The Tree of Life

[Brodinski]

The works of Terrence Malick have always been slightly intangible, mystifying and poetic. With their hypnotizing voiceover, heavenly soundtracks, enchanting photography and an almost liturgical tone, Badlands (to a lesser extent), Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World made up for their lack of plot and character development. Would this again be the case for The Tree of Life?

http://www.onlinemovieshut.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/the-tree-of-life-movie-poster.jpg

As far as there's a plot in The Tree of Life, it takes place in a suburban American city during the 1950s. Brad Pitt portrays a loving, but self-loathing father who tries to protect his children from the dangers of life. Jessica Chastain is his wife, who believes that a worthful existence can only be built through kindness and forgiveness. This means that the father follows the path of nature (instinct, self-concern, being tough) whereas the mother has more of a religious outlook on life (if you're good to others, you will lead a good life yourself). Amid that symbolical battle, young Jack (an impressive Hunter McCracken) looks for his place in this world. As he grows older, he ponders the existence of Evil, the role of God in the universe and all of man's ambiguous aspects. Even later in his life (then portrayed by Sean Penn) he's still musing about those questions.

That only would suffice for a good number of philosophy lectures (correct me if I'm wrong, PN), but Terry deemed it necessary to - in seemingly randomn manner - insert sequences about the origin of the world in between those already chronologically cut-up storylines. He shows us the mutation of cells; eruptions of vulcanos, jellyfish in the ocean and even some dinosaurs. The intention of this - I suppose - is that the Tree of Life is a concept that all life on earth can essentially be traced back to one primal element, as long as you go back far enough in time. Everything is intertwined and connected.

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This whole fancy fair is as usual presented through stunning pictures and sequences in which humans only play a peripheral role. Malick cares little about his characters, but rather about the Ideas, Conflicts and Problems that are represented by those characters. The Tree of Life is about Man, not about men. And Malick asks a whole lot of questions about Man in this film. What's the true nature of Man? What exactly in Man's relationship with nature? How can God be interpreted? And if some things we see from God don't fit with our perspective of what God is, is God then bad by definition? And just what does that mean about Man's morality? Can we break free from our primeval instincts? And so on, and so on...

It's too bad that Malick doesn't succeed in connecting those profound questions with the story that he's telling. The images about the origin of the planet are visually spectacular, but also quite hollow and useless. Sean Penn gets a screen time of about 10 minutes and during that time, all he does is look tormented and the questions that the characters ask themselves don't really feel like they make sense in the characters development, but seem to be asked simply because Malick wants to ask them.

http://i.blogs.indiewire.com/images/blogs/theplaylist/archives/brad-pitt-the-tree-of-life-terrence-malick--photo.jpg

And there was a great potential story that lay hidden in The Tree of Life with a GREAT performance from Brad Pitt, arguably his best ever. Because we are told in the beginning of the film that Jack's brother dies at age 19, the entire episode of his childhood (almost 90 % of the film) has this sad, fateful side to it. Loss is a central theme in the film; pictured on the one hand by the mystical force of nature and on the other hand by the inevitable evanescence of life. The film would've been better if Malick had just focused entirely on Jack's childhood instead of zapping back and forth between that episode and the highly unnecessary and random cuts to dino's, vulcano's and Sean Penn.

http://static.muveez.com/media/sean-penn-the-tree-of-life-500.jpg

This is the first time where I got actually annoyed rather than bewondered when watching a Malick film. There is too much that is trying to be told; too many pointless levels and too much spiritual nonsense, so that the film runs the risk of eventually being viewed as trifling and completely adrift. To me, the film just feels like a majestic, giant soap bubble.


And I'm a supporter of Malick's past films, because I don't rate any of them below 3.5. But this time, Terry has struck out completely. I guess that some people will think of this film as a seminal achievement. Others - like myself - will think of it as not only Malick's worst film, but as a painfully bad film, especially considering the potentially great drama that could have been handled much better.


2+

[thegreatone]

Malick cares little about his characters, but rather about the Ideas, Conflicts and Problems that are represented by those characters. The Tree of Life is about Man, not about men. And Malick asks a whole lot of questions about Man in this film.

A very interesting review. Even though you have rated it quite low, your review has spiked my interest in the movie. Thank You.

[wintertriangles]

Great review. Now I'm seeing similarities between how this was perceived and how The Fountain was perceived, though I would say that Malick is more prone to being overtly vague

[Brodinski]

I think there's a good chance of you liking this, winter. I see from your top 10 list that you're a big fan of The Fountain, which indicates to me that you'll like (love?) this one.

[wintertriangles]

We'll see. Some things like this strike me, some don't. Between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, I haven't been emotionally touched at all so...

Still enjoyed those films, but there was something to grab onto. I guess I need to review this myself to shed light on Fountain comparisons.

[meatwadsprite]

Haven't seen any of Malicks other stuff except Badlands. Still think this will be the first movie I shell out money to see in the theatre this year.

[mark f]

I'm a little bit confused. The character eventually played by Sean Penn dies when he's 19? Does that mean that all the Sean Penn scenes are fantasy scenes?

[Brodinski]

My bad. It's Jack's brother who dies. I see that in the review I just typed "Jack" instead of "Jack's brother".

[meatwadsprite]

Sean Penn's real word is our dreamworld. I think thats what this movie is about. Also, trees.

[planet news]

First of all, UNFORGIVABLE SPOILERS in this things, bro. :mad:

Just joshing. Fine work. What can I say, I find your 2/5 fascinating beyond compare, and I want to see this film even more now.

That only would suffice for a good number of philosophy lectures (correct me if I'm wrong, PN) . . .Malick's favorite topic in both film and philosophy is Heidegger's notion of "Worldhood", which is extremely nebulous anyway you put it. To convey it with images and a semblance of story seems even harder, since it is already so hard to grasp the conception through language -- then again, I think there might be merit to this approach, since it is possible that Worldhood could only ever be fully captured in a non-linguistic way...

What you are saying sounds reasonable (just random to the point of alienating). But have you ever seen Zerkalo?

So yeah, I guess I'll just try to apply what strained understanding I have of Heidegger to this film and see if it yields anything more viable than total emotional and intellectual alienation a.k.a. bored to tears.

This is indeed part of the larger discussion about whether or not philosophy and art should become one -- i.e. whether or not art should or even can surpass its primary role of mimesis and actually REFLECT on the world instead of merely presenting it.

p.s. dinos lolwut

[Brodinski]

But have you ever seen Zerkalo?

