I think what’s special about it, to use a food metaphor, is that it’s a really strong flavor. There is so much emphasis on physical space, mood, and tone that is just precise and exceptionally consistent in execution. The scenes are all composed so consistently and artfully it’s like viewing the gallery of a single era of a master painter.

I also found it to be an incredible portrait of autism without masking (in the character of Lee Harker) as well as mental illness bent into religion (in the character of Lee’s mother and her relationship with Cobble). My wife and I related immensely to the themes of “mentally ill parent insisting on what’s best” and “non-neurotypical outsider can see the truth” and these things were captured in a way neither of us had seen nailed so perfectly in a film.

The script was also as tight as a Raymond Carver short story and as chilling when revisiting specific word choice and evocative connections. Phrases like “the man downstairs”, “dirty while it cleans, like a mop”, “hark the herald angels sing”, “the almost birthday girl”, “bow all the way down”, “I guess we’ll just call you highly intuitive”, “do you still say your prayers”, and others all had powerful resonance that a poet would be proud to claim.

Even the foreshadowing was executed brilliantly in visual and verbal elements, with Harker’s image-word association (Camera, Mother, Father, … , Piano, etc) linking directly to the images of the Camera farm murders in later scenes.

There’s a lot of detail in this movie that rewards careful viewing. I’ve seen it three times so far and will probably go again before it finishes its theater run.

Curious what others here have thought along these lines of detail in the film?