The Fountain (2006) and a Terminal Brain Tumour

Three strands braid together. In the sixteenth century a conquistador is sent by his queen to find the Tree of Life in Mayan territory. In the present, medical researcher Tommy Creo works obsessively in a laboratory, testing a compound derived from a Guatemalan tree on a primate with a brain tumour; the compound shrinks the tumour and appears to reverse ageing. In a far future, a bald traveller journeys through space in a bubble carrying a dying tree toward a nebula. The present-day thread is the spine: Tommy's wife Izzi is dying of a brain tumour and has arrived at acceptance, while Tommy will not accept it and buries himself in work, skipping her appointments and walks. She writes a book called The Fountain and asks him to finish its final chapter. She collapses, and dies. Tommy plants a seed at her grave. In the closing vision the traveller lets go, merges with the tree, and the tree blooms.

Spoilers throughout. Discussing the cancer storyline means discussing how this ends.

As a portrait of anticipatory grief this is unusually sharp. It captures the common asymmetry in which the patient reaches acceptance well before the family does, and the way a partner can convert terror into a project and be physically present but emotionally absent. Izzi remains herself, wanting to finish her work, get outside, see the first snow, rather than becoming only a patient. The film also quietly acknowledges something clinicians see constantly: a laboratory discovery and a single dying person's timeline never line up, and no amount of love or effort collapses that gap. The scenes of scan review and hospital waiting, and Tommy's inability to sit still in them, ring true.

Medically the film is almost abstract. No diagnosis is named, no standard treatment is discussed, there is no radiotherapy, chemotherapy, seizure management, steroid use or palliative care team, and no oncologist has a real conversation with the couple. Izzi remains lucid, articulate, elegant and physically capable until the moment she collapses; brain tumours commonly bring headaches, seizures, weakness, personality and language change and progressive cognitive loss well before the end. The suggestion that a compound tested in one primate could be turned toward a patient elides years of trials, safety testing and regulation.

Brain tumour symptoms depend on where the tumour sits. The NCI lists morning headache or a headache that eases after vomiting, seizures, nausea and vomiting, vision problems, personality or behaviour change, balance and walking difficulty, weakness or numbness, unusual sleepiness and appetite loss. A first seizure in an adult, or a new headache pattern that is progressive or accompanied by neurological signs, warrants prompt assessment; an ordinary headache almost never means a brain tumour. Diagnosis is made by neurological examination and imaging, usually MRI with contrast or CT, and confirmed by biopsy or surgery where that can be done safely, with gene and molecular testing on the tissue now guiding classification and treatment. There is no screening test for brain tumours for people at average risk. No scan or blood test is recommended for people without symptoms, and tumours are found because someone develops symptoms or incidentally during a scan done for another reason. Most have no known preventable cause; established risk factors are limited, chiefly previous therapeutic radiation to the head and some rare inherited syndromes. In adults, cancer that has spread to the brain from elsewhere is more common than a primary brain tumour.

A film is not a diagnosis, and a dramatised illness is not a guide to your own. What a story like this is genuinely good for is lowering the barrier to a conversation you might otherwise put off.

If something in your body has changed and stayed changed for a few weeks, that is worth raising with a doctor — not because it is likely to be cancer, but because most of the time it will not be, and finding that out is the point. Where screening exists for a cancer, it is the one thing you can do before anything is wrong at all. See screening and possible warning signs.

Cancer Explained is free and ad-free. Nothing is sold on this page and no sponsor sits behind it.

If this helped you understand something, or moved you to ask a question you had been avoiding, you can help keep clear cancer information free for whoever needs it next. Support our work.

The Fountain is worth watching as a film. It is not a guide to the disease it portrays. The gap between the two is what this page is for — and the thing worth carrying away is that a change which persists is worth a conversation, whatever a story led you to expect.

This page describes a work of film or television for education. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a judgement of anyone's real medical care. Spotted an error? Please email [email protected].