The Fountain - Simon Robson

     In the film The Fountain we see Tom who struggles to cope with the idea of death. We see him in 3 different realities and in all of them he searches for a way to prolong or avoid death. In one of the realities, which I would consider to be the main one, he finds out that his wife, Izzi, has a brain tumor that is killing her. Tom himself in this reality is a doctor and is working tirelessly to find a cure for this to save his beloved wife. He is awake day in and day out looking for a way to save her, while she lay in a hospital bed alone slowly dying. As a result of Tom’s obsession with prolonging death he forgets to focus on the life that they have been given. Instead of spending time with his wife in her last few days, he is constantly working, and it never gives him a chance to be with her and reminisce on the life they have shared so far, and be content with everything that they had. When his wife eventually passes away Tom is left empty handed as his research was not able to save his wife, and he wasted the last of his time of her being alive. In one of the other realities Tom is a conquistador searching for the fountain of youth. In his search he continues to become more and more power hungry and ends up killing multiple people on his journey, including his own men. He also gets into a fight with the priest who stabs him in the stomach, but before killing him the priest comes to believe that Tom is the “First Father”. This in some ways is symbolic because in Tom’s search for eternal life he is attempting to take on somewhat of a godly role. Being able to stop death or create more life is something usually left up to God or godly figures. His search for this power started to give him this mindset which led to him killing people or taking their life away, in order to gain more life. I think this movie does a good job of showing some of the sacred nature of life and death and the way that these things are very complicated when taken into human hands. In the final reality we see a version of Tom floating through space in and orb as he tends to a tree. Finally, just with all living things the tree dies much to Tom’s horror. Here at the end we also see a vision of Izzi who helps Tom to come to terms with death. We see that everything dies and it is a part of life, so it is important not to be so concerned with death and rather put that energy into life. It leads us to questions about our time on earth and how to best spend it as well as questions about the ethics of creating life, causing death, and prolonging death. 


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