I walked into the movie theater trying to keep an open mind about “Digger,” the new Tom Cruise movie directed by Oscar-winner Alejandro González Iñárritu. It is, after all, intended as a statement about climate change. It is satire, a genre I enjoy. It has an enormously talented cast, fantastic sets, a truly unique visual style.

It is also (I discovered) full of sly references to the surreal film satires of previous eras, in ways both obvious and subtle. I saw nods to “Dr. Strangelove,” “Brazil,” and “O Brother, Wherefore Art Thou.” There is even a bit of “Hamlet” in its rich geneaology.

But the reviews were at best divided, at times vicious. I had even seen conspiracy theories circulating on social media, with some people claiming that the many negative reviews were a hit job ordered by oil interests, who were worried about the film’s potential to mobilise humanity against fossil fuels.

Just the strangeness of all these reactions, and the scale of the movie as a commercial flop (one of the biggest in Hollywood history), made “Digger” interesting to me.

And it was certainly a fascinating film-experience. I was never bored. I actually laughed out loud once.

But when I walked out of the theater, I felt … empty. Or rather, the world felt empty, even though it most certainly was not. The world was Stockholm on a cool, clear November evening. The streets were full of shoppers, the motorways full of cars. There was architecture and economics and all manner of human striving, buzzing and blinking and whooshing all around me.

Yet somehow, watching “Digger” had stripped it all of meaning and made it look like an alien planet, or like a filmset itself. At least, for a moment.

Had someone offered me a million dollars, in that moment, to write an ode to humanity, or an elegy on the wonders of nature, or both — or just to write a very bad poem, about anything at all — I would not have been able to do it. I was truly speechless, not in a way that signals happiness or admiration, but rather deep puzzlement.

The uncomfortable feeling of existential emptiness and cosmic meaninglessness wore off after a while. Still, when my wife (who had been out with her friends to a musical that evening) asked me about the film, I was still at a loss for words.

You probably already know that there is a “reveal” in this film, a surprise that one should not spoil, and I will not spoil it. It is also the case that this reveal is central to the film, and therefore central to what I finally realized about “Digger,” when I woke up the next morning.

“Digger” is not a movie. It is a work of art. That is why it flopped: people were expecting a popcorn experience, Tom Cruise being funny, a biting satire in the style of Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Don’t Look Up.” Instead, they got a two-hour, cerebral, multi-layered thought-experiment that belongs in the video collection of the Tate Modern.

If you like modern art, and you are interested in issues of climate change, energy, sustainability and the like, and you are willing to suspend your expectations of escapist entertainment, you should definitely see “Digger.” The artist Alejandro González Iñárritu (for he is not just a director) was given a quarter-billion dollars to realize an extraordinary vision, and he did not waste it. The film is monumental, whether one “likes” it or not. John Goodman’s performance alone, acting in the role of a deranged US president, is worth the price of admission.

Be prepared, however, for a script that plays fast and loose with science, American politics, gender roles, European sensitivities, and even the rights of animals. (Though it is quite obvious that no animals were harmed, or even involved, in the making of this movie.) “Digger” is, after all, a satire.

But it is probably not what you expect. Or even if it is — if you have read all the reviews and you know the spoilers — actually seeing it might affect you differently than you expect.

Which is the signature of great art.