First the good news. Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is not a pretentious bore like his last, “The New World,” which looked fabulous but got into trouble every time that Colin Farrell’s Captain John Smith opened his mouth.

Malick’s latest coffee-table book of a movie isn’t exactly a crowd pleaser, though (was anybody really expecting it would be?). It’s long, slow, fairly gloomy and resists conventional narrative to the point where no two characters in the film ever have an actual conversation. There isn’t much dialogue, mostly snippets delivered by Brad Pitt as an authoritarian father of four in 1950s Texas as well as enigmatic voice-overs that never rise to the level of narration.

Sean Penn plays Pitt’s unhappy grown son in scenes set in the present, and one of many possible interpetations is that the fractured narrative is his subconscious attempt to make sense of his sometimes idyllic, sometimes horrific childhood. Newcomer Jessica Chastain registers strongly as his warm and loving mother of the younger Penn, played by newcomer Hunter McCracken.

Perhaps the strongest selling point of “The Tree of Life” for mainstream audiences are those long-rumored dinosaurs. They show up at the end of a stunning but too-short sequence that depicts the big-bang theory and the beginnings of life on earth.

How does that tie in with the other stuff? My best guess — there will be many others — is that it’s Penn’s metaphysical attempt to reconcile science and religion (which is also frequently referred to in the movie, beginning with an opening Biblical quotation from Job).

At the end of the screening, I told my wife I thought the unidentified woman with Penn at the end of the movie might be his psychotherapist.

“I think she might be the Madonna,” my wife replied.

“Penn’s ex-wife?” I asked.

“No, the Virgin Mary.”