The Fountain

[Wollie]

has anybody seen The Fountain?

I thought it was one of the best movies i’ve ever seen.
just wondering what other peoples thoguth on it were… if any

 

[CathCentrist]

Unfortunately it didnt play near me. I guess it was too deep a film to be considered for the area I live around that featured Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, for 3 months on the bill. Looking forward to the dvd.

 

[BrooklynBoy200]

What is that movie about?

I saw a screenshot of it with that guy like kneeling in front of a tree or something. None of my friends went to see it so i had no one to tell me what it was.

 

[Wollie]

Its a movie about a a guy named thomas. His wife is dieing of cancer. Its got three different paralle stories. One in the 1500’s, one in the present and one in 2500. The part with the tree in the bubble is from the 2500. Its a movie that can be interpreted lots of different ways… buts its mostly about the beauty of death and how there empty eternal life in this world is (the tree of life is a big part of the movie) anyway there is a lot more as well, you should defiantly see it.

 

[BrooklynBoy200]

Sounds interesting, i think i will go see it. I might have to wait until it comes out on DVD though. I’m broke.

 

[dulcissima]

My daughter saw it and completely loved it. Her friend that went with her completely didn’t “get it” and the two guys that went to the theatre with them wouldn’t even consider it. They saw Happy Feet. So, my guess is it might be a bit too artistic for some.

 

[frail]

I saw it on Saturday with my wife. She hated it. I was a bit taken aback at first. I came in thinking that it was going to be better than it was and will admit that at first I didn’t get it. And it seemed a little off the wall for me and I was a bit disappointed.

I thought about it off and on throughout the weekend and it finally hit me. The story can be interpreted in many different ways. The writer/director himself stated that while there is only one solution there are many ways to find it(paraphrased).

My interpretation of it made total sense to me and with that in mind I began to replay the movie in my mind and found that once it made sense I became a fan. It makes the story all the more endearing and bittersweet. But also extremely sad.

 

[C_Bautista]

I know I’m digging up an old thread, but the DVD’s recently been released and I thought I’d see if anyone else has seen the movie and had an opinion on it.

Firstly, as movies go, it’s distinctly refreshing to have a movie that so directly goes against the typical Hollywood formula. It’s a very poetic movie - almost like a poem set to film.

However, though it’s refreshing to have questions about eternity, life, death, and rebirth addressed so fervently in a movie, I think the movie has it all wrong.

Spoilers ahead, be warned.

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Well, after my first viewing of it, I think the movie is trying to suggest the inevitability of death. That’s all fine and good, but upon closer inspection, the movie’s actually pushing a “circle of life” and “reincarnation” sort of philosophy, I think.

The main character in the past (a Conquistador) eats of the Tree of Life (which he finds in Mayan ruins) and is healed, but dies - in a rather odd way - and becomes a patch of flowers. He makes way for new life by himself becoming PART of the new life.

In the present, he surrenders to the same philosophy by planting a seed on his wife’s grave so that she can (as mentioned by her earlier in the movie) life “in” other things that come from the tree and eat of it.

In the future/“lotus position bubble-world,” he is obliterated by a supernova - and thus makes way for the rebirth of the tree that apparently contains the essence of his wife.

So basically, once he surrenders to the circle of life, he achieves some transcendent fulfillment and dies, but is assimilated into the dynamic Fountain (hence the name) of life to make way for more things.

This is my take on the film, at least. Seems quite Eastern in the philosophy, and not at all Catholic. Instead of realizing victory OVER sin and death, the characters surrender to death and thus achieve their peace. Also, the characters don’t seem to have any desire for God, but rather their own immortality; nor does the concept of sin make its way into the plot.

That said, the film is fantastically well done as far as films go, but the fundamental philosophy driving the plot in its three timelines leaves something to be desired for the philosophically aware Christian.

The story seems to suggest a “universal secular spirituality” that all faiths attempt to reflect. Christianity, specifically, is painted in a rather bleak light, but is clearly represented to have SOME amount of truth in it. A strangely inserted gnostic section forces me to question if the writer thinks that Catholics believe that the body is a “prison” for the soul.

So while the movie is, in terms of cinematographic value, very novel and refreshing, it is simply philosophically dry, when it comes down to it.

Additionally the average viewer might just scratch his head and give up - it’s not trying to be a crowd-pleaser by any stretch.

