The Fountain

At some point, the tortoise catches up. Slowly plodding away, taking his or her time. It’s a matter of effort, avoiding the rumours, and sticking to your choice, elobo solo, the lone wolves. Or tortoises, in this instance. Then again, in this crazy age of genetic experimentation, we can have tortoise wolves, or wolf tortoises, or wolf-tortoise-hares.

Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain relives ye olde Tortoise and the Hare myth romantically and stylistically. Its point is the search for enlightenment, emphasizing patience. Patience throughout the centuries, assuming you believe in reincarnation. Within there are three vignettes interwoven with one another ala Star Trek: All Good Things . . . and Hellbound: Hellraiser IV. Within each, Hugh Jackman seeks Rachel Weiz's heart only to be consistently thwarted by some kind of natural or technological barrier.

Which is a comment on completeness, on the desire for completion. Completion was great before we recognized the I, the “I want this,” the “I need that,” and so forth. Lacking in completion is the problem, being unable to embrace the lack, the symptom, being unable to placate the symptom, the disease, being unable to recognize the disease, the dementia. There’s no dementia to be found within Thomas, for he approaches the confines of reality confidently, seeking a solution to his personal dilemmas, recognizing life’s struggles and pursuits as allies, confidants, compatriots, and friends.

Elated bliss, purity of love, of knowledge within and without a culture. In The Fountain first vignette, Thomas discovers the path to enlightenment through the sword, through raw unraveled determination, in the interests of love. But as it unravels, it consumes him, the maddening price of being confronted with absolute knowledge with no means of being able to understand it. A television in ancient Greece. Hence, the woods subsume his body and he becomes one with nature. In the final vignette, after having been reborn time and time again, he discovers the cure for his spiritual ailment, the culmination of his pursuits, a moment of divinity, of temporal transcendency. Consequently, his reality’s implode like those of the Phoenix or Quetzalcoatl, the tortoise having reached the end of the race, and won, the ethical divinely embracing the political. For a beautiful moment, an instance of knowledge, Apollonian reason and Dionysian hearts.

Thinking and beating together.