Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko search for wonder in a bleak world.

It’s magic hour. A bird flutters through a rose garden. Hands brush against the wall, feeling every bump and speck in the wallpaper.

Olga Kurylenko (Seven Psychopaths) intones, without the faintest hint of self-awareness or irony, “What is this love that loves us?”

You haven’t accidentally stumbled into a perfume commercial film festival — this is To the Wonder, Terrence Malick’s (The Tree of Life) most Malick-y and least Malick-y film to date.

All of Malick’s trademark obsessions are in play. The story — a low-key love triangle between Ben Affleck (Argo), Rachel McAdams (The Vow) and Kurylenko — is almost non-existent. The film is propelled, instead, by brief emotional outbursts, Wagner compositions and some of the most glorious cinematography since, well, The Tree of Life.

Again, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life) and Malick seem more fixated on the landscapes than the actors. This time, the duo also seems to be equally mesmerized by the hair of the female leads. It’s impossible to emerge from To the Wonder and not be obsessed with how gorgeous McAdams’ and Kurylenko’s hairdos are. McAdams has a full head of shockingly bright blond hair, while Kurylenko’s brown hair is weaved with threads of gold and dirty blond. Maybe the secrets to the universe lie in Kurylenko’s luxurious, thick strands.

There’s no wrong way to experience To the Wonder. You can idly kick back and admire the actresses’ hair, or you can gasp at how pretty buffalo look under the golden sunlight. You could also try and follow the movie’s narrative progression, but be warned: It’s not for everyone.

Malick has refined his technique to rather spectacular heights. To the Wonder is easily Malick’s most efficient film to date; the first 30 or so minutes fly by in an impressionistic blitz of light, hair and trees.

Yet it’s also his least grandiose, his least vital. But after covering the Starkweather killings, World War II, the founding of Jamestown and the beginning of the universe, you would be forgiven if you found Malick’s latest subject matter unimportant and not very dramatic.

While all of his other films have ended with moments of grace and acceptance, To the Wonder is Malick at his most cynical and despondent. Affleck, Kurylenko, McAdams and Javier Bardem’s (Skyfall) priest all feel an intangible, indescribable void. The film charts the moral, physical and spiritual decay of a land and its people.

The film’s water, a common and recurring image in Malick’s filmography, is blighted with pollution. Recession and economic woes have hit Oklahoma hard, the land becoming increasingly filled with decrepit houses and rampant, unchecked maladies. Even the titular wonder, French landmark Mont Saint-Michel, was filmed on the gloomiest of rainy days and featured more mud than wonder-with-a-capital-w.

Throughout the movie’s two-hour runtime, all the characters grapple with their existential ennuis. Bardem tries to reconnect with God and Kurylenko tries to make do with Affleck’s limited affections, while Affleck desperately tries to wrap his head around the women in his life and the pollution seeping into the environment.

Most frustratingly, the characters are either unable or unwilling to speak in plain terms with each other. Language has failed all of these people, especially in some of the more baffling voice-overs (“Christ to the left of me, Christ to the right of me, Christ above me, Christ below me…”).

To the Wonder doesn’t offer you much for your loyalty. These lost characters don’t reconnect with their lost loved ones on a drippy beach and find God, nor are any of the Chinatown-lite conspiracy murmurings ever resolved or developed much further. Instead, you’re left with Malick’s aching portrait of the modern world, adrift and without direction.

A crumbling, ancient building holds a blooming rose captive. A brief glimpse of gold, orange sunlight is extinguished by rapidly approaching clouds.

What more did you expect?

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