 

[SORROWS]

I saw The Fountain on video and I didn’t like it at all. Too weird!
Just confusing and clumsy. It did have beautiful effects and poetic scenery but it wasn’t enough to make the movie worthwhile. I really tried to give it a chance and saw the whole movie through, but it was a disappointment.

 

[Riley259]

I know I’m digging up an old thread, but the DVD’s recently been released and I thought I’d see if anyone else has seen the movie and had an opinion on it.

Firstly, as movies go, it’s distinctly refreshing to have a movie that so directly goes against the typical Hollywood formula. It’s a very poetic movie - almost like a poem set to film.

However, though it’s refreshing to have questions about eternity, life, death, and rebirth addressed so fervently in a movie, I think the movie has it all wrong.

Spoilers ahead, be warned.

Sounds very Hindu and pantheistic in it’s bent. I’ll probably avoid it.

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Well, after my first viewing of it, I think the movie is trying to suggest the inevitability of death. That’s all fine and good, but upon closer inspection, the movie’s actually pushing a “circle of life” and “reincarnation” sort of philosophy, I think.

The main character in the past (a Conquistador) eats of the Tree of Life (which he finds in Mayan ruins) and is healed, but dies - in a rather odd way - and becomes a patch of flowers. He makes way for new life by himself becoming PART of the new life.

In the present, he surrenders to the same philosophy by planting a seed on his wife’s grave so that she can (as mentioned by her earlier in the movie) life “in” other things that come from the tree and eat of it.

In the future/“lotus position bubble-world,” he is obliterated by a supernova - and thus makes way for the rebirth of the tree that apparently contains the essence of his wife.

So basically, once he surrenders to the circle of life, he achieves some transcendent fulfillment and dies, but is assimilated into the dynamic Fountain (hence the name) of life to make way for more things.

This is my take on the film, at least. Seems quite Eastern in the philosophy, and not at all Catholic. Instead of realizing victory OVER sin and death, the characters surrender to death and thus achieve their peace. Also, the characters don’t seem to have any desire for God, but rather their own immortality; nor does the concept of sin make its way into the plot.

That said, the film is fantastically well done as far as films go, but the fundamental philosophy driving the plot in its three timelines leaves something to be desired for the philosophically aware Christian.

The story seems to suggest a “universal secular spirituality” that all faiths attempt to reflect. Christianity, specifically, is painted in a rather bleak light, but is clearly represented to have SOME amount of truth in it. A strangely inserted gnostic section forces me to question if the writer thinks that Catholics believe that the body is a “prison” for the soul.

So while the movie is, in terms of cinematographic value, very novel and refreshing, it is simply philosophically dry, when it comes down to it.

Additionally the average viewer might just scratch his head and give up - it’s not trying to be a crowd-pleaser by any stretch.

 

[cathgal]

I didn’t like the movie either. Makes no sense, especially about the bubble. I mean, how does it fit in with the rest of the movie??

For the one who mentioned it was 2500 in the future, how do you know that?

About the conquisador seeking eternal life, becoming a bunch of greens was definitely not what he had in mind. Talk about demoting oneself…

The movie is definitely not a Christian perspective.

 

[Wollie]

I agree the part in the bubble is way out there… and that it doesn’t make a lot of sense at first. I heard the part about it being 2500 from a friend who is obsessed with Darren Aronofsky, the films director. Whether or not the part in the bubble was not supposed to be in the year 2500 A.D. is really not the point of the movie as far as I can tell. To me the movie was about an idea that is very catholic. It’s about the fact that nothing perfect exists in this world, and that the only true eternal life is the death of the flesh and union with god. The part were Thomas, the conquistador, eats from the tree of life and dies shows that the end of his search for eternal life was death… which is the real eternal life (even though he was not expecting this to be the case). “Death is the road to awe,” is repeated frequently throughout the movie. I think the point of this movie was to show the beauty of death. Don’t we, as Catholics, believe that something more beautiful than anything in this world is waiting for us to come home on the other side of death’s door?

Some people say the movie is about reincarnation… I didn’t see it that way at all.
Aronofsky even said that there were many ways to few this film.

Apart from the philosophy of the movie, it is also an extremely deep love story. It was so refreshing to see a love story on screen that didn’t involve teenagers or hormones.

