The fountain

The Fountain has divided every audience member and critic alike since its debut at the Venice International Film Festival in July.

The opposition claims that Darren Aronofsky's third feature is trite and laughable, an overblown sci-fi epic heavy on trippy visuals and light on meaningful content. The proponants have anointed it one of the finest sci-fi films since Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The reality is that the film lies somewhere in between.

Spread over three time periods, The Fountain defies summarization. In theory, it is the story of a husband, Tommy (Hugh Jackman) forced to deal with his wife Izzi's (Rachel Weisz) battle with cancer. Tommy is a doctor who spends his time testing substances on lab monkeys in an attempt to find a cure for his wife's illness. Izzi has just finished a novel about a Spanish Conquistador aka Tomas (Jackman again). His story is brought to life in a series of flashbacks propelled by the present-day Tommy reading Izzi's manuscript.

Confused yet?

Well, there's also a futuristic third story, where Tom Creo (Jackman yet again) cohabits a space bubble along with a tree whose bark allows him to talk to his now deceased lover.

This makes much more sense on screen.

The film's strengths rest in the editing and visual aesthetic. But more than this, The Fountain truly puts almost all other multistrand plotlines to shame. Aronofsky weaves the three stories together in a seamlessly through the repetition of scenes enhanced with recurring lines of whispered dialogue. It's a marvelous job of storytelling.

Director of Photography Matthew Libatique, who has worked with Aronofsky on each of his films, has permeated The Fountain with rich gold compositions and bursts of white sunlight. Swirling yellows and droplets of liquid combine to create nebulas and shooting stars, an effect created by morphing images photographed under a microscope.