No.

[Fiscal]

Brodinski, who is the chick always in your avatar?!

[planet news]

Gf?

So yeah, I just found out the film isn't playing in PA anytime soon. Bummer. Massive bummer.

[will.15]

i AN'T EVER GOING TO WATCH THAT.

[planet news]

Your loss.

[meatwadsprite]

June 10th

PHILADELPHIA, PA
Ritz Theaters East, Philadelphia, PA

I get it 16th.

[planet news]

^ used yr list (http://content.foxsearchlight.com/inside/node/4851)

Sonofab*tch. July 8th is when it is wide released nationally. JULY. EIGHTH.

:(

(also something looks open on June 24th, but that could be anything)

[honeykid]

Palme d'Or Winner 'The Tree of Life' finally gets UK release date

The winner of the top prize at the Cannes film festival has finally got a UK release date.

Fox Searchlight announced they will distribute the Terence Malick opus ‘The Tree of Life’, which stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. It’s slated for a July 8 2011 release.

The multi-generational tale of a man trying to come to terms with his complicated relationship with his father, whilst also questioning his faith and the meaning of life, controversially scooped the top prize at Cannes this year.

It had mixed reactions from critics, but still convinced judges it was more worthy than 'Le Havre', the entry from Finnish festival darling Aki Kaurismäki, and the acclaimed 'We Need To Talk About Kevin', directed by Brit Lynne Ramsay and starring John C. Reilly and Tilda Swinton.

The film won the prize despite the reclusive habits of Malick, who took no part in any of the press events at the festival.

Icon had been in charge of distributing the film in the UK, but when the studio announced that it would open in the UK before its Cannes premiere, international distributors Fox Searchlight and Summit International stepped in and Icon lost the rights.

Quite why Icon tried to steal the thunder from the festival screening is still unclear, but when 'The Tree of Life' was awarded the Palme d'Or they must have been kicking themselves.
http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/08062011/35/palme-d-winner-tree-life-finally-gets-uk-release-date-0.html

[Dog Star Man]

This was a wonderful review, and I shared the same thoughts, though my biggest complaint was that the film became a over-the-top reiteration of previous works, so when I was expecting some originality, I felt it was cheap repeat only this time by too much experimentation. (And that's coming from my mouth for god-sake!) It felt as if I was in an argument with someone who has a point, but to deliver the point they have to deliver the message with big words to make themselves sound somewhat more superior. Look, I understand the message, I understand the language, but the argument ultimately becomes a failure in the end to me. Almost like talking oneself into a corner. Glad I'm not the only one here.

[Loner]

Excruciatingly boring.

1

[mark f]

You paid money?

[Loner]

You paid money?

Yes and is that suppose to mean something?

[meatwadsprite]

You liked Thin Red Line and you didn't even dig this, uhhhhh.

[mark f]

Yes and is that suppose to mean something?

Yep. It means you ran right out to see it, you paid money and you thought it stunk. It sounds like 0 for 3.

[Loner]

Yep. It means you ran right out to see it, you paid money and you thought it stunk. It sounds like 0 for 3.

Well I did enjoy the Coca-Cola and Junior Mints.

[igor_is_fugly]

Just saw the movie yesterday, and I totally agree with this review. I think this could have been a great film if only the filmmakers hadn't decided to scramble up the entire story, draw out every single scene about 5 minutes past when it stops being interesting, and if they'd gotten rid of random shots that seem to have no purpose in the film other than just to look pretty. I can handle the shots of trees and planets and what not because they apply to the movie's theme but the mardi gras mask in the ocean? and the whole house underwater/in the desert? A lot of the shots just came off as pointless eye candy to me. The cinematography was fantastic though, I will definitely give it props for that. The acting was also superb, and I agree with this possibly being the best performance of Brad Pitt's career. Unfortunately the cinematography and acting just couldn't make up for the messy final product and I'll be very disappointed when this sweeps the awards this year like I have a feeling it will...

[iluv2viddyfilms]

I think I liked it more than most it seems like, but have a lot of the same issues with the film as the original poster. I rank it a "B" if I had to grade it. Compared to his other work it's below Badlands, The Thin Red Line, and Days of Heaven, and slightly above The New World.

[linespalsy]

I just saw it. I liked most of it quite a bit. Malick's floating cinematic perspective on the world and meditative treatment of emotions is present here in images that strike me as fairly pure and original. Worth seeing on that alone. I can't quite put my finger on it but the ending seemed rushed (and that's even with the 2:20 running time.)

That floating perspective I mentioned? It's present but the unraveling that takes place felt kind of superficial. I guess it's supposed to represent the end of the world, the unravelling of consciousness and narrative or something. Kind of left me cold on first viewing, which I can't say about any of his other movies.

[planet news]

I completely agree with the sentiment about the ending; i.e. superficiality. It didn't lack enough to undermine the rest of the film, which I felt was a total masterpiece, but it definitely didn't gel right as a conclusion to Jack's reflections (a.k.a. the whole film) and, for the audience, a proper denouement for the visual/emotional journey of the film.

The imagery itself wasn't particularly interesting, almost cliched. Especially the stuff with the ladies raising their hands and the underwater room. The gathering on the beach reminded me a bit of 8 1/2 or Big Fish where all the "characters" from the rest of the film "came back" along with strangers and distant memories, though somehow I feel there was more to it here than in those films.
I've been working on an interpretation of the film that I will post shortly if anyone's interested.

[linespalsy]

Yeah post it, I'm interested in reading. I'll probably do what I normally do with Malick's movies. Wait a few years, then watch it again.

[planet news]

Well, this is on the blog too. I don't expect anyone to read it all the way through, but the main ideas are all highlighted. Actually, let me just tell you now: don't read it. If you're going to read it, just read the highlighted bits. Not sure what all that other stuff's about anyway... There're probably a lot of mistakes in it too, because I didn't bother proofreading; I'm kind of sick of seeing it and thinking about the film now, actually. :dizzy:

Might go see it again sometime really soon to try to verify some of the claims made here if my memory became faulty. We'll see.

