To a people of violence, the water tries to speak peace. To a people of grief, it tries to speak healing. To a people very much alone, it tries to speak community. And to a people ignorant of purpose, it tries to speak that they have one…that purpose, and identity, can be found in believing a story most dismiss as fairy tale.

This is the heart-breaking, theologically provoking opening of Shymalan’s new cinematic fairy tale. It is his most emotional work, his funniest, and his warmest. It trades past gimmicks and radical plot twists for a look into common folk creating community. And it is anchored by Paul Giamatti’s astonishing performance as Cleveland Heep, which goes even deeper than his remarkable portrayals of the hesitant everyman in American Splendor and Sideways. This is storytelling of high daring, radical faith, and crazy, delirious childlike innocence. It will confound many.

For this viewer, the movie was a holy prayer, a poem of peace, a transcendent fairy tale, and an intrusion of the ancient-saving-other into my perilous, rational, violent times. It is one of the great spiritual films of our new millennium and the viewing of it was miracle for me—that rare experience of being transformed in a darkened theater.

But not everyone will see it this way. In violent times that do not listen to God, in times where he may have to speak to us through cereal boxes, crossword puzzles, nymphs in the pool, and writers labeled as egotistical maniacs for us to hear, few may hear the value spoken in this simple poolside parable.

Jesus addressed a crowd one day. He had been telling confounding, often infuriating stories for awhile and the culture vultures had gathered. He told them the same thing Young-Soon Choi (Cindy Cheung) tells Mr. Heep in this film—you have to become like a child to hear the story. Some in Jesus’ day could not. Childlike belief, that full plunging and acceptance into things without proof or precedence, did not come easy for them, if at all. Jesus’ stories threatened the social order. They finally got him killed. But in this tale, Mr. Heep takes the plunge (in one of the movie’s funniest scenes), and so the story unfolds for the salvation of them all.

This is a partial review. I will fill it in further as the weeks go on and more have a chance to see this film for themselves. If you have not seen it yet, ignore the rampant cries against it. Enter the theater like a child, innocent and willing to believe, and see if transformation and healing can be found there for you.