In their essay Notes on Metamodernism, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker discuss the way in which metamodernism seems to be characterized by oscillation. As part of their deliberations on the concept of the metamodern, they invoke the words of German thinker Eric Voegelin to help explain the nature of this oscillation:
Existence has the structure of the In-Between, of the Platonic metaxy, and if anything is constant in the history of mankind it is the language of tension between life and death, immortality and mortality, perfection and imperfection, time and timelessness, between order and disorder, truth and untruth, sense and senselessness of existence; between amor Dei and amor sui, l’ame ouverte and l’ame close; …’[1]
In this post, I would like to initiate a discussion of Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film The Fountain as a metamodern text visually articulating various kinds of oscillations concerning the experience of our mortality. Conceived as a ‘metaphysical post-Matrix-Science-Fiction-Film’[2], The Fountain formulates a central concern that has been a ‘constant in the history of mankind’, namely the meaning of our existence. Ultimately, the film seems to suggest that the journey from life into death is what constitutes humanity. However, this journey is not one with a clear beginning and an end. In stead, the acceptance of our mortality allows us to experience this transition in a metaphysical sense. Life and death becomes an oscillation, rather than a simple beginning with an end. In my view, this challenging film overtly visualizes the formation of the ‘In-Between’, which Voegelin speaks of, in that it structurally oscillates between three distinct narrative lines.