Two main controversies surround The Tree of Life. First is the daring inclusion of a largely autonomous VFX sequence depicting the birth of the universe, the coagulation of the solar system, the evolution of life on Earth up to the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction, and a brief bookend presaging Earth’s annihilation. Second is the inclusion of a heavily symbolic finale sequence—reminiscent of the coalescence of dream and memory in 8½—which finds scattered precedents towards the beginning of the film and delimits the creation sequence. Both mark entirely new territory for Malick. Whereas his previous films seemed mired in the pure, unfettered presentation of a self-enclosed, human-disclosed world, here Malick takes us beyond the option of worldhood in two temporal directions: both the ancestral and the terminal. For the first time Malick explores the radical contingency of the material universe in the utter absence of any Dasein whatsoever. It is also the first time that, as far as my interpretation will go, Malick attempts to actually picture the scene of Dasein in its primacy as a concept.

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Creation Sequence: a Materialist Reading of Job

It is a wonder that such a scientifically-revealed depiction of creation has taken so long to be integrated into a work of mainstream art, for the technological capability enabling such a depiction has existed for more than a decade. Yet, despite its obviousness, Malick’s bid for its inclusion remains audacious precisely because of its apparent incongruity with the bulk of the film. Though certainly less transparently incorporated into the momentum of an overall narrative, Malick’s move clearly parallels Kubrick’s own prehistoric and cosmic reflections in 2001 and induces much of the same effect (quite possibly, even, for the same goals). What remains unclear is which juxtaposition comes off as more jarring; is it Kubrick’s, with two essentially alien worlds, or is it Malick’s, with worlds both alien and intimate, casually intermixed?

Still, this distinction plays mostly with the intellect. When one takes either Kubrick’s or Malick’s work as a whole, nothing really seems out of place. After time and repeated examination, it slowly becomes clear that—far from being ancillary to what some might see as the true “substance” of the film—these staggering displays of visual splendor are not only crucial to the film’s meaning but also crucially placed.

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Consider the film’s opening idea—recalling the passage when God asks Job, “where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundation . . . while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4-7)—in relation to Malick’s decision to introduce the human element of the film with a shattering, irrational tragedy; that is, the very kind of experience that characterizes Job’s own frustration with God. We find in these opening scenes a distraught Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) asking herself the very same questions that plagued Job. She then starts to receive a slew inadequate condolence from her neighbors like Job does from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. None of these answers seem to satisfy her as none satisfied Job.

What else then is the subsequent interpretation of the natural creation of the universe but that of God Himself coming “out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1), speaking to Job of His indifference to the petition of mortals, His utter transcendence beyond their understanding, and the insolence of any man who dares to explain away His motives so easily? After showing the O’Briens’ grief at the inexplicable, Malick immediately answers their pain in the most direct and powerful way possible. Malick provides us, the audience, with the very same answer that God provides Job, or rather, the authors of the Bible provides their readers. Our lives are just a sliver of the life of God, or—in a secular sense much more appropriate to Malick’s Heideggerianism—our lives are just as violently contingent as the deep history that precedes us and, as shown later on in the film, the vast future ahead.

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Only by retelling the Book of Job in the most honest, materialist way possible can Malick then go on to focus the rest of the film in a worldly or human-meaningful frame. Within the span of a third of the film, Malick situates the entirety of humanity’s existence into a single point within the unfathomable stretches of cosmic time from whence everything we know or will ever know became what it is and will continue to become. Even before his affectionate examination of a particular Dasein through the O’Briens and his figurative portrayal of Dasein’s communal universality through the movement of love—that is, the beach finale—Malick first seeks to humble us, to put us in our place. Not, as Christianity might have it, in a misanthropic way, but through a simple contrast of space and time. We are small and we are brief, he says with these first chapters: do not presume you can understand it all. It is only afterwards that he at last allows us to revel in the beauty of this smallness and brevity in the only sense it bares significance to Dasein.

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Finale Sequence: the Fourfold Root

Even on a purely aesthetic level, the finale sequence of The Tree of Life is difficult to reconcile with the rest of Malick’s otherwise remarkable oeuvre. Especially in relation to the breathtaking grandeur of the majority of The Tree of Life alone, its ending comes off as plain and sometimes even a little silly. If taken as separate works, these nebulous montages—the elder Jack’s (Sean Penn) syncopated journey through multiple desert landscapes, the fully submerged bedroom with a boy swimming through it, Mrs. O’Brien’s radiant reconciliation with God in the presence of several mysterious young ladies, the convergence of Jack’s human relationships both past and present on a beach at sunset—could have called great significance to their own craftsmanship, spiritual affects, and melodic continuity, but here they must take on duties far above a mere aesthetic presentation. Here, they must live up to their subsuming creation.

No one would claim it an easy task to imagine an alternative conclusion tothis filmor, for that matter, to even state the appropriate endpoint to a Malick film, let alone how this should be offered. It is by their pre-reflective, stream-of-consciousness natures that Malick’s films often seem capable of finding conclusion at any number of moments past, say, their midpoint. It all comes off as being extremely dependent on just what he is interested in exploring or how far he is willing to go—how far he is willing to take us. Yet, it is precisely because of this uncertain endpoint that Malick’s audience will ultimately attach so much more import to his specific choices than to a more conventional cinema. And, since The Tree of Life displays Malick’s most liberated form to date, his decisions surrounding its conclusion have carried all that much more weight as crucial to an overall judgment of the already-nebulous (no pun intended) film as a whole; that is, even if the film’s coda is just a semblance of a thought, its consequence proportional to its running time.

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We can return to Malick’s earlier films for signs of precedent. Most relevant is his serene Days of Heaven (1978) and its spatial simplicity of wide, open fields with tiny figures striding upon it. Structurally, this mirrorsthe desert and beach geographies of The Tree of Life‘s finale. Certain location choices for The Thin Red Line also suggest this minimalism. When presented mostly with landscapes arranged like geometric planes and humans as points upon those planes, there already begins to emerge a sense of ontological abstraction. Indeed, correspondences abound between Malick’s spacious mise-en-scène and Heidegger’s fourfold of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities.

In stark contrast with today’s popular postmodernist injunctions toward nomadicism and the overthrowing of identity for a being of constant movement and reinvention (which, incidentally, is a position I have tended to sympathize with as of late), Heidegger seeks the redemption of authentic Dasein through certain focal practices exemplified by a deep, familial collectivity. Earth is, in this sense, a set of vital practices that grounds the rest of our daily life on a background of collective understanding. In many ways, we already experience this understanding or mattering as earth, and there are as many earths as there are contexts for social behavior. Sky then emerges from earth as the set of possible practices built upon or appropriate to the background in question. Although all aspects of the fourfold should be taken relation to us, the mortals, the sky represents our limit as individuals if we are to remain faithful to some identity. Our ability to let go of our identity can then be seen as our ability to die or our mortality.

