“Half-Life” is one of those rare movies where it doesn’t matter how busy you are or what you were thinking about before you started watching it. When the credits start rolling, you just sit there, immobilized, listening to the music in stunned silence. It could quite easily win an Oscar, and I can’t think of a movie more deserving.

Now, the problem with Oscar-worthy movies is that they tend to be difficult to understand. Half-Life is, quite clearly, at least somewhat about the consequences of global warming. But don’t despair, all you Freshman Reading Program veterans who think you’ve heard all you need to hear on that subject. The movie starts from the premise that California is underwater and the air is becoming toxic, but these realities are underplayed in favor of the story of a broken family.

The fact that everyone half-expects the world to end interplays with the world of the Wu family, which is crashing down around them. And in fact, reality becomes quite blurred at times. There is a “Calvin and Hobbes” effect going on with Timothy Wu, whose experiences tend to blur together with his drawings and incredible imagination. Or maybe he’s not imagining it, and he really has powers. In the end, the line between imagination and reality is so blurred that it’s better not to try to figure out what’s really happening.

There is a single story that ties the movie together, but for the first half hour or so, it can be hard to put that together. The beauty is in the visual vignettes: eclipses, a broken stoplight and several lovely dream scenes in animation at once eerily realistic and twisted in unexpected ways.

It all comes together to create not just a movie but an experience. If you do get a chance to see “Half-Life,” don’t try too hard to figure out what’s going on while you’re watching it. There will be plenty to talk about afterward, from homophobia to the environment, from doomed love to the need for control over an unpredictable world. But while it’s going on, just sit back and enjoy the ride.