Moody, provocative and intellectually ambitious, "Adoration" is primed to elicit impassioned discussion among audiences.

While the fractured narrative and slightly confusing chronology may frustrate some viewers, director Atom Egoyan's elliptical storytelling works well with the complex and cerebral subjects.

With his clear-eyed vision and deliberate, almost poetic, pacing, Egoyan is a masterful director, and "Adoration" is his best film since 1997's quietly haunting "The Sweet Hereafter."

His films often play out like contemplative novels. This one also has the qualities of a complicated puzzle; points of view fluctuate and facts are pieced together in patchwork fashion.

Egoyan explores the shifting nature of truth and received wisdom, as well as the impact of the Internet and anonymous Web chats on our collective and individual psyches. Mostly, "Adoration" is a quest for identity and a probing of human connections.

Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), a high school French teacher, assigns her students to translate a news story about a terrorist who put a bomb in his pregnant girlfriend's luggage. This assignment has an unusual impact on bright young Simon (Devon Bostick), an orphaned teen who lives with his uncle Tom (Scott Speedman).

When he reads his translation aloud to the class and posts it online, the story takes on its own life. Truth is almost incidental; emotion reigns.

Simon's adapted tale becomes a source of widespread chatroom speculation, and his constructed identity begins to blend into reality. Sabine and Simon both suffer repercussions.

Tom is much more down-to-earth than Simon, but is drawn into his nephew's search for truth. The family unit is representative of society at large and our struggle to face painful realities. The story compels us to confront attitudes and feelings about family bonds, politics, ethnicity, terrorism and technology. These issues are interwoven deftly, with a hint of a mystery.

But after a lot of buildup, the familial story is tied up anticlimactically. Sabine's motives are hard to fathom, but that may be part of the intended ambiguity.

The film is beautifully shot. Scenes of Simon traveling alone and at his family's lake house are without dialogue, but his actions, even the symbolic ones, speak volumes.

While films serve many purposes — and always must entertain — the ability to enlighten and ignite contemplation is one of the highest functions. "Adoration" is just such a movie.