The film follows four (sometimes tenuously) connected stories. In the first, a Moroccan goat farmer gives his two young sons a rifle in order to defend the goats from jackals. The second sees a nanny and housekeeper take her two young (white) charges across the border from the U.S. to Mexico in order for her to attend her son’s wedding. The third story has Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett holidaying in Morocco when Blanchett’s character is suddenly shot through the window of a tourist bus. (See where this is going?) Finally, in Japan we’re given the story of a deaf teenager whose disability isolates her from her peers, resulting in a kind of confused, desperate form of sexual aggression.

There is no doubt that, technically, Babel is an excellent film. The performances are all stunning and González Iñárritu’s ability to place the audience within each environment means that the jigsaw puzzle presented is never confusing or disorienting. His respect for each culture shines through, and there’s a real sense of credibility to the overall flavour and atmosphere presented.

The stories themselves as individual pieces, meanwhile, are all quite gripping and somewhat suspenseful. Individual scenes, when taken in isolation, are fine vignettes that are colourful, dramatic or simply tragic, and at first it’s hard not to be swept away. Yet where Babel fails — and this is crucial — is that the whole seems less than the sum of its parts.

There’s a kind of pretentious attitude that runs throughout the film, as if there is some grand statement being made. But what is the real message here? That life is random and tragic? That suffering unites us? These sentiments are more trite than profound, and as each character is shuffled into position for another devastating blow to occur, the end result is one of rather transparent emotional manipulation.

Nonetheless, Babel is well made and well acted. It works best if you don’t actually stop to think about the point being made, instead allowing yourself to be enveloped by its textures. If nothing else, it sustains its lengthy running time.

Hugh Jackman plays Tommy Creo, a research oncologist whose wife, Izzi (Rachael Weisz) is dying from a brain tumour. Parallel to this are two other stories: in one, Jackman plays Tomas, a Spanish conquistador who aims to assassinate Grand Inquisitor Silecio in order to protect his Queen (also played by Weisz); in the third, Jackman is Tom, a man hurtling through space in a spherical, translucent spacecraft. How these three stories relate to each other is one of the delights of The Fountain, and something that is best left for the film itself to reveal.

Writer/director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) has given us a film that possesses a depth of emotion and spirit few achieve. Its themes of mortality and grief are interwoven masterfully through its cinematic triptych as visual motifs recur again and again — the golden palette of the nebula featured in the third story, for example, is scattered throughout various scenes to remind us that these three stories are part of a larger whole.

Hugh Jackman and Rachael Weisz are both superb in their respective roles. Weisz gives Izzi a mix of strength and vulnerability that immediately rings true, while Jackman’s Tommy is a man driven but frustrated, myopic yet still totally lost and confused. I’m not sure as to how Pitt and Blanchett would have played these roles, but I just can’t imagine either giving such subtle and textured performances, as good as they usually are.

The score by Clint Mansell (who has collaborated on all three of Aronofsky’s films) pulses and flows like a meditation, with Aronofsky cutting between the three timelines seamlessly to complete the illusion. At first the transitions feel slightly jarring, but Mansell and Aronofsky create such a gentle, dreamlike pacing to the film that we instead feel carried along with the journey, experiencing the emotions while intuitively understanding the thematic relationships between the elements in the stories.

You can ponder and reflect on how the pieces of the film’s plot(s) all fit together after the fact, but the literal connections seem less important than the metaphorical unity. Tomas, Tommy and Tom are all on quests to challenge death, and they all come to similar realisations in their own ways, along their own paths.

At its heart, The Fountain is about the acceptance of death and the true nature of immortality. We live on in the earth, the grass, the trees, the flowers and the memories of those whose lives we’ve touched. So savour each moment with loved ones, because tomorrow those moments may be all you have.

Of course, most filmmakers would be content to stick to using lighting, camera angles, editing and maybe black and white film to help set the tone, but Soderbergh has gone all-out, reverting to the technology of the era, including mics, lighting and lenses, to create a truly authentic experience. Couple this with the acting style and the dramatic film score by Thomas Newman, and the illusion that this is indeed a film from the ’40s is almost complete.

Yet somewhat incongruent to all this effort on Soderbergh’s part is a script that includes sex scenes and swearing. It’s not that Paul Attanasio’s screenplay is bad — it’s actually very good — but for this purpose it just doesn’t suit.

Set in post-war Germany in 1945, the plot follows journalist Jake Geismer (Clooney), who has been sent to cover the Potsdam conference but soon finds himself caught up in something larger. Cate Blanchett plays Lena Brandt, a prostitute and old flame of Geisner’s, whose story seems much more interesting than she’s willing to let on. And finally, there’s Tobey Maguire as Geisner’s assigned driver, cast against type and excelling as a seemingly “nice guy” with a mean, ugly streak underneath.

It’s hard not to admire Soderbergh’s audacity in sticking to outdated technology in order to bring us a film that feels caught in the era in which it is set. The question remains, however: is it enjoyable?

For film students, it certainly is, because it’s an experiment in film technique. Furthermore, it’s hard not to grin during the final scene in particular (which I won’t spoil but will note that the film’s poster is a big clue). But as a cinematic experience on its own terms, The Good German comes up short.

The performances, however, are all uniformly excellent, with Cate Blanchett in particular seemingly existing in another era — she truly is one of the great actresses of our time.

The Good German is a fine film that’s worth seeking out if you’re someone who isn’t afraid of the quirky and unusual. Is it a great film? No, but it’s very good nonetheless.