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The fear of Yahweh is a fountain of life, turning people from the snares of death.

- Biblical Proverb

The Fountain was released in theaters yesterday. It is the story of a man seeking eternal life to be with the one he loves. It is sci-fi without the mysterious beasts and lazers. Much like the science fiction of C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy. The point of the film isn’t the settings or props it’s the people and the story. Lewis’ Space Trilogy shows us different planets so we can compare them to ours, not so we can dream about using a lightsaber. It’s philosophy over fantasy. It’s this brand of sci-fi that I love and that The Fountain uses. The director, Darren Aronofsky, in a recent interview with cnn summed up it:

“When you read science fiction, after about 80 pages, the world comes into focus,” he says. “We wanted the same feeling for the film. But then the information starts coming in and you get a sense of what’s going on … and the puzzle comes closer to solving itself.”

I am not saying The Fountain is a great moral tale. I couldn’t cause I haven’t seen it. But maybe it can show us something about the nature of life and our desire to prolong it at all costs that we miss in our day to day life.

The basic idea is that I think people forget about loss and how important it is to our lives,” he says. “And beyond that, what interests me is the spiritual core that connects all of us.”

What makes us human, he adds, is the fact that life is fleeting. But our connection to one another is, literally, eternal — we are all made up of pieces of the big bang, and our ashes will bring about new life somewhere else.

“We’ve forgotten that connection,” Aronofsky says. “Yet it is a part of our lives, part of our spiritual journey. And the film became an exploration of that.”

I am not sure if I believe I am part of the big bang, but it’s the same concept. We are all connected and I believe “life” is much more than the time we spend here, on earth, in physical bodies. If that doesn’t sound like science fiction, I don’t know what does. But I’ll take my “fiction” over the “reality” of the world anyday.

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