Such a beautiful film that goes so, so deep. For me, it was a truly spiritual experience to watch this film again after 8 years. The images are beautiful, unique and the thousands of match cuts connecting the film's inner spiritual layer with the real life of the characters (in a non-linear manner) is just sublime. For me, this is poetry and a beautiful testament to love, pain, life - and the never ending cycle of life.

I have very much liked all of what I've seen of Aronofsky, and judging from the amount of hate I had seen for The Fountain I was not expecting to like it. But while I think it could have been a tad longer, I thought the film was fantastic and my third favourite Aronofsky after The Wrestler and Requiem for a Dream.

I also think The Fountain is under-estimated, it is a perplexing movie I agree but for me that was what drew me to this film in the first place. I find 2001 and Tree of Life perplexing movies, and like The Fountain they are not movies for everybody but I think important films. The pace is slow, but I was too taken in by the quality of the visuals, music, direction and acting to be bored by any of it.

Visually, The Fountain is one of the visually stunning films I have seen in a long time, and I have seen a lot of visually amazing movies such as any of Kubrick, Kurasawa, Fellini or Malick's resumes. The cinematography is outstanding and the colours and effects are rich. The music is of such beautiful and haunting quality, Aronofsky's directing shows ambition and heart and the dialogue is thought provoking.

As for the story, of all of Aronofsky's movies, The Fountain is perhaps his most philosophical and profound. There will be some people who will finish the movie trying to figure out what it all means, others like me will be rewarded by its effective scenes and ambitious themes. Scenes such as Jackman trying to find a cure for his wife's cancer, saving the Spanish queen from destruction by searching for the Fountain of Youth and sitting like Buddha beneath his cosmic tree really stand out, and the film does much with the ambitious and difficult-to-define themes of life, death, love and immortality.

The performances are excellent, with both Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz giving some of their best work of their careers here. All in all, a great film. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Unwieldy and strange, this romantic science fiction film had plenty of production troubles that resulted in delays. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett were originally fixed to star, but in the end they dropped out and Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz came on board. I think it was a good call. I'm no big fan of Jackman and Weisz and, let's face it, the films for which they are best known offer little to test their acting mettle (I'm thinking of the MUMMY and X-MEN franchises). However, both actors are actually very good here; Weisz is convincing as the woman diagnosed with a brain tumour who's come to peacefully accept her fate, and Jackman wrenches at the heart strings as the husband who just can't come to terms with his wife's illness.

The film starts off obtuse, as if director Darren Aronofsky is determined to get viewers switching off in droves. We're cutting between three periods of time – the past, present, and future – and none of the stories seem to make sense. I would have preferred a more linear style to get me into the story more comfortably, but it all makes sense around the halfway mark so from that point I was able to sit back and enjoy the story. What we get is a completely atypical exploration of some big themes – life, death, love, and loss – while other concepts such as the battle between science and religion are also explored. The 'past' storyline, of Spanish conquistadors invading the Mayan empire, is well-handled and the 'present' story is packed with emotion and sadness. The future storyline is a little weird, with a bald-headed Jackman surrounded by some shall we say 'different' special effects, but it all ends on a high with a clever ending that ties together all three of the story lines in an intelligent way. It's a shame Hollywood doesn't have the guts to make more films like this, instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator with stuff like TRANSFORMERS.