Y Si, Yo Creo
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death. Thoughts of quests to find the World Tree or the fountain of youth have
given way to hopes that medical science might one day allow for humans to live
greatly longer lives. Tommy represents this modem day conception of
immortality. He is a skilled surgeon and medical researcher whose consistent
mantra through the first part of the film is that “death is a disease.” This attitude
reflects Tommy’s unwillingness to face the death of his beloved wife and his
own. This becomes more evident later in the film, where Tommy has prolonged
his own life by eating the flesh of the tree as the pair travel to Xibalba.
Aronofsky invites his viewers to challenge their own level of acceptance of their
mortality by reminding them that preoccupation with death has existed in mythic
and symbolic form as a companion to human culture. In an interview with
Michelle Fetters, Aronofsky addresses this last point, arguing, “We’ve become
so preoccupied [as a society] with sustaining the physical that we often forget to
nurture or take care of the spirit. That’s one of the central themes I wanted to
tackle within the film: Does death make us human, and if we could live forever,
would we lose our humanity in the doing so?” (www.movieffeak.com). This is
the journey that will be undertaken by Tommy in the film. He has sacrificed
everything—even time with his dying wife—to feed his belief that he can
conquer death. In so doing, he risks losing his humanity.
In addition to utilizing the motif of the World tree, Aronofsky also uses
elements of the Mayan underworld, most specifically with regards to Xibalba.
Izzi describes Xibalba to Tommy as “a nebula wrapped around a dying star.”
This image categorizes the relationship between Tommy and Izzi, first through
his attempts to hold her to the physical world and then in their shared death. In
the original Mayan, Xibalba roughly translates into “place of fear,” however, the
movie makes it clear that the guardian is Tommy/Tomas’s own fear of death,
and not a guardian intending to block the path to all, just to the unworthy or
those who are unprepared. Similarly, Buddha comes to enlightenment beneath
the Bodhi tree while being besieged and tempted by the demon Mara. Trevor
Ling says of Mara, “Against those who are Enlightened, he is totally powerless,
and all his attempts are folly. It is he who has been defeated when a disciple
continues in meditation, or becomes fully enlightened” (urbandharma.org). In
these examples, a guardian or barrier to knowledge exists, but only in relation to
the worthiness and readiness of the person pursuing it. Both of these accounts
are the complete opposite from the Book of Genesis, and the type of scenario
repudiated by the film: the cherubim with the flaming sword permanently guards
the gateway to the Tree of Life—there is no way past it. Of this image of the
guarded Tree of Life, E.O. James asserts, “Therefore, the Tree of Life was
guarded by a cherubim to prevent Adam putting forth his hand to secure
immortal life by partaking of its fruit. If this interpretation is correct, in the
earlier myth the tree had always been taboo, and it was not until divine
knowledge had been acquired by partaking of the Tree of Knowledge in the
midst of the garden, that he thereby obtained understanding of the mysteries of
sex, childbirth, life and death. This made mankind procreative and raised it to a