Review of The Fountain (2006) by Lore S — 07 May 2017

I had been in a situation where I was watching someone I love die, and I was also researching and fighting to get him a lung transplant... I was finding myself torn. My grandmother and I visited him every day in the hospital, 7 days a week, 12 hours a day minimum- and while I was there, with him, a part of my mind was beating myself up saying "You could be submitting applications to more hospitals.

.. more surgical units in the country, in other countries, you can be researching more procedures, you aren't doing enough"... And when I was out- and spending another 5 to 6 hours filling applications, making copies of medical records, sending to places, getting rejection notifications, reading the reasons, trying to use that in the next wave of applications- all I could think was that this was time I was losing with him, and he would die alone in his room.

4 months of that and he was gone... And a week after he died, the phone rang, I answered. He was approved for the lung transplant and they wanted to move on it immediately. "You're too late, he's dead" click.

Years later- I was crashing at a friend's home, and I woke up to the very beginning of this movie. I had never heard of it, I knew nothing about it... and I'm glad because I might have went into it with preconceived notions.

.. I was taken and I was immediately in love with it, I connected with it on so many levels- and I saw it differently than what you put in your video at that point in time. It became one of my top 5 favorite movies- I had no idea how badly it was treated then.

And what I found- is as my own mindset changed, depending on the mood I was in. Until recently the dichotomy of "You should have spent more time with him", and "If you had spent more time submitting you would have gotten to this place faster and he would have had a chance" was one that tortured me.

.. and in that mindset- yeah- I saw the film's meaning differently. Later- as I came to terms with things, I saw it more in the lines of what you said... And I find the mood in it will affect how I connect with the film, what it means changes based on where I am mentally and emotionally as I watch it.

.. and I love that. I've seen it so many times, and every time I watch it, it's like I'm seeing it for the first time, with new eyes... with wonder, sometimes more pain than hope- and sometimes more hope than pain.

I found out last year actually that not enough people love this movie, that not enough people have seen this movie- and while at most, for most films I may go "Oh- that's a shame", when it comes to this movie (and like, Children of Men), it outright angers me.

It's brilliance and near perfection... I'm glad it didn't get made for that budget, because it's timeless and powerful the exact way it was shot. Brad Pitt is a great actor- sure, I don't want to take away from him, but many times I watch a movie he's in, my brain is going "That's Brad Pitt".

In this... it wasn't like that with Jackman and Weisz. It didn't matter that I had seen stuff, while the person I lost wasn't a boyfriend or husband, I felt that pain right with him... I knew what was going on through Tommy's head, I was there- I watch that and the actors vanish- and it's so much more.

.. no matter how it's interpreted in a viewing...?