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Divinity manifest itself not necessarily in religious practices but in a moment where the practices of the earth and sky are functioning in a singularly harmonious interplay between creativity and unity. Dreyfus’s example for divinity in his “Highway Bridges and Feasts”—a fantastic exegesis of Heidegger’s attitudes towards technology—is an experience of union such that one is prompted to wish aloud for the participation of others not present. It does not have to be something particularly momentous; it can be as ordinary an experience as a baseball game, though the entire point behind the name is that, when considering all the factors necessary to make such a divinity possible, such a harmony is nothing short of extraordinary: indeed, divine.

Of course, Malick is certainly not the only filmmaker to depict these sort of practices. Sentimentalists like Ford, Capra, and Spielberg love to fill their works with familial displays of divinity. What distinguishes a film like Days of Heaven or The Thin Red Line is not at all what is being told or shown, but rather how it is done. Malick attempts more than any other filmmaker, either past or present, to display these moments in their very being as moments and not as detailed stages upon which characters have been mapped. The famously “divine” Goodfellas sequences do revel in a kind of familial harmony, but Scorcese’s form is simply too deliberately calculated to capture it in its full glory. The viewer is left instead marveling at Scorcese‘s masterful choreography rather than the primacy of what is being experienced by all the members present in the scene. It is precisely Malick’s extraordinary ability to craft pure presentations of these beautiful materializations of divinities in all of their divinity that singles him out as both the preeminent auteur who is changing the way we understand film and the overly vague, narratively lazy hack that he is occasionally dismissed as.

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What then can be said about Jack’s mysterious encounter in lieu of the fourfold? Could the gathering at the beach be something like a portrait of Dasein itself? Considering Malick’s uncharacteristic, first-time inclusion of a series of strictly irreal images, it is not unreasonable to posit this sequence as the film’s entrance into yet another way of seeing; that is, apart from the rest of the film’s already remarkable way. Whereas the previous portions of the film largely match the verisimilitude associated with Malick’s previous works, here we are taken for the first time into a location of pure fiction: the metaphysical scene of Dasein as a concept, visualized and reified. It is the divine scene of Dasein as a collective being-with-others, the plane of immanence upon which the subjectivity of the subject is constructed, a coalescence of earth and sky, divinities and mortals. Malick shows us a place where the elder Jack is himself just one aspect of his Dasein among many, though not all are equally potent in their manifestation; his parents clearly take the center stage. Always, he says, do they wrestle inside of him.

This is the great genius of Heidegger: the idea that our very subjectivity emerges from the intersubjective interactions of which we are, from birth, forced to take part. What Descartes spells out as the incorrigible subject—the ultimate empirical and ontological abyss: the dark night of the soul—turns out, for Heidegger, to be built upon its very inversion. It is in fact the collective and our socialization into the collective’s earthy, grounding practices that allow us to make sense of the world at all. There is no more apt image of this immediate thrownness into the world than the child swimming out from an underwater room to witness his birth as if already familiar with its recognizable forms. The home—and all the different kinds of equipment that come with it—is indeed the first place most of us happen to find ourselves as we gain the skills to maintain continuity known as ourselves.

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Final Shot: the Bridge

Still, the film’s most interesting connection with the fourfold has yet to be drawn. I am speaking here of the final photographic frame of the film before its dissolve into the mystifying light—a motif mirrored at least once during that film as the reflections of bathwater against a wall—which also began the film. The specific shot in question is of a modern suspension bridge against an orange sky. Again, I defer directly to Heidegger, who has quite a lot to say on bridges. Consider the following passage cited by Dreyfus from Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking”:Ever differently the bridge escorts the lingering and hastening ways of men to and fro . . . The bridge gathers, as a passage that crosses, before the divinities–whether we explicitly think of, and visibly give thanks for, their presence, as in the figure of the saint of the bridge, or whether that divine presence is hidden or even pushed aside.
For Heidegger, a bridge is a kind of simple, technological instrument that can provide a starting point for the sorts focal practices described by the fourfold. One notes that, of the relatively little screen time the elder Jack is given outside of his metaphysically impressionist landscapes, most of that time is spent in silent contemplation of the chilly, angular skyscrapers within which he works. He, like his father before him, designs machines for a living in an environment so sterile that a newly planted tree can prompt a deep reminiscence of his childhood memories, of which we are subsequently so privileged as to witness. This regression is the same longing of the past of Heidegger’s mawkish love for the peasants of the Black Forest. Simply put, it is the longing for divinity; that is, the divinity of the dinner table, of the schoolhouse, of wrestling with brother in the yard, of chasing mother through the house, of acting out with friends . . . Feeling lost among the impersonal world of which he works, Jack longs for these divinities once again, and Malick allows us to experience Jack’s divinities for the first time in relation to our own.

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How then might we reunite the shimmering steel of the suspension bridge with a gathering of fourfold if it is also already hopelessly implicated with the technological fortress that Jack seeks to escape? The postmodern world as exemplified through technology is first and foremost one of dispersion and alienation from identity. This seems immediately opposed to the realization of divinity through the fourfold.

Yet, what is the experience of a bridge but one of brief unification in a world utterly divided, specialized, and estranged from its own constituents as they are from each other? A bridge, by practical necessity and economic calculation alone, is rare among the roads and places it connects. A bridge is always in some sense temporary; no one ever stays on a bridge. One is always traveling over it. The collective, endlessly divergent beforehand, somehow finds a reason to cross that can be embraced across its all of its parts. The postmodern divinity can no longer be found in the harmony of interconnection but the brief unity towards a common goal upon a technological instrument such as a bridge, even if that goal is openness itself.

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Addendum: Heidegger contra Descartes

Consider this section as an initiation to Heidegger for the curious. I myself am scarcely initiated, so please, experts, expect and forgive any unwarranted generalities or gross misreadings!

Heidegger is perhaps the most important figure of 20th century continental philosophy, second only to Nietzsche in terms of influence—for whom Heidegger himself owes a great deal. His innovations parallel those of Wittgenstein in Anglo-Saxon circles, and both philosophers can be seen to mark analogous turning points in the progress of their respective philosophical spheres. Instead of Frege/Russell’s “linguistic turn”, Heidegger returned continental philosophy firmly to the question of being qua being, which had not been, he claimed, seriously addressed since antiquity. From the Eleatics onward, it seemed philosophy had been hopelessly enamored in a metaphysics of presence, a metaphysics which had already assumed too much of being.

