The Fountain

 I loved this movie. I thought it was a kind of spiritual awakening. In the beginning of the movie when Tomas was in the jungle searching for the temple and he mentioned that he must keep going to save her, I knew I was going to love the movie.  It was interesting to have the perspective of a book within a movie and how they intertwined. The story of the fountain is being written by Tomas's dying wife. She keeps telling him that she wants him to help her write the last chapter. I thought this was very cute. The book speaks of a man who guards the queen of Spain. Her rule is being threatened and she needs to find the fountain of eternal youth in order to defeat the inquisitor. So she sends the man on a perilous journey west, to find the Fountain. She gives him her ring and promises that if he comes back with eden, that she will be his Eve. This pulls the bible into the story and just how important it was. 

So he treks through the jungle and finally finds the hidden temple that holds the fountain. Once he reaches the top he is faced with a great warrior who fights him, before the man can get to the other side of the temple. Right here is where things get interesting and I will come back to it. 

So Tomas's profession is tumor research and he is trying to find a drug to combat his wife's growing tumor. He is so close to finding the cure when she has a seizure and ends up in the hospital. While she is slowly dying Tomas reads the book she has written, which is how we know about the story. She ends up dying and Tomas is an absolute mess. Which pulled at my heartstrings. He then goes back to work and finally finds the cure to reducing the size of his wife tumors. Again pause and ill come back to this. 

All while this is going on another story is presented to us of a man in a bubble headed to a dying star. He is protecting a dying tree inside this bubble. He eats the bark of the tree every now and then, so we can assume this is the fountain that the guard was searching for! Back to the story about the guard, as soon as he is about to be killed, he turns into the man in the bubble! So the warrior realizes that he was about to kill, what i can assume is a "god", so he offers himself as a sacrifice. The man in the bubble transforms back to the spanish guard and goes to the tree. He eats the sap of the tree thinking he has found eternal youth, but the tree retaliates and consumes him. So, I can assume that the man in the bubble is the guard, just from the future! It is amazing how the director was able to interconnect these stories. They were all searching for eternal youth, but never truly achieved it. 

These stories were also connected by a ring. The guard received a ring from the queen, tomas lost his wedding ring and the bubble man tattoos his ring. Tomas, sticken in his grief, loses it and 'tattoos' his ring into his finger using the ink his wife gifted him. The bubble man also tattooed his own body using the ink made from the tree. Overall i thought the interconnection of these three stories was flawless. 

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