The Fountain
At its core, The Fountain is the story of a 21st-century doctor, Tom Creo (Hugh Jackman), losing his wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz) to cancer in 2005. As she is dying, Izzi begs Tom to share what time they have left together, but he is focused on his quest to find a cure for her.
While he's working in the lab, she writes the story entitled the "fountain" about 16th century Queen Isabella losing her kingdom to the Inquisition while her betrothed, conquistador Tomás Verde, plunges through the Central America forest in Mayan territory, searching for the Tree of Life offering immortality for his Queen and their love.
As she does not expect to see it, Izzi asks Tom to finish the outcome of the story for her. As they look out to the star of a nebula, she imagines, as the mayans did, that their souls will meet there after life and when the star goes supernova. In the 26th century, future space traveler Tommy travels there for the event, in a spaceship made of an enclosed biosphere containing the Tree of Life he seeded above her grave.
The three story lines are told nonlinearly, each separated by five centuries. The three periods are interwoven with match cuts and recurring visual motifs; Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play the main characters for all three narratives. Even within a given narrative, the elements of that particular story are not told in chronological order.
Whether the actions in these stories are actual events, or symbolic, is not clarified; and, director Darren Aronofsky emphasized that the storylines in their time periods and their respective convergences were open to interpretation. The director has said of The Fountain's intricacy and underlying message, "[The film is] very much like a Rubik's Cube, where you can solve it in several different ways, but ultimately there's only one solution at the end." In a 2012 interview outlining the path of life depicted, Aronofsky stated that "ultimately the film is about coming to terms with your own death" oftentimes driven by love.
=== Tomás the conquistador ===
The film opens with conquistador Tomás Verde in New Spain fighting a horde of Mayans to gain entry into a pyramid, where he is attacked by a Mayan priest with a flaming sword. Through flashbacks, it is revealed that the conquistador has been commissioned by Queen Isabella of Spain to travel to the New World in search of the fountain of youth or Biblical Tree of Life and immortality. If Tomás can find it, she is convinced that she can put an end to the struggle between herself and an influential cleric during the Spanish Inquisition who is attempting to stop her search and usurp the throne. Isabella vows to spend eternity with Tomás upon his return, citing a correlation with Adam and Eve. When Tomás arrives at his destination, he finds that his fellow knights are exhausted and refuse to continue searching for the Tree of Life. A Franciscan monk discovers the location of the temple, but is killed while Tomás represses the mutiny amongst his officers. As the priest dies, he gives Tomás a ceremonial dagger and directs him towards the pyramid. Once he arrives at the pyramid, Tomás and his men are ambushed and Tomás is captured. He is forcefully directed to the top of the pyramid, and engages in combat with a Mayan priest wielding a flaming sword. Tomás is stabbed in the stomach, but just as the priest is about to kill him, future Tommy appears before the figurehead. The priest believes Tomás is the "First Father", apologizes and asks Tomás to usher him down the path of awe by slitting his throat. Tomás sacrificially kills the priest and proceeds to a pool with a large tree; convinced this is the Tree of Life. Tomás applies some of its sap to his torso and is cured of his stab wound. He drinks the sap flowing from the bark. But in a reenactment of the Mayan creation myth told earlier in the film, flowers and grass burst forth from his body and he literally gives rise to new life.
=== Tom the neuroscientist ===
Tom Creo is a doctor working on a cure using samples of the "Tree of Life", found through exploration in Central America, which are being tested for medicinal use for degenerative brain diseases in his lab in 2005. He is motivated by his wife Izzi's brain tumor, which has caused a rapid decline in her health. Izzi has used this time to assess the implications of death and comes to terms with her mortality, but Tom refuses to accept that she might die and has increasingly resolved to find a cure. She has written a book which apparently tells the story of Tomás the conquistador, but when she collapses at a museum, she becomes convinced that she won't live long and asks Tom to write the final chapter and "finish it". She dies shortly thereafter and Tom dedicates himself to curing not only her disease, but death itself. His colleagues fear that this drive has made him reckless, but they support him scientifically and emotionally at Izzi's funeral. As a final inspiration of love and devotion, Tom plants a sweetgum seed at Izzi's grave in the manner of a story she told him relating how a Mayan guide's dead father lived on in a tree nourished by the organic nutrients of the buried body.
=== Tommy the space traveler ===
This narrative for Tommy is set in deep space in a small, self-contained biosphere bubble spaceship. Jackman's character in this plot is alone, flying in outer space toward the golden nebula of Xibalba with a large tree and a few personal effects comprising his ship. While traveling, he meditates, performs t'ai chi, grows mushrooms and cuts pieces of bark from the tree for nourishment. He also converses with apparitions of Izzi. It is implied that the tree within the biosphere also represents Izzi and that Tommy has been transporting it to Xibalba with the hope that she will be restored to him. Tommy is also shown to have applied extensive, incremental tattooed ring patterns to both of his arms similar to the tattoo of his engagement ring from Izzi in 2006; it is implied that the tattoos mark the passage of time on his journey in 2500.
At the climax of the film, to Tommy's horror the tree finally dies just before arrival, as Izzy had also died just before a cure. A final apparition of Izzi appears, comforting Tommy in the face of his accepted impending death and suggesting that they may share an afterlife now. He finally understands and embraces his death, moments before the star goes supernova, engulfing the ship and everything within. The traveler's body is absorbed, but the tree flourishes back to life being engulfed by the star dying inside the nebula. Izzi's apparition picks a fruit from the new tree of life and hands it to Tom, the present-day neuroscientist, who plants it in Izzi's grave.
murder, thought-provoking, violence, alternate reality, atmospheric, flashback, psychedelic, philosophical, inspiring, romantic, historical, sentimental