Practicing Delicacy via The Fountain

    “That is the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen!”
    “What makes it stupid?”
    “It sucks.”
    “You’re gonna have to explain yourself.”
    “Well, the ending.  It didn’t have anything to do with the rest of it.  I mean, what was the deal with the baby?”
    “Let’s go back and look at it.  Then maybe we can figure it out.”
    As a teacher of film I have had this or similar conversations with my students after viewing Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The conversation represents what is at the core of David Hume’s Of the Standard of Taste.  We have our sentimental reaction to a piece of art.  Kant describes it as pleasure or displeasure.  This reaction however is subjective.  Hume argues that one can perceive the beauty of a piece, that beauty is inherent.  Those with sufficient reason and delicate sensibility will be able to properly critique a piece, while those ruffians and poseurs will use prejudice and sentiment to accept or reject it.  Many of my students have not the reason nor delicacy to perceive the beauty peppered in the milieu of 2001.   But all is not lost.  Hume gives hope in that the quality of delicacy can be learned, like any skill, through practice and exposure.  By exposing students to the “great works”, those that have the “uniform consent of nations and ages”, and modeling the discovery and analysis of those elements of beauty, the students can practice delicacy.  Hume implies three questions to identify in pursuit of that delicacy: Does it work toward its intended end? Do the parts mutually relate and correspond to that end?  Is the whole consistent and uniform?  By utilizing these questions I can train my students in their delicate sensibilities which will lead to more appropriate critique.
    Darren Aronofsky’s  The Fountain is an excellent opportunity to practice this delicacy.  While Hume encourages multiple viewings, one can determine the beauty of the film by posing those essential questions. 
    First, does it work toward its intended end?  To know this one must decide what that end is.  It does not seem initially clear what the end of the film is to be.  There are three stories introduced.  The Conquistador, The Scientist, and the Hairless Space Traveller.  Each story involves the character seeking after the cure to death.  The conquistador is looking for the tree of life, whose sap leads one on to immortality.  The Scientist is looking for a cure for brain cancer.  The Hairless Space Traveller is journeying to the Mayan home of death and rebirth.  This seems to indicate that the piece is intended to deal with the question of death and if death is an end that can be avoided.  In all three cases, death endures and the protagonist must accept the demise of either himself or his love.  All pieces work together to that end.
    Second, do the parts mutually relate and correspond to that end?  Each story is interconnected.  This is represented visually in one way by the characters being played by the same actors.  This indicates immediately that the characters of the three stories are interrelated.  All three stories involve a tree in a significant role.  The role varies however in its function.  In the Conquistador story the tree is supernatural and has properties that will preserve life and provide immortality.  This will save the queen from the threat of the inquisitor who brings death.  In the Scientist story the tree is the source of a bark that has medicinal properties that cure cancer which brings death.  The protagonist only wants the cure to save his wife.  The Hairless Space Traveler has a tree that he talks to and treats as a loved one.  He is traveling to save the tree’s life, while using the tree to preserve his own.  The stories have these parts that work together to clarify the end.  Each protagonist is a side of the same man.  Each tree is a side of the same idea; that the man is using his relationship to run from death.  While the man speaks of saving the tree, or the queen, or his wife, he still uses those things to preserve himself.  The Conquistador greedily drinks the sap.  The Scientist chooses his work to save his wife over spending time with her.  The Hairless Space Traveler eats the bark and laments the death of the tree in personal terms.  The pieces come together in the final sequence as we move between the stories and show the climaxes of each and the characters cross over the boundaries of the three stories.  All the pieces are mutually related.
    Finally, is the whole consistent and uniform?  The film maintains a similar tone throughout.  The melancholia and desperation of the three protagonists remains consistent throughout.  They follow the same character arc though different facets.  As noted before, they all three represent aspects of the same character.  This character is dealing with the imminent death of his love.  We see the hero, the memory, and the internal life of that man, played by the Conquistador, the Scientist, and the Hairless Space Traveller respectively.  These parts are consistent and correspond with the intent of the first question.  The intercutting of the climax helps bind the stories into one cohesive piece as the characters interplay with each other and point to that original intent.
    These questions help to tease out the beauty of a piece and one can appreciate the aesthetic qualities as they relate to a whole.  This approach will be useful in helping my students to access the films that they would more readily reject on the basis of prejudice or lack of experience in delicacy.  As they refine their taste, they will better appreciate the beauty of less ostensibly accessible texts like The Fountain,  and in doing so will then be able to access the complex ideologies that surround such texts.  They will be able to appreciate the unique perspectives of filmmakers like Aronofsky or Kubrick and apply those perspectives to their own schema.  It will make them more critical thinkers and help them down the path of inquiry to establish their own methodologies.  That is what matters most to me as a teacher and that is what motivates me to teach film at all.