accessDon’t read this post if you haven’t seen The Fountain. Go forth and watch, then come back here for some answers.
The Fountain is an excellent movie. It’s also very confusing; I was more than a little disappointed with it after seeing it in theaters. After awhile (and a lot of thinking) things started to make a little more sense, though. I just saw it again for the second time last night, and it was a lot better the second time. If you’ve ever seen The Fountain and were more than a little confused and disappointed, consider this: the conquistador from the 16th century is fictional.
Everything from the 16th century is part of Izzy’s manuscript, The Fountain.
Understanding that probably helps a lot. The movie drops a lot of hints throughout, but never really comes out and says it. The previews don’t help much either, as they heavily suggest that the same Hugh Jackman spans all three time periods. I spent most of the movie trying to understand how that worked out the first time I saw it, what with Conquistador-Jackman getting stabbed (and presumably dying) in the first ten-minutes. Once you realize that all of those scenes are from the manuscript, though, things make more sense. Scientist-Jackman—whom we spend most of our time with—is real. Astronaut-Jackman is also real, and the tree he’s taking to Xibalba is his wife (scene parallels help a lot with making this connection).
This isn’t the only interpretation, though. The director, Darren Aronofsky, has purposely left the film vague and refuses to provide a clear-cut answer as to what exactly is going on. Josh Tyler over at CinemaBlend agrees with my theory, and post a collection of other theories not-long after the movie was released last November. Many of them raise some interesting points, but I think the theory Josh and I agree on is the most likely based on what we actually see in the movie.