Y Si, Yo Creo
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comments, “One cannot help but remember the famous tree of Xibalba, of the
underworld, mentioned in the Popol Vuh. According to this source the Lords of
Xibalba put the head of the vanquished ball player Hun Hunahpu in this tree,
and immediately fruit grew out everywhere. Later on, the head changed into a
cala-bash and managed to fecundate a young earth and moon goddess by spitting
in her outstretched hand. Clearly, decapitation was a sacrifice on behalf of the
earth in order to nourish and fecundate her” (403). Here, within this idea, lies the
notion of a bound system of sacrifice—the male ball player to the feminine
aspect of the Earth. The Fountain places the tree as inherently tapped into the
feminine (as Izzi becomes the Tree of Life). Up until these final moments,
Tommy takes from the tree to prolong his own l ife, and the tree is in bad shape.
The male force drains the female. Now, his sacrifice comes when he lets go of
clinging to life. He and Izzi are one, but even before that, the tree blooms one
final time before being obliterated.
With the deaths of Izzi and Tommy comes a bringing about of balance to
both themselves and the universe in which the film functions. All three pieces of
the narrative coalesce, finally, into one cohesive and unified thread. The very
last lines of the film end it in the present story, the rewritten version,
presumably, where Tommy chooses Izzi, chooses to be with her through life and
death rather than wasting his time fighting the inevitable. Izzi asks, “Is
everything all right?” to which he answers, “Yes, everything’s all right.” Even
those things that he cannot control—the moment of death and what comes
after—have been brought into union. Thought and belief, the double-meaning of
“creo” are made whole.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Amy Green
Notes
lrrhis observation has been made by filmgoers and is in and o f itself not revelatory.
Indeed, the Internet M ovie Database’s Trivia page for the film lists this translation. What
has been missing is any sort o f treatment o f the implications o f her name, and o f
Tommy’s, with regards to understanding the film.
2The Epic o f Gilgamesh presents much the same message, although this is just one
example. Gilgamesh, after watching his close friend Enkidu sicken and die, heads out to
the far reaches o f the world in an attempt to leam the secret o f immorality. What he
discovers instead is that mortality is inevitable and that civilization continues on, while
individual lives end. Even religions o f consolation, like Christianity, focus on the rewards
that come in the afterlife, not the permanence o f any physical reality or mortal self. In
E.O. James analysis, “In Christian iconography the Cross was symbolised as the Tree o f
Life, being the emblem o f the victory o f Christ triumphing over death. As the Fall o f man
was attributed to the Tree o f Knowledge in Eden so the Tree o f the Cross was equated
with the Tree o f Life as the means o f redemption and resurrection” (244). While this is
certainly true, that doesn’t mean that humans are meant to believe they can similarly
triumph over death - Christianity, as a religion o f consolation (looking to everlasting life
in the afterlife), does not allow for humans to be both earthly and immortal.
3The parallels to Buddhism do not mean that this film espouses Buddhist philosophy. It
only does so in the sense that Tommy tries to find a type o f enlightenment and must let