The most notable metaphysician of presence is perhaps Descartes himself who famously introduced the ontological split between res cogitans (thinking thing) and res extensa (extended thing). Indeed, it has now become a common tenet of our everyday language to speak of the subjective—whimsically alluded to by Brad Pitt’s character at one point in the film—and the objective, where the object is forever exterior to the subject and enters into a relationship with the subject only through some interior representation. We are, for Descartes, utterly cut off from any direct access to what is commonly phrased as “the outside world”—the most that can be expressed between them is a correlation.

http://cahiersduillusion.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/the-tree-of-life-51.png?w=480&h=264 (http://cahiersduillusion.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/the-tree-of-life-51.png)


What Heidegger has to say here is simple: the subject/object distinction comes in all too late; contrary to Descartes’ apparently fundamental claim of cogito ergo sum, this distinction still does not begin at the beginning. For Heidegger, ontology is not the naming of irreducible or incontrovertible entities but rather the revelation of the very conditions of possibility for this naming. Any metaphysics of presence then already supervenes upon an even more primordial being, one where humans are not isolated souls looking to the outside world but rather local instantiations of that world always already in the world. The exceptionality of human existence (what Heidegger calls Dasein)—as opposed to the being of, say, a rock—lays in our unique ability to take a stance on our own being by rendering intelligible and sensible the world in which we have been embedded through the formation of cultures, language-games or, to bring it back in relation with Descartes, our various intersubjective practices. Whereas traditional views of ontology simply pass over this vital process of world disclosure before being-in-the-world, Heidegger’s new conception of ontology is distinctly focused on the latter.

[iluv2viddyfilms]

My thoughts on the film and a few problems I had with it.

One thing I forgot to say in my review, that I liked about the film, is the context of the narration. Instead of just having the characters narrate into thin air, prayer was used as the purpose for the narration. This did work well for me, so when the eldest child prays to understand the cruelty of life, it has more meaning. Anyway.

The Tree of Life (2011, Terence Malick)

http://davethenovelist.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/the-tree-of-life-jessica-chastain.jpg

I enjoy director Terence Malick's films, but I'm not one of his cult followers who await each new movie of his like the second coming of Christ. In his 40 year career he's only directed five pictures. Two of them are masterpieces, and the others are very good, but no better than any other filmmaker's top film. In The Tree of Life, which is getting a lot of comparison to 2001 - some of it justified, some not so much, the story centers around a father, mother, and their three children. The father is played by Brad Pitt in one of his best performances as a type of strict Ward Cleaver type living in a quaint suburban neighborhood in the 1950s and 60s. It's straight out of a postcard or "The Wonder Years" where the kids have backyards, a dog to run around with, a tree house, and a nearby woods to go exploring in. During these scenes which make up a majority of the film, the narrative really shines. The father is raising his kids the best he can with harsh rules and punishment, the mother is the helpless bystander who is as apt to receive the whip of discipline as the kids are, and the young actor Hunter McCracken plays the eldest and most visible of the three sons.
There is good tension built up during these scenes. One of the reasons is because it has been revealed that the middle son will die when he is 19 years old. We find out early in the film through a telegraph to the mother and a phone call to the father. It's handled nicely and relies on viewer intelligence to make the deduction. We assume the death is during the Vietnam war, but that is never stated, probably because it really doesn't matter. This creates impending doom during the majority of the film when we know the family will face tragedy at some point. It makes the relationship between the eldest and middle son more poignant. Unfortunately the youngest son is only an afterthought and is rarely included in the film.
Like all of Terence Malick's' movies the camera is on dollies and follows the characters around, there is narration, long lingering shots on trees and nature and light being filtered through material. It’s heavy on symbolism, which is fine, but it seems to disrupt from the flow of the story. The middle part of the film is excellent, but the moments with the child grown up as played by Sean Penn linger a bit and the film does not do a great job in connecting the child with the man and how the father influenced him as an adult. I get what the film is going for with the lingering metaphorical ghosts of his father and brother as he lives a somewhat searchful adulthood, but again it’s not handled the best as Malick seems more interested in provided images than creating a narrative or emotions through the characters. A few of these images such as Penn walking around in the desert, or walking along the coast with the waves crashing, and an image of the mother holding her hands up to the sun with the light streaming through are nice, but come across as too pretentious.
Somehow the sequences of the creation of the universe worked with me, but only when I think of them isolated. If the entire film was three hours of that material with beautiful sound I would have been happy, but it feels out of place with the other two sections of the film. The dinosaur bits were a nice touch as it shows what life has evolved from and into, but like most of the film it was disjointed and disconnected. Badlands is Malick’s best film, followed by The Thin Red Line. I don’t know if I could say this is his worst film, as his “worst” film is about as good as any other filmmaker’s best film, but I was a bit disappointed by the lack of humanity in some of the more pretentious and overly symbolic moments.
The reason 2001 works better than this movie is because Kubrick never tried to add humanity in his work. The audience had to find it for themselves, as each character was cold, distant, and dutififul in Space Odyssey. Still the audience's imagination is triggered and emotions are full as we contemplate the meaning of the universe within cold space, and HAL's murderous plotting. The Tree of Life seems like the message is too heavy handed and does too much work by not trusting the audience to find meaning in the message. The worst shot in the film is at the end with the sunlight shining through the hands of the mother. God how I hated that shot. I don't need that forceful symbolism to tell me the universe and life is beautiful. It undermines me as a viewer.

Grade: B-

[Darren Aronofsky]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OiEFKSqcAwc/TntI_48ayPI/AAAAAAAAD00/Kx02iRrPL2k/s320/tree-of-life-poster-2011-a-p_0.jpg (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OiEFKSqcAwc/TntI_48ayPI/AAAAAAAAD00/Kx02iRrPL2k/s1600/tree-of-life-poster-2011-a-p_0.jpg)

Director by Terrence Malick


The story centers around a family with three boys in the 1950s. The eldest son witnesses the loss of innocence (plot).

An incoherent mass of visual beauty.. i have been waiting a long time to see this film for many reason first my favorite actor Sean Penn secondly Mr Malick and the Magnificence poster !.

