“I basically started thinking in terms of images that really have nothing to do with anything,” said Harmony Korine in his director’s notes. And so, with the poetic image of blue-frocked nuns marching to a baptism, he opened his newest venture, Mister Lonely. Diego Luna stars as a Parisian Michael Jackson impersonator, who meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) and then flies to a Panamanian island to live in a commune of like-minded folk (the motley cast of characters includes Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, the Three Stooges, and Abe Lincoln).

Through the art of impersonation, Korine explores the very basic desire to find purpose in life, and to become one’s ideal self. He juxtaposes this earthbound desire for purpose with the story of the nuns co-inhabiting that Panamanian island. After one flying nun falls from a plane—praying all the way down only to miraculously land safely—she inspires a whole culture of flying nuns. In these parallel storylines, Korine explores a sense of wonder and possibility beyond the gates of the commune.

With its quick jump cuts, soundtrack, and special effects, Mister Lonely is very different from Korine’s previous minimalist Dogme films, such as Gummo or Julien Donkey-Boy, but Korine explores new cinematic possibilities like a kid in a candy shop. He guides us through his film with images, organized in a series of vignettes that are held together by an almost-plot. This encourages the audience to focus on the various beauties of life in this commune of misfits: James Dean does dishes with the queen, Abraham Lincoln comes to loggerheads with the Three Stooges, Michael Jackson rides a baby-sized motorbike, and a flock of black sheep (get it?) runs around on the compound, followed by a single white lamb. In a film about a search for purpose, Korine forces us to accept and appreciate the absurdities inherent in life—why question the nun’s beliefs when they are really flying?

But Korine doesn’t stop with mere images of absurdity. He takes his exploration further by showing the morning after, and by showing us that life in a “non-judgmental” commune can easily become what one ran away from. A group of navel-gazing post-collegiates searches for purpose by sitting around and talking. Here, Korine depicts a group of people who have reached for their dreams, but only encountered frustration. Many other scenes—sterile, white-clad scientists come to horde away the diseased black sheep, the commune’s talent show is only attended by a handful of people—take this message to the next level. Life in seclusion is far from heaven, and Michael (the other characters are nameless, known only by the celebrities they impersonate) becomes the quiet observer. Even in this very personal commune in Panama, he somehow finds impersonal Paris.

At times, Korine overuses Michael’s voiceover, giving us obvious, rigid, and clichéd answers. However, the images matter more than any awkward dialogue. If a picture is usually worth a thousand words, then the images here represent entire novels. A nun riding a bike jumps from a plane, plummeting round and round in blue expansive sky. On his tiny motorbike, Michael slowly curves around a racecourse. Each of these portraits evokes loneliness, a sense of wonder, and elation. If we were to watch Mister Lonely without sound, we wouldn’t miss a thing.

Korine, known for crossing boundaries and bending rules, has come into his element with Mister Lonely. He uses imagery to explore the complexities of issues that we’ve been taught to think of in binaries. He refuses to stop at the ending, a false conclusion, instead taking us to the morning after. His ever-present close-ups, coupled with shallow depth-of-field, make the story personal and a little suffocating. Nobody would’ve predicted it, but abandoning the Dogme aesthetic certainly didn’t cripple the director. Now, he uses a bevy of tools to mold unspoken almost-stories that burn themselves into the brain. Here’s hoping that we don’t have to wade through another set of dark years before his next film.