The Tree of Life is a hugely divisive film. Some love it, some hate it. It all comes down to personality, temperament, spiritual beliefs, and how much a penchant the viewer has for avant-garde, poetic, meditative cinema, and how much they insist on only strict three-act archplots.

I am firmly in the "loved it" category, for many reasons (some of them quite personal), but objectively, I would argue that it is great cinema. Yes, the dialogue is all essentially stream-of-consciousness prayer, conversing with God, and so forth, and the connective tissue of the film is emotionally intuitive rather than logical in the sense of conventional narrative, but that doesn't make it pretentious. Indeed, the film is essentially a meditation on grief and suffering, directly akin to the Book of Job in the Bible, flashing backwards and forwards in time - including a stunning detour after act one, to creation itself - to the end of time, heaven, and beyond. Is Terrence Malick overreaching? Perhaps. But the film is staggeringly beautiful visually. Great performances too, especially from Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, with their characters symbolising the "nature" versus "grace" spiritual themes in the film. I found it particularly clever the way Pitt's character was the conventionally religious one, yet he was the one bound up in unhappiness and striving for significance, taking out is frustrations on his children, and so on. By contrast, Chastain's character was a free spirit, truly in connection with God, to the point that she literally floats in one scene. Even in unbearable grief (the loss of a child) she retains that connection to the eternal.

I found The Tree of Life profoundly moving. Perhaps it is, as someone quipped to me, a very expensive and elaborate way of saying "it's all right" in a soothing, cinematic way, but I read a story about a couple who said this film helped them come to terms with the tragic cot death of their baby. For that alone, God bless Terrence Malick.