The contemporary story has him trying to use human intellect and reasoning to reach his goal. But he must be guided by the spiritual and not follow the lower animal. We see him following his animal nature many times, even one time peering through an x-ray of a monkey skull with it matching the outline of his own face. We also see his turning toward the divine for inspiration when he looks up through a skylight.

The top level is the spiritual level. In space he was meditating, doing tai chi, and otherwise preparing spiritually to finally "finish it" and reach Nirvana/Heaven/Peace (the film gives us freedom to use whichever term we desire). When Tom has his revelation late in the film, he is able to stop nourishing himself from the base of the tree and can effortlessly climb high in its branches. He then flies away, able to look upon the complete picture.

In Jung’s work, especially involving alchemy, certain shapes are associated with these different levels or stages. Circles are symbolic of the highest stage. Squares and triangles – which are really just primitive circles, a circle being an infinite-sided shape – are symbolic of less finished stages. There is a lot of interplay between these shapes in The Fountain. Triangles abound in the ancient scenes. The contemporary scenes are designed around squares and rectangles. The spaceship is a great circle. When Tom is overcome by his emotions, he turns to performing surgery on monkeys illuminated by a triangular pattern of lights that echoes the pattern on the dagger/map in the ancient story. Tom gets divine inspiration by looking up through a rectangular skylight to circular swirling clouds.

Jung called the process of finishing oneself, of becoming complete, individuation. A very important aspect of individuation is a mutual development of both our male and female aspects. Jung saw the Hindu god Shiva (often depicted as half man and half woman) and Jesus (sometimes depicted in androgynous terms as the returning Adam to restore the separation of the sexes begun with Eve) as perfect examples of individuation. In Kabbalah, moving up the Tree of Life involves an intertwining of the male and the female. There is a wonderful illustration of this in The Fountain when Izzy desperately pulls Tom into the bathtub with her. (Some ancient illustrations of the Androgynous Man show an intertwining of man and woman above a circle encasing a square encasing a triangle.) What Tom lacks to be finished is a developed female aspect of his psyche and Izzy knows this. He is all aggression and driven by the need to control and to conquer. Izzy – his Eve – is helping him to finish himself.

Ultimately, all of this really boils down to a pivotal moment in Tom’s and Izzy’s lives. Will he go for a comforting walk with Izzy during her final days, or will he continue to be the conquistador? Will he become finished in the sense of being male and female? Or will he remain unfinished?