Malick does not leave it up to the audience to figure out the meaning of this film revealing it in the opening minutes of the film, this film Directed for a very high branch on the cinematic tree.

The film explores the notion that everyone faces the choice between nature and grace as a path through life. Struggle or compromise. Cunning or tolerance.

Without spoilers words this film was great experience for me, great cinematographer, music, acting by Brad Pitt and the little boy, the opening scene and the epilogue of the film was great carry a lot of emotions.


4/5

[linespalsy]

There's already a thread for discussing/reviewing The Tree of Life HERE (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?t=25681&highlight=tree+life).

[Skepsis93]

There's already a thread for discussing/reviewing The Tree of Life HERE (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?t=25681&highlight=tree+life).

It's technically a review though, right?

[MovieMan8877445]

It's technically a review though, right?

The other thread is a thread for the reviews of it.

[Linus41]

Definately must see this movie. Greets

[nicky01]

Interesting review about the movie. I've enjoyed this great release movie. I never suppose it to be so good and don't go watch this movie on it's release. But when I've heard really good review about the tree of life movie from my friends. I directly go get download this movie, to watch it at my own leisure. I like it's story and stuffs. it's an another good release movie of the year for me and i've restore this movie collection to watch it over again.

[PJ_Movies]

Based on your movie review I have to expect a barrel in my mouth after watching the film. I'm probably going to do it anyway. Every great actor participates in at least one barrel sucker in their career. This is Brad Pitts what...3rd.

Anyway, I love the Adam and Eve story and anything titled The Tree of Life gets a click from me. But...You can immediately discern the mood of the movie by the image of the Tree (with it's innocent little ladder). On second thought maybe I'll skip it. we'll see.

[Powdered Water]

This was a tough movie to watch. I have little doubt that it will win many awards. I hope it doesn't win Best Picture, but it wouldn't surprise me. I pretty much agree with almost the entire opening review of the film but I'm more on par with Loner's rating.

Almost effing un-watchable. 1

[Gregory Wood]

All valid points, but i just can't help but love this film. It reminded me of 2001: A space Odyssey.

[Tyler1]

This was a tough movie to watch. I have little doubt that it will win many awards. I hope it doesn't win Best Picture, but it wouldn't surprise me. I pretty much agree with almost the entire opening review of the film but I'm more on par with Loner's rating.

Almost effing un-watchable. 1

I'm afraid i would have to agree with you as well. The narrative is really bad. 2001 makes you think. This one is a brain-freeze.

This is one movie that i will never watch again.

[JormaVonTrier]

I think Tree of Life had very much potential but the director messed it up big time. Would not be anything larger than life, but a very nice film. Now it is a complete mess that just makes you cringe when watching it. Shame.

[filmgirlinterrupted]

Complete bantha fodder. I almost walked out of the theater. 1

[HitchFan97]

Visually marvelous, Malick deserves a Best Director nomination at the very least, but it was somewhat boring. It was trying to be a poignant drama and a 2001 homage at the same time; that's not exactly a formula that guarantees success.

3

[Warren'sShampoo]

I'm afraid i would have to agree with you as well. The narrative is really bad. 2001 makes you think. This one is a brain-freeze.

This is one movie that i will never watch again.

I'd argue that a substantive film and/or one by a significant director is always worthy of a second look, even if that second look comes years down the line. Sometimes a movie that seemed unimpressive the first time will be better appreciated after a second or third screening, whereas a film that appeared impressive initially will fail to withstand the scrutiny of a second showing.

And I'd argue that The Tree of Life is quite thought-provoking as a subversive critique of the American Dream, especially as presented in the paradigmatic ideal of small town 1950s Americana (Texas, no less). The correlative and revisionist explorations of family, fatherhood, and masculinity are also intellectually challenging. In short, Malick probes and deconstructs the normative notions and nostalgia that we usually take for granted in this society and culture, yet he avoids demonization or caricature. The film may be problematic in certain respects, but both aesthetically and thematically, The Tree of Life proves vivid and resonant.

[Powdered Water]

See, I really didn't get that Warren. I thought while watching the film, that some of those things you mentioned are some of the things I may be "supposed to be thinking about", but the film was so vague and garbled that I just couldn't be bothered to dig too deeply.

Your point about second looks is valid, of course, but not always a winner either. I've tried more than once to re-visit films I dislike (Citizen Kane in particular) and most of the time I still struggle. Sometimes a first impression is a good one, I reckon. Not to dismiss your idea entirely. There have been some that I've found respect for and even come to enjoy.

[Warren'sShampoo]

I think Tree of Life had very much potential but the director messed it up big time. Would not be anything larger than life, but a very nice film. Now it is a complete mess that just makes you cringe when watching it. Shame.

... you mean, "makes me cringe." Malick did not shoot and structure the film in a way that would be amenable or pleasing to mass audiences (especially in Hollywood-conditioned America), but then he never intended to do so, either.

[Warren'sShampoo]

See, I really didn't get that Warren. I thought while watching the film, that some of those things you mentioned are some of the things I may be "supposed to be thinking about", but the film was so vague and garbled that I just couldn't be bothered to dig too deeply.

Your point about second looks is valid, of course, but not always a winner either. I've tried more than once to re-visit films I dislike (Citizen Kane in particular) and most of the time I still struggle. Sometimes a first impression is a good one, I reckon. Not to dismiss your idea entirely. There have been some that I've found respect for and even come to enjoy.

Ironically, Citizen Kane constitutes one of those movies that I failed to warm to upon my initial viewing, but that I then found amazing with a second screening.

With The Tree of Life, I suspect that the film lost or numbed you early and you never "recovered," so to speak. Malick took that risk with his unorthodox photographic and editing choices and his temporal and lyrical approach to narrative, but he arguably created a memorable movie as a result. Obviously, the operative word is "arguably."

[Warren'sShampoo]

Like all of Terence Malick's' movies the camera is on dollies and follows the characters around, there is narration, long lingering shots on trees and nature and light being filtered through material. It’s heavy on symbolism, which is fine, but it seems to disrupt from the flow of the story. The middle part of the film is excellent, but the moments with the child grown up as played by Sean Penn linger a bit and the film does not do a great job in connecting the child with the man and how the father influenced him as an adult. I get what the film is going for with the lingering metaphorical ghosts of his father and brother as he lives a somewhat searchful adulthood, but again it’s not handled the best as Malick seems more interested in provided images than creating a narrative or emotions through the characters. A few of these images such as Penn walking around in the desert, or walking along the coast with the waves crashing, and an image of the mother holding her hands up to the sun with the light streaming through are nice, but come across as too pretentious.
Somehow the sequences of the creation of the universe worked with me, but only when I think of them isolated. If the entire film was three hours of that material with beautiful sound I would have been happy, but it feels out of place with the other two sections of the film. The dinosaur bits were a nice touch as it shows what life has evolved from and into, but like most of the film it was disjointed and disconnected.


