Aronofsky is cutting-edge when it comes to considering the spiritual in film. Pi concerned an obsessed mathematician’s pursuit for proof of the divine. It combined ancient Hebrew scriptures with Jewish mysticism, then added in Wall Street and mathematical theory. It’s a gritty, painful-in-parts, wondrous film made for less than $100,000.

Aronofsky and a small group of Gen-X filmmakers (P.T. Anderson, David Fincher, Sam Mendes) understand the relationship of death to life, and of pain to exaltation. Their search for the divine often begins in the unutterable pain of life. (Magnolia was born out of Anderson’s family suffering cancer, likewise The Fountain for Aronofsky.) Many of the more artistic films from the last decade have a preponderance of pain with only a glimmer of grace and hope. Is Aronofsky turning the corner with The Fountain? Is he daring not only to bring us the pain of death, but also the consideration of the beautiful divine?

The Christian faith is wedded to glorious visions…celestial cities, foundations made of precious jewels, messengers in white. But that faith has its root in the horrific bloodletting of Jesus on the cross. Out of those wounds, out of that deep, dark blood seeping down that wooden cross, come the visions of glory. They are not separate from each other. One does not exist without the other.

Some films made by religious believers focus on the glory without reference to the pain. But can there be divine glory without divine pain? Do we find the mind-blowing realities of heaven and contact with the Divine behind our living room couch, or does it come on the edge? The edge of life, pain, and the human experience? Aronofsky finds God in his movies. On the sometimes bleeding edge of pain and loss, rebirth comes.

Rebirth. It’s a concept Christians have preached for ages. Born again. But to be born, you must die.

Thankfully, in a culture obsessed with denying death, brave artists like Aronofsky dare to stare death in the eye, to travel to the fringes of knowledge and faith to find some evidence of something beyond us. After reading the graphic novel, I can’t wait to see the film.