Jan 01 2009
“The Fountain” and Eastern Religion - Part 2: Reincarnation
Another thing that became evident to me after watching “The Fountain” for the second time was the strong encouragement of the idea of reincarnation. After the first time, I really had no idea why the tree seemed to be alive and react to Jackman’s affection and attention. It was one of those things that I just let go over my head the first time around. But things have connected a little more now. At first glance in the film, it just seems like Jackman’s talking to a hairy tree, but when you see him plant the seed at his wife’s grave it all starts to make sense.
He plants the seed from the Tree of Life at her grave so she will be reincarnated and live in the tree. That’s why the tree at the end seems to react to Jackman’s touch and presence. This is a huge idea adopted by most eastern religions.A thing I love about the film is the shot symbolism found throughout. Examples are the two extreme close-ups of Jackman speaking to his wife and then speaking to the tree. In both shots you see only his lips in the right side of the frame speaking and the hair on his wife’s neck (aka hair on the tree) flexing with his words and breath. This really helped me connect her to the tree. Aronofsky does a brilliant job in “The Fountain” of using shot symbolism to connect and help the audience understand the film’s complex structure.
wow, very insightful! yeah, a lot of this stuff clearly just washed over me, especially being my first time. And of course lots of the Eastern kinda things i didnt pick up on, at least the more subtle ones.
Good job pointing out the visual parallelism, with the shots, and yeah, that definitely helps explain the tree and the hairs and all that, which was very confusing at first.
Nice work!