I enjoyed the creation-of-the-planet and development-of-life-on-earth scenes and sequences early in the film. Not only were they visually gorgeous, mesmerizing, abstractly curious, and ironically poignant, but they helped set the tone for many of the film's meditations: fate and fatalism, the fragility of life, the primacy of nature and the primal nature that informs human behavior, and the smallness of humanity amidst the universe's and planet's grand continuum of time, space, and living organisms. I felt less positive, however, about Malick's laborious return to this type imagery late in the film, after the narrative proper concludes. Perhaps I'll prove more appreciative upon a second viewing and I understand the attraction of circular construction, but I felt that Malick had already made the point and he didn't need to return to it so excessively. In doing so, he may have disrupted the film's momentum and coda, but one may also be inclined to grant him more leeway because throughout the film, he has been challenging artistic boundaries or conventions.

The reason 2001 works better than this movie is because Kubrick never tried to add humanity in his work. The audience had to find it for themselves, as each character was cold, distant, and dutififul in Space Odyssey. Still the audience's imagination is triggered and emotions are full as we contemplate the meaning of the universe within cold space, and HAL's murderous plotting. The Tree of Life seems like the message is too heavy handed and does too much work by not trusting the audience to find meaning in the message.

I feel that the connections to 2001 are rather superficial. In The Tree of Life, humanity is central to the film's concerns, as opposed to constituting some gratuitously sentimental addendum. Yes, Malick utilizes (perhaps indulges) in abstract and cosmic imagery reminiscent of 2001, but for a very different purpose.

[Powdered Water]

Wish I could say the same. I've sat through Citizen Kane three times now and I get colder after every viewing. Sometimes guys just make movies for themselves and could care less if anyone "gets" it. Did Malick do that here? Maybe. Probably. I don't really care. I may try to watch this again someday, but I gotta be honest. There's just too many movies I want to watch out there and to force myself to sit through a film again that I already really don't like just seems totally pointless.

[Warren'sShampoo]

Wish I could say the same. I've sat through Citizen Kane three times now and I get colder after every viewing. Sometimes guys just make movies for themselves and could care less if anyone "gets" it. Did Malick do that here? Maybe. Probably. I don't really care. I may try to watch this again someday, but I gotta be honest. There's just too many movies I want to watch out there and to force myself to sit through a film again that I already really don't like just seems totally pointless.

... probably. Some filmmakers are inherently that way, and in those cases, the inclination would likely be even stronger in their senior years. Since I'm planning on jumping into the J. Edgar thread later in the day, here's a relevant quotation.


Film

The Films Are for Him. Got That?

By BRUCE HEADLAM
Published: December 10, 2008

CARMEL, Calif. ... He claims not to care deeply about awards. When asked whom he makes films for, Mr. Eastwood said, “You’re looking at him.” ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/movies/14head.html?pagewanted=all (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/movies/14head.html?pagewanted=all)

With Malick, meanwhile, the answer probably doesn't need articulation.

[Warren'sShampoo]

It's too bad that Malick doesn't succeed in connecting those profound questions with the story that he's telling. The images about the origin of the planet are visually spectacular, but also quite hollow and useless. Sean Penn gets a screen time of about 10 minutes and during that time, all he does is look tormented and the questions that the characters ask themselves don't really feel like they make sense in the characters development, but seem to be asked simply because Malick wants to ask them.

This is the first time where I got actually annoyed rather than bewondered when watching a Malick film. There is too much that is trying to be told; too many pointless levels and too much spiritual nonsense, so that the film runs the risk of eventually being viewed as trifling and completely adrift. To me, the film just feels like a majestic, giant soap bubble.
2+

I think that the images and questions are obliquely relevant and resonant, largely for the themes that I cited in post #50. But Malick's idiosyncratic manner in this film manages to be both stylized and naturalistic, abstract and phenomenological, objective and intimate, sentimental and detached. These impulses aren't necessarily contradictory, but they don't conventionally occupy the same space, thus alienating many viewers. Yet although I don't know if The Tree of Life is a "masterpiece" or "great" or whatever, I do find it memorable, both intellectually and viscerally. It fails to fade as readily as most movies.

[Arequipa]

Almost a great movie. Two beers for me.
Verdict: The Tree of Life is definitely a film of its own accord and will draw you in whether you understand it or not. The performances are great, the directing is unique, and the visuals are astounding. It may not be your cup of tea if films that don’t follow the typical linear storytelling method aren’t your thing, but it’s a film that’s worth seeing and contemplating your own beliefs with.

[leibermovies]

I don't know about you guys, but I was thoroughly enthralled the whole way through! I really don't quite get how this movie was boring. Like, I was getting constant shivers, leaning forward in my seat, just captivated.

I'm a major sucker for high-quality cinematography, and this had some of the best ever. Maybe that's why I was crazy for this. I was also addicted to sifting through the philosophical/religious imagery and figuring out exactly what Malick was trying to say.

Second viewing was equally awesome.

[nebbit]

Had to really force myself to watch this to the end :bored:

[Popcorn and Candy]

There have been a lot of adjectives used to vouch for this movie's genius, but I'm not convinced. Or maybe they too are over my head.

[nebbit]

There have been a lot of adjectives used to vouch for this movie's genius, but I'm not convinced. Or maybe they too are over my head.
Must be over mine too :yup: Maybe its one of those movies that gets better the more times you see it ;)

[sunny4ever]

I thought I was out there all by my lonesome in giving this one a couple of stars.

I always wanted to grasp the meaning of self-indulgence as used by Simon Cowell on American Idol. This movie was self-indulgent. I felt like I was cornered at my auntie's house and forced to look at photographs of an old vacation.

Malik tried to carry us along as he figured out the two ultimate questions, "Where do we come from?" and "Does life have a purpose?". Using well known internet photography and familiar sound scapes. Malik wasted a considerable chunk of my time trying to answer questions, when I have gotten the answer from Jehovah's Witnesses with less pain.