While this movie may be a bit too much for some, at least it tries to get you to think and to feel… much more refreshing than the mindless “entertainment” Hollywood is constantly throwing at us!

 

[cathgal]

I agree the part in the bubble is way out there… and that it doesn’t make a lot of sense at first. I heard the part about it being 2500 from a friend who is obsessed with Darren Aronofsky, the films director. Whether or not the part in the bubble was not supposed to be in the year 2500 A.D. is really not the point of the movie as far as I can tell. To me the movie was about an idea that is very catholic. It’s about the fact that nothing perfect exists in this world, and that the only true eternal life is the death of the flesh and union with god. The part were Thomas, the conquistador, eats from the tree of life and dies shows that the end of his search for eternal life was death… which is the real eternal life (even though he was not expecting this to be the case). “Death is the road to awe,” is repeated frequently throughout the movie. I think the point of this movie was to show the beauty of death. Don’t we, as Catholics, believe that something more beautiful than anything in this world is waiting for us to come home on the other side of death’s door?

Even though it said ‘death is the road to awe’, it didn’t explain / show the aweness of it. I don’t see the Catholic perspective.

Some people say the movie is about reincarnation… I didn’t see it that way at all.

Reincarnation is to come back as another form of life. Becoming a bunch of greens is another form of life.

 

[Ahimsa]

Reincarnation is to come back as another form of life. Becoming a bunch of greens is another form of life.

Actually, “reincarnation” simply means “coming back to life”. As such, pretty much all religions believe in reincarnation, in one version or another. In Christianity, the idea is that you receive a glorified body after resurrection – that’s a type of re-incarnating. Reincarnation isn’t just for Hindus anymore.

In any event, we all know that our physical bodies return to the earth, and that (outside of being buried in hermetically sealed coffins and tombs) the molecules and atoms of our physical bodies do become “reincarnated” (that is, they do become “re-incorporated”) in the form of single-celled creatures, plants, and animals. I don’t see why that’s such a big surprise.

 

[C_Bautista]

If you’re going to say that receiving a glorified body is being “reincarnated,” then you must remember that we are receiving the SAME body that we had in temporal life, but it is transformed and remade. But it is substantively the same one.

In Hindu reincarnation, the physical is not intricately attached to the metaphysical/nonphysical. In the movie, the characters’ essence is completely detached from their physical body and is then subsequently placed into a new, totally unrelated physical body (i.e., bunch of flowers or a tree growing from his wife’s grave).

I think the idea behind the movie is that the essence or nature of a person is no different from the essence or nature of a plant or tree - that a person who died lives on IN other material things, not of their own accord. Whether that process involves “plantification” or utter obliteration by a supernova is irrelevant; the movie’s point is that in death, the human person lives on because it BECOMES something substantively different in its surrounding physical world.

The Catholic position, though, is that God will raise our OWN physical bodies - while perfectly uniting the corporal and the spiritual aspects of our being - all while maintaining our personhood, free will, and human nature. The difference in the Hindu approach to the idea is that Hinduism takes a “drop of water into an ocean” sort of stance; the human person is transformed, but is no longer specifically human or personal. The human person is destroyed, in this way of thinking, and forever becomes something else entirely.

I’m no Hindu scholar, but so far as I can tell, the movie takes the Hindu approach more so than the Catholic one. It is true, however, that the movie maintains ambiguity on many points, in perhaps an immature way, and so it is, at first, somewhat difficult to p(name removed by moderator)oint its exact message.

Further edit:

Here’s an idea, though: wouldn’t it be possible that the main character is the same “person” in all of the movie’s timelines (within the constrains of the movie’s philosophy, of course). Maybe when he ate of the Tree of Life, he later became reincarnated in the 21st century as a doctor obsessed with defeating death.

Then, his wife died and her essence was “absorbed” into the tree as described earlier in the movie. He discovers the means to live forever, since he was apparently close to curing cancer. Perhaps he was attracted to her in the first place because of her similarities to Queen Isabella.

Then, after his wife is “absorbed” into the tree, he spends centuries looking for a way to free her; when the technology arrives, he takes his “bubble spaceship thing” and goes to the mythical nebula/star to free her “essence” from the tree.

While this is a rather different approach to the movie, it seems as plausible as any as far as I can tell.

 

[Ahimsa]

If you’re going to say that receiving a glorified body is being “reincarnated,” then you must remember that we are receiving the SAME body that we had in temporal life, but it is transformed and remade. But it is substantively the same one.

