human hubris

His films like *The Fountain*, *Black Swan*, and *The Wrestler* obsessively explore characters undone by their refusal to accept human limitations and mortality.

His emotionally brutal dramas dissect how characters' arrogance and self-delusion about love, power, and identity inevitably lead to destruction.

Works like *The Thin Red Line* and *The Tree of Life* meditate on humanity's tragic tendency to impose order and meaning upon a universe indifferent to our pride.