I have recently returned to Bristol from a week in Spain, where I spent some time in Valencia on the east coast, Spain’s third largest city and famous for its astonishing City of Arts and Sciences, designed by the Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. It features a number of futuristic buildings and is built towards the mouth of the course of the river that used to run through the city, diverted in 1957 after a catastrophic flood.

In an afternoon spent there, I walked among thousands of fish in Europe’s biggest aquarium and sat back in my seat in the Hemisferic, an Imax cinema and planetarium where I watched breathtaking footage of deep space taken by the Hubble telescope.

When I returned to Bristol, I was not expecting that the first film I would see a few days later at the cinema would take me back to my time spent in the City of Arts and Sciences.

The Tree of Life, however, is not a typical film. Dividing critics, it drew boos as well as applause at its premiere in Cannes where it won the Palme D’Or as the best film of the festival.

Directed by the reclusive Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life centres on a family growing up in 1950s Texas and the reminisces in modern times of the eldest son (Penn).

That is not the half of it though, and the film also sees the camera fly off into space, travel back in time to the dinosaurs and swim underwater. Can you see why I was reminded of my trip to the City of Arts and Science?

The problem is that while I was expecting to see sharks swim over my head in Valencia, and was quite happy to sit in awe for an hour watching the Imax film about Hubble, I was not expecting this to happen to quite the extent it did in The Tree of Life.

Like last year’s Enter The Void, which also features extended sequences to mess with your senses, there are moments in The Tree of Life which are breathtaking. For much of this, Bristol-based Nigel Ashcroft can be congratulated.

The problem for me was that these sequences lasted for too long. The Emperor’s New Clothes were brought to mind as Malick pushed for these unnecessary leaps into space and travels back in time, as Penn walks forlornly around a rocky landscape, and nobody had the guts to tell the director that it was all a bit too much.

At the heart of The Tree of Life is a tender, heartbreaking story about the minutiae of family life. But it surrounded by a film that is overblown and pretentious. It is ambitious filmmaking that sadly falls short of the genius of a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, its closest companion piece.

If you want truly awe-inspiring views of underwater life and glimpses into space, get on a flight to Valencia. The Tree of Life is an important and challenging film, but one which is also deeply flawed.

The Tree of Life is currently showing at the Cinema de Lux, Orpheus and Watershed.