Death is the Road to Awe

I watched Darren Aronofsky's film The Fountain this afternoon, as a storm rolled in, the winds blew around the house, and the temperature dropped forty degrees from where it had been this morning. From fog to ice in less than twelve hours.

There are quotes from Mayan mythology in the film, which moves across time in three interconnected stories. The film itself works for me because it is poetic and suggestive rather than simplistic and overly explained. Mystery remains. Some things are left open to interpretation. I get out of it a story about confronting death and immortality in various ways: the tree of life; the survival of the soul after death; the survival of the physical body. The film gives meaning via its images—there are so many compositions that echo across all three time periods of the film, in the arrangement of lighting, staircases, shapes, and movement along long corridors—and while the film has a narrative, as cinema seemingly must, the narrative is presented to us non-linearly, breaking across time. You can assemble an idea of memory and imagination by film's end for yourself, but it is not necessary to do so.

The film also discusses life and death across many scales—fractal philosophy?—from the death of the self, to the death of the beloved, to the death of stars. All lead to rebirth, resurrection, and completion: the supernovae of the ekstasis of union and transcendance. But it takes time to accept that death leads to life—that death is the road to awe—and the lead character lives a long, long life fighting against it, till in the end he accepts death, only to be reborn. The film uses repetition, recurrence, and circularity in dialogue and imagery alike to sound echoes across all the film's timeframes, to link them all together, and also to successfully create emotional resonance.

Gold is a color used throughout the film, to symbolize material wealth, and lust of wealth and power. But it is also the color of the alchemical transformation that surrounds the lifegiving of the tree of life, and also the forging of the elements withint the hearts of stars, especially the gold of the nebula that surrounds the dying star at the film's end, which goes nova, creating more new elements in its final moments, and seeding the galaxy with them. The elements that make up our bodies were seeded by exploding suns: we are all made of starstuff, we are all light. The film also goes from dark to light, as the lead character evolves from fear to rejection to acceptance. The final illumination is resplendent.

Most science fiction movie making has devolved into apocalyptic ray guns and martial arts, leaving The Fountain to stand almost alone, in recent SF filmmaking, as a film of ideas, dreams, and philosophy. We need more of these films: ray guns and fight scenes are the stuff of video games, in the end they leave us no wiser and no more richer in ourselves. They are prurient and topical and leave behind them only short-lived thrills. The best science fiction has always been about ideas rather than action: it is a literature of ideas, of speculation, and of action, yes, but action driven by ideas and conceptions rather than simplistic melodrama. We need more ideas in film, and in literature, and less action-movie plotting.

I come to this in the midst of many of my own contemplations about death, dying, life beyond death, and the eternal recurrence. So much resonates. I have my own deaths to talk about; and to rehearse; and to overcome. We go on.