband guy.
And there’s Rachel Weisz, who plays the wife, and the queen (and the tree I suppose?). Her wife character comes off as this like aloof, pixie dream girl. Which I’m going to be honest, is my head cannon about her real life personality. She is definitely not like that in the mummy, or the movie Constantine (which her only movies I can remember right now), but it’s just like the way she looks or behaves or the way she sounds that kind of gives me the feeling that she’s like that. Anyway, she plays that sort of personality here, which is endearing to watch.
I was disappointed by the fact that there is no actual star named Xibalba that they mention in the movie (the nebula representing the Mayan underworld). I thought it would be a cool rabbit hole for me to get into, but sadly it was all made my sci-fi for the movie. There is an actual nebula that they Mayans associated with creation, the Orion Nebula, but there is no Xibalba :(
Rating: 9/10