Darren Aronofsky thinks he's really smart

I just finished translating The Fountain and it was hard. There is not much dialogue in the movie but it's made complex by the fact that same dialogue is repeated in different scenes, sometimes with slightly different meaning. Also, let's face it, it's not clear what is happening in the movie and if, in fact, some of it is "happening" at all...

What you probably know even if you didn't see the movie is that Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman both play three different characters with similar sounding names - from 1500, 2000 and 2500. This is stated in the trailers and in the press materials. I think even this is not that simple. [Spoilers in the rest of this paragraph, if you didn't see the film.] My interpretation is that the only stuff that is really "happening" are the scenes from year 2000. Everything from 1500 is taken verbatim from Izzi's slightly abstract book (it definitely isn't historically accurate AT ALL) and everything from 2500 is taken from the last chapter of the same book which Thomas finished at Izzi's request shortly after her death.


I am sure there are many more interpretations possible and I even had conversations with the subtitle editor (whose real name is "Anna Karenina"!) about what the sentence "Death is the road to awe" (repeated three times in the movie) means. She thought "awe" stands for "humility before God", I thought it means "something wonderful amazing". And I don't think either one of us is stupid or doesn't understand English.

This is a complex film that generates some powerful feelings in the viewer. But I am not entirely sure what exactly those feelings are. What is certain is that love is a many splendored thing and if you love someone, it might be nice to be with him forever.

But I am not sure this is exactly the kind of message I need to hear right now.

"The Fountain" is being released in the Czech Republic in March 2007.

P.S: After much deliberating with Anna, we settled on "road to greatness".