Rewatched while staying near Seaside FL, where the movie was filmed. Masterpiece, man! It’s always been interesting to me how the whole movie could be interpreted as either very anti-God or very pro-God. On the one hand, the film could be seen as one about deconstructing and escaping the “confines” of religion - but on the other, there’s a deeply Christian message buried beneath, telling us that a world with free will (even with the possibility of sin) is always preferable…

I think I appreciated it more on the second go. After dropping the expectations of some kind of grand-scale sequel and knowing where things were going, I became grateful for the way this movie (like its predecessor) does not try to tell a large-scale story but instead focuses on intimate character-driven stakes. I hope the 3rd one increases the scale a bit, but the emphasis on character here is key, and the relatively limited focus is what allows them to…