The Fountain is a 2006 American epic science fiction romantic drama film written and directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz.

Blending elements of fantasy, history, spirituality, and science fiction, the film consists of three storylines involving immortality and the resulting loves lost, and one man's pursuit of avoiding this fate in this life or beyond it.

Tommy is working on a cure using samples from a tree found through exploration in Guatemala, which are being tested for medicinal use for degenerative brain diseases in his lab.

She writes a story called "The Fountain" about Queen Isabella losing her kingdom to the Inquisition and a commission given by her to Tomás Creo to search for the Tree of Life in the Central American forest in Mayan territory.

Tommy 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.

But in a reenactment of the Mayan creation myth recounted earlier, his body is turned into flowers and grass that burst forth from it and he literally gives rise to new life, killing himself in the process.

The three stories are interwoven with match cuts and recurring visual motifs; Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play the main characters in all three narratives.

[16] Whether the actions in these stories are actual events, or symbolic, is not clear: director Darren Aronofsky emphasized that the storylines in their time periods and their respective convergences were open to interpretation.

"[17] 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.

Many patients actually start opening up to the possibility of what's happening to them, but there's very little vocabulary to help them deal... We decided to expand it with this woman [Izzi] offering a gift to her husband as a metaphor that tells him where she's come to in her awe inspiring journey towards death.

[25] Aronofsky prepared for production by traveling with a crew to Central America to consult with Mayan experts and to explore the Mexican ruins of Palenque.

[26] In addition to the trip, the films Aguirre, the Wrath of God and The Holy Mountain were screened for the crew to inspire it in designing a rainforest set for The Fountain.

[30] In June 2002, Warner Bros. met with Aronofsky and producer Eric Watson, expressing concerns over an escalating budget and threatening to cease the project unless a co-financier was found.

The film, officially titled The Fountain, was 'greenlit' (approved for production) with a budget of $70 million, co-financed by Warner Bros. and New Regency, who filled the gap after Village Roadshow withdrew from the project.

[35] In February 2004, Warner Bros. resurrected Aronofsky's project and began to court actor Hugh Jackman to replace Pitt in the lead role.

He sought to make a science fiction film that would explore new territory in the genre like The Matrix and its predecessors Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[42] Aronofsky, influenced by Bernal Díaz del Castillo's The Conquest of New Spain, applied the narrative in writing the film's conquistador scenes.

[49] The Fountain also stars Ellen Burstyn as Dr. Lillian Guzetti, Tom's superior, and Mark Margolis as Father Avila, who accompanies Tomás the conquistador.

"[63] To create a death scene, Aronofsky drew from Mayan mythology the description of flowers and butterflies emerging from the bodies of valiant warriors when they die.

One creative solution was uncovering Peter Parks, a specialist in macro photography, who had retrieved deep-sea microorganisms and photographed them in 3-D under partial funding from the Bahamas government.

Parks brewed chemicals and bacteria together to create reactions that Schrecker and Dawson shot, recording 20,000 feet worth of film over eight weeks.

[26] The visual-effects company Look Effects worked on 87 shots for The Fountain that included major set extensions, digital mattes, image enhancement, face replacement and blemish removal, as well as animating key elements to the film's story.

The San Francisco-based string quartet Kronos Quartet—who previously performed for the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack—and Scottish post-rock band Mogwai also contributed to the film score.

[67] The Fountain was originally scheduled to be released on October 13, 2006, but the film was delayed to create a "long-lead campaign" and generate anticipation via word of mouth.

[68] Aronofsky shared his screenplay with eleven artists: Phil Hale, Martin Wilner, Jason Shawn Alexander, Kostas Seremetis, Dave Gibbons, Barron Storey, James Jean, Jim Lee, Olivier Bramanti, Seth Fisher, and Bill Sienkiewicz.

The website's consensus reads: "The Fountain—a movie about metaphysics, universal patterns, Biblical symbolism, and boundless love spread across one thousand years—is visually rich but suffers from its own unfocused ambitions.

"[78] Michael Atkinson, writing for Sight & Sound, reviewed Aronofsky's endeavor: "It's difficult to recall another American film that, in pursuing a passionate and personal vision, goes so maddeningly, uproariously wrong."

He complained of the numerous motifs, "It's difficult to swallow the amalgamation of Mayan, Biblical, Buddhist, Taoist and New Age iconography, all of it tossed as if into a stew.

Kenny called the film "as demanding as it is dazzling" and compared Aronofsky's direction to Stanley Kubrick's "in terms of conceptual audacity and meticulousness of execution."

Lane complained about the film's up-close and far-away shots, "What fails to concern or attract Aronofsky is the place where most of us hang out—the in-between, the midshot of everyday existence."