I wrote a few days ago about going to see the The Fountain and how I experienced it as a tremendously powerful and spiritual film. My brain was too overloaded with school work and other things to say anything more coherent about it at the time. Well, lucky for me (or perhaps lucky for those who are reading this and haven't yet seen the film) a few of my fellow Scribes also saw the film and had quite coherent things to say about it.

From Never Say Never To Your Traveling Self:

I went to see The Fountain with expectations of something bizarre and phony. Instead, it is a metaphysical love story/rumination on mortality that stretches the imagination in the way that a film like Hero did. It's a bit of dream-like fantasy mixed so well with familiar reality that our general understanding of human existence seems up for question.

From Pop Occulture Blog:

All I can say is that this is the most symbolically loaded and esoterically intriguing movie that I have ever seen. It literally put me into an altered state of consciousness. I was literally transfixed by it and found much to my surprise that this movie seemed to literally draw on a vast store of personal imagery and historical occurrences from my life. That is, there seemed to be specific elements which were targeted at me directly as a person. I went with two friends who reported similar results as well. We all felt the same way about it, and after we saw the movie and walked home, we began having extraordinary synchronistic hits related to symbols and content within the movie.

My personal experience of this film was certainly colored by the work I've done as part of my magickal training, both with the world tree and with the concept of the three levels of self. The Fountain created a beautiful visual metaphor for both of these ideas. Though, as Tim points out, the film seems to have the ability to speak to everyone on some sort of personal, synchronistic level, regardless of personal mythos and symbology. To be able to do that is one of the hallmarks of truly great art.

If, as Loreina says, the critics who thought The Fountain was "out there" have simply numbed their brains watching too much American movie pablum, then I agree with her that we need more film makers who are courageous and creative enough to create work that is "sincere and passionate." Maybe then the reviewers will know it when they see it and they too will feel about a film like The Fountain something akin to the spiritual connection I did.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 2:17 PM