If you plan to see The Fountain go no further -- spoilers ahead
This explanation of The Foutain was the one that worked best with me:
I think I have an alternate explanation for the series of events in this movie. My interpretation is based on the Mayan Bible or Popul Vuh. A common theme in Izzi's discussions with Tomas was Life emerging through death and sacrifice. If you read the Popul Vuh, the first father is sacrificed, and from his decapitated head, a tree emerges bringing forth new life.
I think that all of the events depicted in the movie were supposed to be real (according to this underlying theme). In the first thread, there was literally a guy charged by the queen to track down the tree of life. When he found the tree, he consumed the sap, only to be consumed by new growth (in the form of flowers). Assuming that this actually did happen, we could also assume that the Inquisitor would have fulfilled his mission and sacrificed the queen, since her conquistidor presumably would have failed to come back with the "fountain". But don't forget Izzi's recurring statements about life emerging from death...
Flash forward to the second thread - Izzi and Tomas are now reincarnations of the queen and her conquistidor. As fate would have it, the two were once again brought together. The reason that Izzi is able to write about the tree in her book (before Tomas discovered the healing properties of the tree in South America), is because she is recalling her previous life in the 1500's. Also, when Tomas spontaneously discovers the cure to aging and reversing the tumor, he first looked up at the ceiling and seemed to be seeing the dying nebula in his mind. This boils back to our theme - life emerges from death (new stars emerge from the dying nebula). In that scene, Tomas was experiencing a deja vu moment of his previous life that allowed him to make a scientifically impossible leap of logic in tying the chemical compounds together to create a cure. When Izzi is dying, she realizes that there will be life after her death, although Tomas cannot come to terms with this. He tracks down the tree of life, plants a seed at Izzi's grave, and from her remains a new tree of life emerges. He seeks to cheat death by eating of the bark of this tree to maintain his mortality. He also seeks to have Izzi reborn by reaching the dying nebula together with her tree remains.
I would be curious to hear others takes, for those who have seen it.
This explanation of The Foutain was the one that worked best with me:
I think I have an alternate explanation for the series of events in this movie. My interpretation is based on the Mayan Bible or Popul Vuh. A common theme in Izzi's discussions with Tomas was Life emerging through death and sacrifice. If you read the Popul Vuh, the first father is sacrificed, and from his decapitated head, a tree emerges bringing forth new life.
I think that all of the events depicted in the movie were supposed to be real (according to this underlying theme). In the first thread, there was literally a guy charged by the queen to track down the tree of life. When he found the tree, he consumed the sap, only to be consumed by new growth (in the form of flowers). Assuming that this actually did happen, we could also assume that the Inquisitor would have fulfilled his mission and sacrificed the queen, since her conquistidor presumably would have failed to come back with the "fountain". But don't forget Izzi's recurring statements about life emerging from death...
Flash forward to the second thread - Izzi and Tomas are now reincarnations of the queen and her conquistidor. As fate would have it, the two were once again brought together. The reason that Izzi is able to write about the tree in her book (before Tomas discovered the healing properties of the tree in South America), is because she is recalling her previous life in the 1500's. Also, when Tomas spontaneously discovers the cure to aging and reversing the tumor, he first looked up at the ceiling and seemed to be seeing the dying nebula in his mind. This boils back to our theme - life emerges from death (new stars emerge from the dying nebula). In that scene, Tomas was experiencing a deja vu moment of his previous life that allowed him to make a scientifically impossible leap of logic in tying the chemical compounds together to create a cure. When Izzi is dying, she realizes that there will be life after her death, although Tomas cannot come to terms with this. He tracks down the tree of life, plants a seed at Izzi's grave, and from her remains a new tree of life emerges. He seeks to cheat death by eating of the bark of this tree to maintain his mortality. He also seeks to have Izzi reborn by reaching the dying nebula together with her tree remains.
I would be curious to hear others takes, for those who have seen it.
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