Who said that the Past Tomas sequence isn't real? It's the plot of the book Izzy's writing, yes, but that doesn't mean it definitely didn't happen for real. And even if it's indeed not real, that doesn't have to mean that Future Tom isn't real, just that him appearing in the past sequence doesn't really happen, at least in the literal sense.
About your second point, if a person comes to think death is beautiful and is happy to die, I can't see how it's a downer ending (they're perfectly happy, right? I'd say it's a good thing). And coming to such realisation can very well be an important accomplishment.
Is there any evidence, at all, that Aronofsky is actually a "Kabbalist"? If I can't find any, and don't get any responses to it, I'll just delete the reference from the page.
Further adding to the mindscrew and the sheer confusion of the movie: The Past Thomas sequence isn't even real. It's a story Present Tom's wife wrote. "We know," says the cynical audience. Yet they happily accept that Future Tom is the true and real incarnation of Present Tom some hundreds of years in the future, his life extended by a magical tree. Problem: Future Tom projects himself into Past Thomas's storyline, which wasn't real, so probably neither was Future Tom.
Either that or the director got so caught up in trying to make the movie flowery and poetic that he forgot what was real and what wasn't. He'll be the first one to tell you that it doesn't matter. Damned artists.
Also, no Downer Ending tag? It's a movie about how death is beautiful and we should be happy when it happens to us. Only the confused realization of the protagonist keeps this from being a Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story — all three storylines end with miserable failure, having accomplished nothing except deciding that said accomplishment didn't matter in the first place. It'd be downright nihilistic if it weren't implied that Tom's wife is waiting for him in the afterlife.
Edited by Sanmei Hide / Show Replies