Movies | Life
The Fountain (2006): Fighting the Inevitable
How not to deal with approaching death
Intro
In 2006, director Darren Aronofsky released his third film, The Fountain. Coming off strong from his previous work on Pi (1998) and Requiem for a Dream (2000), this time he took a drastically different approach to his storytelling. Abandoning the provocative and fast-edited style of his two previous films, he approached this new film with a more assured and slow pace.
It is his most philosophical film for sure, and arguably his most personal. He interweaves themes about religion (one of his favorites) — Christianity and Buddhism — and general philosophy with heavy references to the Mayan culture. But the main theme — the connecting tissue of the film — is the topic of death, how we deal with this inevitability, and what impact the approaching loss can have on us.
The plot of the film is structured in a very particular and deliberate way. We witness three stories unfold in parallel: one set in the 1500s about a Spanish Conquistador that is sent on a quest by his Queen, one set in the 2000s about a doctor trying to find the cure for his wife’s cancer, and one set in the 2500s about an astronaut travelling the cosmos trying to reach a dying star. The three stories are…