It might ‘look’ like the same body, but it won’t be the same body – with the exact same molecules and atoms and so forth, The atoms that make up our current body only remain in our body for several years, and are replaced by other atoms coming from the bodies of other living beings.

In Hindu reincarnation, the physical is not intricately attached to the metaphysical/nonphysical. In the movie, the characters’ essence is completely detached from their physical body and is then subsequently placed into a new, totally unrelated physical body (i.e., bunch of flowers or a tree growing from his wife’s grave).

I don’t see how the flowers or the tree are totally unrelated to human bodies, given that the human bodies’ atoms are the atoms that subsequently participate in the making of the flowers and the tree.

The atoms of my body did not originate with me – they were previously part of other bodies of other living beings: plants, bacteria, animals, Julius Caesar, etc. There is nothing alive on earth that is separate. We are all related.

I think the idea behind the movie is that the essence or nature of a person is no different from the essence or nature of a plant or tree - that a person who died lives on IN other material things, not of their own accord. Whether that process involves “plantification” or utter obliteration by a supernova is irrelevant; the movie’s point is that in death, the human person lives on because it BECOMES something substantively different in its surrounding physical world.

I’m confused. You say that the movie says that the essence of all living beings is the same; and then you say that the human becomes something “substantively different”. Which one is it?

The Catholic position, though, is that God will raise our OWN physical bodies - while perfectly uniting the corporal and the spiritual aspects of our being - all while maintaining our personhood, free will, and human nature. The difference in the Hindu approach to the idea is that Hinduism takes a “drop of water into an ocean” sort of stance; the human person is transformed, but is no longer specifically human or personal. The human person is destroyed, in this way of thinking, and forever becomes something else entirely.

Some Hindus believe in the ‘drop’ theory; and many don’t. Many Hindus look forward to living as individual beings, with free-will, in heaven. Other Hindus look forward to becoming ‘one’ with God. From the Hindu perspective, either option is possible, depending upon what any one particular person sees as his or her highest idea of what salvation/liberation is.

The Hindu idea of ‘drop in the ocean’ is merely a metaphor to describe the highest state of existence – the ‘drop’ is not ‘destroyed’. It does, however, begin a radically new sort of existence.

I’m no Hindu scholar, but so far as I can tell, the movie takes the Hindu approach more so than the Catholic one. It is true, however, that the movie maintains ambiguity on many points, in perhaps an immature way, and so it is, at first, somewhat difficult to p(name removed by moderator)oint its exact message.

I see a Catholic message in the idea that someone’s sacrificial death, leads to others having life. That seems like the essence of the story of Christ’s death leading to Life.

 

[Wollie]

I think this movie is far more symbolic and far less literal. When the plants grow out of him, he doesn’t become the flowers. I think that they are a symbol of the beauty of death.

Also I do not think that ambiguity is immature. I think the purpose of the film was to show that death can be beautiful, but other interpretations are plainly visible as well.

Something is not necessarily bad just because you can’t understand it. Try viewing it a second or third time (it really help me to get a grasp on it!)

 

[Riley259]

Actually, “reincarnation” simply means “coming back to life”. As such, pretty much all religions believe in reincarnation, in one version or another. In Christianity, the idea is that you receive a glorified body after resurrection – that’s a type of re-incarnating. Reincarnation isn’t just for Hindus anymore.

In any event, we all know that our physical bodies return to the earth, and that (outside of being buried in hermetically sealed coffins and tombs) the molecules and atoms of our physical bodies do become “reincarnated” (that is, they do become “re-incorporated”) in the form of single-celled creatures, plants, and animals. I don’t see why that’s such a big surprise.

Reincarnation means your soul or life-force is put in another earthly body and continues to do that until you reach “nirvana”. That’s very different from Christianity’s belief of a glorified resurrected body.

 

[C_Bautista]

It’s not so much that I don’t understand it as I don’t understand why he leaves so many suggested themes unattended. The gnostic section with corporal punishment and suggestions that the body is worthless is never addressed later in the movie. And the imagery of the cross (the dagger, etc) and even scenes of Eucharistic Adoration don’t seem to be followed up on.

To me, throwing those things out there and then leaving them undeveloped is simply poor writing. And it’s unfortunate because the movie is, otherwise, well done, as I said before.