Two of my favorite categories of movies are movies about Los Angeles and movies by Terrence Malick. So I must admit I’m practically under a double predestination to like Terrence Malick’s new movie Knight of Cups, set almost entirely in and around Los Angeles. And I do in fact like it a great deal, and recommend it.

It is in the same visually striking style as his films The Tree of Life (2011) and To the Wonder (2012), but while this new one is still far from a linear narrative, it is easier to understand than those two. Christian Bale plays a screenwriter who has a vigorous sex life but a troubled love life, and has to face up to mortality. One of my favorite movies is Fellini’s 8-1/2, which has a similar protagonist with a broadly similar problem. But the contrast with Fellini is instructive: Where Fellini ransacks Catholic imagery to put on a beautiful spectacle (and that it is beautiful is undeniable), Malick actually wrestles with religious issues and offers some wisdom beyond “what fools these mortals be.”

In Knight of Cups, a Catholic priest (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl) says that we mustn’t think suffering is a sign of God’s dislike for us – it is, rather, a gift, a reminder to look beyond ourselves, to realize that we have a higher destiny than the one we would settle for in our current human situation of forgetfulness. In another scene, a Zen teacher (played by real-life Zen writer Peter Matthiessen) tells the main character to experience fully the present moment, because everything is in it.

This is the sort of film that asks the viewer to examine his or her own life, and I must say it’s quite effective in this regard: It had me realizing that while my life now is happier than it’s ever been, more full of joyful experiences, life still hurts too much for it to be wise for one ever to become attached to it. The movie bears out what the priest and the Zen master said: It shows us both the great beauties of life and the pain at the heart of it. That true love and true detachment can coexist is the fundamental truth at the core of both Christianity and Buddhism: A person must lay down his life in order to save it.

This movie is one it’s worth seeing more than once. But allow me to issue a consumer warning: If you read my description of this film and think, “I’d hate that,” you’re probably right. But I think there is an audience for this movie, and trust that the film and its audience will find each other.