MovieChat Forums > The Fountain (2006) Discussion > Death is a disease. Like any other.

Death is a disease. Like any other.

posted 12 years ago by Innsmouth_Apprentice
95 replies | jump to latest

...And there's a cure. I will find it.

With The Fountain, Aronofsky presents a superficially seductive counter-argument to these sentiments, which are voiced by the movie's protagonist. Yet underneath the surface of The Fountain, one finds a grim and jaded man who has become a troubadour of emptiness and despair...an enemy of life.

I have watched The Fountain for the third time, with the specific purpose of testing my objectives, resolve, and worldview...my will to life. I hereby pass final judgment on this movie: it is a specious and despondent spectacle... a poisoned dagger in a pretty package.

The Fountain is a pro-death movie. Therefore, it's pro-disease, as well...One who genuinely loves life can only be disgusted by it...

Darren Aronofsky, this misguided, depressed, soul-sick Director, lies to the viewer. He steals concepts that belong exclusively to life ("awe", "love", "beauty"), and shamelessly uses them to praise death.

Death is not the road to awe, it is the road away from awe...Death is the end of awe, and of all other feelings of splendor that is life.

The weak ones, the sickly ones among people have sabotaged life for eons...They've used cheap mysticism to justify their acceptance of nothingness. They've even conjured up elaborate tales of other worlds...Other lives beyond this one..."Lives after lives"...

They've tried to sweeten the bitter taste of the morbid dish they are content to feast upon - death...

That dish, however, is ashes, bones, wails and sorrow...How Aronofsky must hate life, to serve this ghastly meal up to mankind. To attempt to undermine what is the only true essence of Life and Nature - the struggle against the Grim Reaper...

Aronofsky joins the skeletal ghosts marching away from all that is good and vital. Shifty-eyed, dishonorable devils...Trying to drag undecided others to the grave...What can be less awe-inspiring than the grave?...

You can smell the rot on this Director's "work"...Take care not to get used to it - you might start to like it, as he himself has a long time ago...

All wars have traitors...Death's minions will eventually be weeded out, however. Mercilessly and completely. That will start the road to true awe...

That will bring eternal awe! Eternal laughter! Laughter without looking over one's shoulder!..

The poisoners call death "the debt to Nature"...They are snakes with the basest kind of cunning...Our debt to Nature is to appreciate life! To extend it! To help it proliferate without end!..

To say that you must die to propagate life...how infirm and feeble the mind must be to believe such gibberish!..

I bring news of a road to true awe.

I bring life.

[–] Innsmouth_Apprentice 11 years ago

Aronofsky is like a guy at a cancer ward telling other patients how epic and magical cancer is.

[–] Innsmouth_Apprentice 11 years ago

How absurd and unnatural - to be OK with dying.

[–] Innsmouth_Apprentice 10 years ago

Far fewer people are OK with aging (ageing) than are OK with dying.

Furthermore, aging is the one cause of death that remains most mysterious and challenging to us.

Rejuvenation is the name of the game.

FOCUS.

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] Innsmouth_Apprentice 11 years ago

1. Narrow-mindedness = narrow vision = focus = the necessary prerequisite for achievement.

2. If a mind is "open" in the sense that it embraces or even accepts its own destruction, then that mind is an infirm mind, lacking for the will to live. It is therefore not an "open" mind, but a weak mind.

[–] Innsmouth_Apprentice 11 years ago

Moment of realization is worth a thousand prayers.

[–] Innsmouth_Apprentice 11 years ago

It is the nature of life to rise higher.

It is the nature of life to overcome.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] Innsmouth_Apprentice 11 years ago

Everything has an expiration

You objectively lack the knowledge to make sweeping statements about all of existence,

even the universe.

which would include the universe

You die to make place for the new generations,

You do, perhaps.

eternity is stagnation

Eternity is never-ceasing change. Existence is never-ceasing change. What universe are you living in, where you see "stagnation" for even a millisecond?

and boredom.

Life provides an infinite number of avenues to explore. That's the opposite of "boring".

Don't hide behind pretense of deep philosophical thinking,

One hardly has to dig very deep to find a desire to live. I don't have to think about it - I feel it. And it is the start of thought rather than the result of it.

this is easy

Agreed.

pre-masticated

Yes.

guru stuff

It's hardly "guru stuff" to know that life has a will to life.

You bring nothing.

If you are satisfied with aging and dying, then you are weak, infirm, and useless, or, indeed, harmful. You are not fit to accept what I bring. I bring what I do to those who are fit to accept it.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] 10 years ago

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[–] Innsmouth 10 years ago

Lol. While I realize this post expresses strong dislike toward the movie, I appreciate the strong response, and in a way I think this is part of the movie's achievement. To get you not just thinking about the mystery of life and death, but feeling and experiencing this mystery.

While I could see myself agreeing with your line of thinking in certain circumstances, I loved The Fountain, it is one of my favorite movies, and it is so because I disagree with your conclusion that Aronofsky is reveling in death. This is a movie with many, many interpretations, but what I came away with is that the awe and wonder is not necessarily in death, but in the mystery that clouds it.

Life, whatever view you want to take of existence, is an incredibly short thing. If religions are right, or if there is any kind of eternal conscious existence after death, our years in this mortal life are not even a raindrop compared to eternity. And even if you take an atheistic view and you believe in nothingness after death - a human life, even 100 years, is once again barely a scratch compared to the billion-years-old universe, and the future that is to come. Whether in the eyes of the divine or of the chaotic cosmos, we are ants staring up at celestial ocean we can never even begin to understand.

That is how I would describe the feeling I was left with while watching and contemplating the movie. Like staring at the universe, which is both beautiful, wondrous, and in some ways terrifying. The mystery itself is both spectacular and terrifying. Maybe the divine (using a rather broad definition here) awaits us. Maybe an eternity of nothingness. Either way, death is indeed the road to awe.

[–] 10 years ago

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