Director Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is unforgettable: a sad, dark tale that lingers in the mind, inviting self-reflection, contemplation, prayer. The Whale follows the final days of Charlie, a morbidly obese man who lives in the self-imposed prisons of his own body and apartment. We learn early on that Charlie is divorced and has an estranged adolescent daughter, that he is dying of congestive heart failure, and that his binge-eating issues were trigged by grief after the death of his partner, Alan. While Brendan Fraser’s remarkable and haunting portrayal of the lead character has deservedly garnered nearly universal accolades—including an Oscar, as of a few days ago—the movie’s writing is so beautifully nuanced and layered that we’ll likely see many disparate interpretations of the film’s meaning in the weeks to come.

Great films do this: they leave different people with distinct, and sometimes very different, impressions. The Whale is definitely not a movie that will be enjoyed by everyone. For example, it’s definitely not wrong to interpret this movie as being decidedly anti-Christian. In fact, my first takeaway was that this movie is overtly hostile to conservative Christianity. As the story goes on, we learn that Charlie’s partner, Alan, took his own life, and that Charlie, as well as Alan’s sister, Liz (Hong Chau), blame Alan’s death on his inner conflict between his traditional Christian upbringing and his sexual orientation. The movie unabashedly implies that the fictional church at issue, New Life, is at fault for Alan’s suicide, and the script is peppered with invectives against Christian evangelism and New Life’s teachings.

But as I watched, I was surprised to find that the movie’s plot featured a distinctly Christian vision of the power of love, acceptance, understanding, forgiveness, and redemption—a vision that permeates the film and defines the relationship at its very heart. The plot of The Whale focuses on Charlie’s final attempt to reconcile with his daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), before he dies. Ellie is an angry teenager, filled with hate for Charlie after his adulterous affair and his lack of contact with her for a significant portion of her young life. It is clear that Ellie has abandonment issues stemming from Charlie’s perceived lack of interest in her and her well-being, and that these struggles have led her to act out bitterly and sometimes even viciously.