For clarity, I'll be using the following naming convention:
Tom - this is the character within the bubble ship ~2500A.D., which is the Present in the film.
Tommy - this is the character in the modern age, ~2000A.D., who we see in Tom's memories.
Tomas - the conquistador character from Izzi's story 'The Fountain,' which is set ~1500A.D.
...
You ask:
HOW COULD ONE POSSIBLY INFER THIS LOGICALLY IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM FROM THE EVENTS OF THIS FILM?
Glad you asked, because careful observation of the evidence and logical analysis are precisely how I inferred that Tom had a transcendental moment that changed his own history. Here’s the evidence:
- It’s clear that the turning point of the entire story, at least as far as Tom is concerned, occured when Izzi came to ask him into the snow, and he gruffly refused. This is evidenced by the fact that this scene is the first thing that Tom recalls when he’s ready to see the error of his ways at the very beginning of the film when he says “Alright, I trust you. Take me. Show me.” It’s also supported by the fact that he remembers that moment repeatedly, and is further supported by the fact that the last time he remembers it, it happens differently, which changes the course of the story, and his own timeline.
-
The Fountain is a film about transcendental subjects: love, death, enlightenment and meditation, immortality, the cycle of life, and time. There are actually several moments of transcendence in the film, and moments that verge on transcendence, which serve to foreshadow the moment that Tom changes his own timeline. Note how in nearly every case,
these transcendental moments make a direct connection between events that are widely separated in time. First, there’s the transcendental moment in the lab, at 00:16:48, when Tommy looks up into the skylight and sees Xibalba (from the POV of his ship in the future approaching it) – and in that instant he’s struck with the inspiration for the immortality elixir that saves the monkey Donovan, and ultimately leads to his immortality and his journey to Xibalba. Second, at 00:20:28, there’s the moment at their home when the painting of the ancient temple seemingly comes to life for a moment with birdsong. Third, there’s the moment at 01:09:48 when Tommy begins to exhale cold air in the past as the tree dies in the bubble ship in the present, just before the snow begins to fall. Fourth, at 01:16:43, past Tommy in the lab overlaps with present Tom as the lab and the bubble ship are shaken and suddenly lit up from above, as Tom's ship clears the nebula around Xibalba. This is soon followed by the final conversation with Izzi’s ghost, who drives home the transcendental connection between Tom’s present and future actions: ‘You do, you will.’ And this time, Tom gets it. He hears Izzi’s admonition ‘Finish it’ for the last time, and this time he says ‘Okay.’ At exactly that moment is the fifth transcendental moment in the story - Tom goes back to the memory when Izzi asked him out to the first snow, and at 01:21:26 we watch as he *clearly has an epiphany* just like the one he had in the lab when he realized the formula for the immortality elixir, and he pushes past Manny to go chasing after his wife in the snow. Then, having corrected his error in the past, Tom finishes his last task – envisioning the final chapter of Izzi’s book. This begins with the sixth transcendental moment in the film, when meditating astronaut Tom magically appears to the Mayan priest in lieu of Tomas the Conquistador. A seventh transcendental moment occurs at 01:26:11 when Tomas trips out on the white sap from the Tree of Life and sees Xibalba, then drops the ring and turns into flowers. Then the most extraordinarily transcendental moment of the whole film occurs, when future Tom reaches into his own imagination to retrieve the lost ring from where Tomas dropped it.
- And then there are the final scenes of the film. Note that throughout the entire film, everything we’ve seen has been; Tom in the bubble ship on his way to Xibalba, his recollections of his life, and Izzi’s book. He is present in every scene without a single exception, it’s his story. But he gets incinerated at Xibalba, and instead of being the end of the film, we’re suddenly transported back to Izzi picking a seedpod from a tree (apparently during the first snow), and handing it to Tommy. This fades to Tommy alone at her grave.
Clearly these scenes can’t be Tom’s imagination, because he’s dead. They can’t be Izzi’s imagination either, because she’s in the ground. And if they’re simply a flashback, then we’re stuck with two major paradoxes:
One: this Tommy has his ring on at her grave. This is a major problem, because we know that future Tom didn’t get his ring back until he fetched it from his mind some 500 years in the future.
Two: this Tommy seems to be at peace with Izzi’s death – he even says ‘goodbye’ to her. This isn’t like the Tommy or future Tom that we’ve seen throughout the film, who couldn’t let Izzi go until he was about to perish at Xibalba.
There’s only one reasonable solution that simultaneously resolves these issues: this isn’t the same Tommy. This Tommy, ‘Tommy2’ we can call him, went chasing after Izzi during the first snow, let the rotten monkey die on the operating table, never lost his wedding ring, never discovered the immortality elixir, and never went to Xibalba. All of that changed because the 500+ year-old enlightened master Tom1 gave Tommy2 a second chance to set things right, and ‘finish it.’