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I'm supposed to be writing about a day in my life. I promise that I will.
In the meantime, let's talk more about things that I just don't get. I swear that when I was younger, say in high school and college ... grad school, I was clever and understood a great deal more than I do now.
Admittedly, I probably wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. I think the phone might have rang a few times and I may have gone to buy shoes right before the movie started and so I was probably rightfully distracted. Or there might have been chicken and coleslaw with lemons and green salsa on the side. However it went, The Fountain pretty much lost me.
The movie was beautiful. The textures and the contrasts between light and dark. It was, I think, a story of death and salvation, but not in the ways that you might think. The trick of it was that immortality wasn't what you expected it to be, it didn't REALLY mean forever.
I think.
The three parallel lives re-told the same story, a man's quest to save the woman he loved, to find a way for them to be together forever. On the surface it was about discovering the tree of life, but it was in death that they were truly meant to be together.
I think.
I liked the modern story the best. Hugh Jackman played desperate so very well. I almost cried a few times because Tommy was a man who was very much in love and who didn't know how to let go. I FELT for him. In the past, conquistador Tomas was striving for the preservation of queen and country as much as for the woman who wore the crown.
His promise, to deliver Spain from bondage and discover Eden, gets translated as he tries to deliver his wife from cancer and her impending death. That gets translated again to a future Tom who is searching for a way to cheat death. Preservation of life, most explicitly the life of himself and his wife take center stage -- man's resistance to the inevitable. Not unsurprising Isabel/Izzi is perpetually waiting. Waiting to die, waiting for salvation, waiting for Tom to give in and join her in death.
Shadow and light separate them, he is ever in shadow while she is lit and glowing.
I think that I had a handle on it until we get to future Tom who turns out to be the First Father, but he's flying around in a bubble with a tree that I think is meant to be the representation of Izzi. She haunts him in both human incarnations and he turns into this kinda Buddha and finally accepts that he must die, but that in dying he will be with Izzi forever.
In a way, Izzi resolves the problem that she has created. She is the one who set the conquistador on his path and it is finally she who pushes him towards accepting his destiny. It leaves me wondering if there were other lives between what we saw, lives that better nuance the shift between Isabel the Queen and Izzi the dying cancer patient. I mean, there has to be some moment and some shift in thinking besides the one after the seizure as she starts to determine that perhaps immortality isn't such a good idea. By the time she has the seizure in the museum she loses her fear and encourages Tommy to help her and finish the book that she has written. The book's ending, of course, is inevitable because all men must die. The Tree of Life can't even stop that. As we learn, it can only prolong life by transforming life into a different energy. As Tomas the Conquistador bursts into flowers and is, literally, swallowed back into the Earth.
So, that's it.
The movie was lit with lots of gold. Enlightenment was the wash of light in the room and on the faces of some of the characters. Isabel is always lit brightly, she commands that the morning light be allowed into the room before she sends Tomas on his journey. I don't think that she is at her most enlightened at this moment, so am curious. But the light and that ring (the one she gives him to represent her on his journey and the one he is ever forgetting after surgery) tie together notions of love and knowledge.
I'm really going to need to watch it again, because, yeah ... not so much. Jackmam and Weisz were beautiful and the story was very open and I think that you could interpret it in a lot of different ways. Sometimes I thought that maybe it was all a dream, sometimes I thought we were talking reincarnation and sometimes I thought that it would just different lives paralleling a search for immortality and the Tree of Life.
In the meantime, let's talk more about things that I just don't get. I swear that when I was younger, say in high school and college ... grad school, I was clever and understood a great deal more than I do now.
Admittedly, I probably wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. I think the phone might have rang a few times and I may have gone to buy shoes right before the movie started and so I was probably rightfully distracted. Or there might have been chicken and coleslaw with lemons and green salsa on the side. However it went, The Fountain pretty much lost me.
The movie was beautiful. The textures and the contrasts between light and dark. It was, I think, a story of death and salvation, but not in the ways that you might think. The trick of it was that immortality wasn't what you expected it to be, it didn't REALLY mean forever.
I think.
The three parallel lives re-told the same story, a man's quest to save the woman he loved, to find a way for them to be together forever. On the surface it was about discovering the tree of life, but it was in death that they were truly meant to be together.
I think.
I liked the modern story the best. Hugh Jackman played desperate so very well. I almost cried a few times because Tommy was a man who was very much in love and who didn't know how to let go. I FELT for him. In the past, conquistador Tomas was striving for the preservation of queen and country as much as for the woman who wore the crown.
His promise, to deliver Spain from bondage and discover Eden, gets translated as he tries to deliver his wife from cancer and her impending death. That gets translated again to a future Tom who is searching for a way to cheat death. Preservation of life, most explicitly the life of himself and his wife take center stage -- man's resistance to the inevitable. Not unsurprising Isabel/Izzi is perpetually waiting. Waiting to die, waiting for salvation, waiting for Tom to give in and join her in death.
Shadow and light separate them, he is ever in shadow while she is lit and glowing.
I think that I had a handle on it until we get to future Tom who turns out to be the First Father, but he's flying around in a bubble with a tree that I think is meant to be the representation of Izzi. She haunts him in both human incarnations and he turns into this kinda Buddha and finally accepts that he must die, but that in dying he will be with Izzi forever.
In a way, Izzi resolves the problem that she has created. She is the one who set the conquistador on his path and it is finally she who pushes him towards accepting his destiny. It leaves me wondering if there were other lives between what we saw, lives that better nuance the shift between Isabel the Queen and Izzi the dying cancer patient. I mean, there has to be some moment and some shift in thinking besides the one after the seizure as she starts to determine that perhaps immortality isn't such a good idea. By the time she has the seizure in the museum she loses her fear and encourages Tommy to help her and finish the book that she has written. The book's ending, of course, is inevitable because all men must die. The Tree of Life can't even stop that. As we learn, it can only prolong life by transforming life into a different energy. As Tomas the Conquistador bursts into flowers and is, literally, swallowed back into the Earth.
So, that's it.
The movie was lit with lots of gold. Enlightenment was the wash of light in the room and on the faces of some of the characters. Isabel is always lit brightly, she commands that the morning light be allowed into the room before she sends Tomas on his journey. I don't think that she is at her most enlightened at this moment, so am curious. But the light and that ring (the one she gives him to represent her on his journey and the one he is ever forgetting after surgery) tie together notions of love and knowledge.
I'm really going to need to watch it again, because, yeah ... not so much. Jackmam and Weisz were beautiful and the story was very open and I think that you could interpret it in a lot of different ways. Sometimes I thought that maybe it was all a dream, sometimes I thought we were talking reincarnation and sometimes I thought that it would just different lives paralleling a search for immortality and the Tree of Life.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-31 07:48 pm (UTC)From:As to the meaning, I think I agreed to turn off most of my plot-seeking brain and enjoy the images. I'm not sure I "got" everything I was supposed to. I believe I avoided writing an review because I was afraid I had not thought enough about it, and was doing the film and myself a disservice by not being able to decide whether it was my fault or the film's.
In other words, thanks for the review. I'm glad you're posting these.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 07:36 am (UTC)From:I really do want to see it again and the second time around, I promise to really pay actual attention to the movie. There is a message buried in there somewhere, I read that the film is the director's response to The Matrix as avant garde film making in the sci-fi genre. He wanted to continue to push the envelope and explore interior themes as opposed to classic Star Wars/Star Trek space opera fare. So, if that helps ...
I'm glad that you're reading the movie posts. They're fun to write and it's cool to know that peeps are reading them and getting something out of them.