As in “The Tree of Life,” Malick pushes past the suggestive or transcendent spirituality of the American landscape into territory that is clearly religious, although he may not mean it in a limited or sectarian sense. Javier Bardem is the third major character in the film, a Catholic priest who moves among the battered, dispossessed and most downtrodden people of small-town Oklahoma, even as he battles his own loss of faith. Bardem’s Father Quintana, who is only tangentially connected to the story of Affleck and Kurylenko, seems closely akin to the tormented Lutheran pastor played by Gunnar Björnstrand in Ingmar Bergman’s 1963 “Winter Light” – a likely reference point for this film. Both these men of the cloth are asking the famous question posed by Jesus on the cross and before him by King David in the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” At the risk of being obvious, it’s an inherently ambiguous question that goes well beyond theistic concerns, and your understanding of it will quite likely be different from mine.

Nearly everything about “To the Wonder” seems radically out of step with the tastes of contemporary filmgoers, even (or especially) the artsy bicoastal types who are Malick’s most loyal fans. Its title sounds naive, or maybe faux-naive; it relies on cinematography (by the great Emmanuel Lubezki) and voice-over narration (mostly by Kurylenko) rather than storytelling and dialogue; it engages directly with Christian theology, without ducking or apologizing. If you read movie reviews, you’ve already noticed the rising tide of derision. While Malick’s contemplative and symbolic brand of cinema has long had detractors – and I personally heard the boos at the Cannes premiere of “Tree of Life” — this will certainly be the first of his films to receive a largely negative critical response.

Many of the wisecracks made about this film contain grains of truth, quite frankly: It looks like Affleck and Kurylenko went around the world scouting locations for a Terry Malick movie that never actually happened, or it looks like a commercial for expensive cologne or wristwatches. (No one has ever made an Econo Lodge parking lot look so suffused with meaning, that’s for sure.) As with any other movie, it’s all a question of what attitude you carry into the theater, and whether you’re prepared to go where Malick wants to take you. All I can tell you is that once I surrendered to the ebb and flow of Lubezki’s images, the elegiac and almost anti-narrative mode, the sweet-sad blend of romance, eroticism and tragedy and the hypnotic score – which mixes contemporary electronic pop with Berlioz, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärt – I really never wanted it to stop.

I know this will sound as if I’m being perverse or contrarian on purpose, but in some ways I actually prefer “To the Wonder” to “The Tree of Life.” It’s a purer, clearer and more focused work, one that lacks the universe-encompassing, mind-blowing, post-Kubrickian grandiosity of the earlier film, but may be better off for it. One thing that’s going on with Malick’s sudden burst of productivity, I suspect, is that he’s about to turn 70 and has gotten the huge albatross of “Tree of Life” off his back. This movie is the work of an artist who’s boiling his craft and his message down to essentials, and who has reached the point of not much caring what other people think.

I would agree that “To the Wonder” is a more limited accomplishment than “The Tree of Life,” and won’t spark one-tenth of the debate or have one-tenth the impact. It’s a far more old-fashioned film in its way – simultaneously a celebration and lamentation of heterosexual desire, built around the body, face and voice of a beautiful woman, and an evocation of 1970s art cinema. It features a memorable scene involving a herd of American bison, in place of the notorious dinosaurs of “Tree of Life,” and that pretty much sums it up. But the enigmatic spell of enchantment it casts is a work of complex artistry, and the sneering reviews say more about the critics, I am afraid, than about the film or its director.

“To the Wonder” is the last movie reviewed by Roger Ebert before his death last week. (As Roger would have wanted and expected, it was published during the week of the film’s release.) It’s a curiously appropriate and even haunting sendoff. With his typical generosity toward both the filmmaker and the audience, Roger explains the movie’s unconventional nature, and makes clear that many viewers will find it unsatisfying. But he loves it, cutting to the heart of the matter with a koan-like series of rhetorical questions that’s very much in the Malick spirit. “Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren’t many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren’t many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn’t that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?”

“To the Wonder” opens this week in Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas. It opens April 19 in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Diego, San Jose, Calif., and Santa Cruz, Calif.; and April 26 in Charlotte, N.C., Honolulu, Ithaca, N.Y., New Orleans, Palm Springs, Calif., Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City, Santa Barbara, Calif., Santa Fe, N.M., Tucson, Ariz., and Tulsa, Okla., with more cities to follow. It’s also available on demand, beginning this week, from cable, satellite and online providers.