I have no problem with minimalism. I love movies that direct your imagination and let you fill in the blanks. But Malik took minimalism far beyond where he needed to go. If it was my job to do that much work constructing a movie, I could have done that at home without buying a ticket to this movie.

A far better minimalist movie that did achieve answering "Where do we come from?" and "Does life have a purpose?", while throwing in "Is there true forgiveness in this world?" would be ANOTHER EARTH, written by and starring Britt Marling. Albeit low budget, this movie was much more captivating (yes, the Science was awkward, but I forgave them).

I do not get all the HIGH BROW fawning over The Tree Of Life. I just don't.

Help me please!

[sunny4ever]

Grade: B-[/quote]
I have to get use to this web space.

I did not get that the son who died was the second son. Nor did I get that he died in Viet Nam. I could have missed that through the confusion. However, it appeared to me that the death was a suicide and "which son die" was left open. Am I alone in this thinking?

[tomas12343]

I think that I would have more fun sticking forks in my eyes than watching this movie...I mean I am all in for clever movies,but that was just painful!

[wintertriangles]

I think we can do better than youtube quality comments

[honeykid]

Well, you say that.... :D

[Cenydd Ros]

The optical effects supplied with the help of Douglas Trumbull (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0874320/) were beautiful, yet the digital effects (namely the dinosaurs) were disappointing and clashed with the otherwise stunning level of craft.

Overall, I thought the film could have been much better in its narrative. The idea was good. The film craft was largely excellent.

[slestack11]

This movie was pretty horrible in my opinion. I really think that Sean Penn thinks it is ingenious and Terrance Malick should be praised, but in reality, he (Penn) is an idiot.

[wintertriangles]

What does Penn have to do with the movie? He had a really small part in it, his opinion shouldn't matter.

[nebbit]

Maybe Sean thinks it does :bored:

[cinemaafficionado]

I've been putting this movie off asI heard it's really slow, but having seen Days Of Heaven, Badlands, Thin Red Line, and New World, I'm sure the cinematography is exceptional, so I'll put in my two cents, after I see the movie.

[Zartha]

Great review! Not sure if I still want to see it.

[TylerDurden99]

I loved this movie. Stunning visuals and excellent performances made up for the underdeveloped primary story thread. There were some pointless shots and sequences, but unlike many others, I was astounded by the Origin of the World sequence. I would've loved to see it win an Oscar. Oh well.

[HitchFan97]

I thought some scenes were a bit too slow, but the Origin of the World sequence definitely was not one of them. I was blown away by that part, probably the highlight of the film.

[alby]

Who else thought you were watching Planet Earth?

[Sedai]

Why, is the movie shot from space? ;)

[Powderfinger]

I didn't get it at all :rolleyes:

[wintertriangles]

I didn't get it at all :rolleyes:No elaboration will not allow anyone help you.

[TheUsualSuspect]

The creation of the Earth were the most fascinating moments and I liked all the scenes with Brad Pitt, but I can't help but come to the conclusion that Malick needs a writer desperately.

He's a painter, he paints his films beautifully, but in the end they all feel hollow for some reason. Very cold and distant, even for a film about life. There's no coherent story to be found, just random images put together to form some kind of narrative structure. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, the film does run long and I can't help but pick out numerous scenes that could have been left on the cutting room floor.

Masterpiece? Pretentious? Yes, both, everything.

It's a film that reminds me of 2001. Beautiful, has a deeper meaning, but feels empty.

I mentioned in another thread of mine that if I could only save ten films, this would make the list. Just so that people can see it, cause it does need to be seen.

3.5

[Powderfinger]

To be honest, I actually stopped watching it after 1 hour.

[nebbit]

Who else thought you were watching Planet Earth?
http://i492.photobucket.com/albums/rr285/croatoan5376/Emoticons/smiley_emoticons_seb_buchstaben_spa.gif

[HitchFan97]

Totally agree with TUS on this one.

[ollanik]

Really great film,visual masterpiece.

[Austruck]

Well, I just accidentally watched this film on a premium channel tonight. That's two hours I'll never get back.

Sorry, but the word that jumped into my mind (after "Kubrick?") within the first ten minutes was "pretentious." I don't know anything about Malick and frankly, I shouldn't need to know anything about the director to "get" a film.

As for the comment in this thread about directors making movies for themselves: As a writer I find this attitude amusing. I mean, if I want to write for myself, I'll write in a journal. If I publish thousands of copies and charge people money for it, then I'm no longer writing for myself.

Same here: If a director is putting together a major motion picture and then distributing it to theaters for people to pay hard-earned money to see it, he's NOT making it for himself, is he? Because otherwise he could simply make one copy and watch it in his home theater somewhere in L.A.

Having said that, I just couldn't get with the program. Sorry, all you philosophy majors and Malick fans out there. Within minutes I got the whole "yes, we're small and insignificant and look how awesome and huge the earth is, etc. etc. etc." The longer that sequence went on (oh, look, dinosaurs, what a shock! where are the apes with the monolith?), the more annoyed I got (despite the lovely images). I watch a movie to see a story told. If I want to watch awesome photography of earth, I'll watch the National Geographic Channel.

I started to wonder if Malick had to pay his writer based on how many words of dialogue he used and was trying to save money to pay for his awesome dinosaur and explosion shots. Sean Penn's world couldn't have gotten more sterile if they'd hosed off the footage with Clorox. Yesss, we get it. Move on... And setting the main focus of his point (well, the human aspects of his point) in the 1950s seemed irrelevant to me. This isn't how people act today. I get that this is how some people were raised and weaned -- myself included, having grown up in the 1960s -- but the setting and time period gave that whole sequence a sort of cliched quality to it, since we ALL know what the '50s were like, right? (Stereotypes, anyone?)

I realize I'm writing this right after seeing the movie, and I'm still pissed that I got sucked in to watch the whole thing (I was stunned into continuing to watch it, hoping against hope for an actual story with characters I'd care about, but frankly, I never really did).... This clouds this post. I admit that.

But seriously, I feel as if I'm the whistle-blower in The Emperor's New Clothes.

Once a movie's STORY becomes this inaccessible and ceases to be an actual story, it's lost me. The parts with actual people and characters was so small, insignificant, and unmoving that it mostly irked me. Bravo, Malick! Your point that we're insignificant was so well played that I didn't give a rip about these people. Why should I? They're only a blip on the huge radar screen of the history of mankind.

Do we have a graphic for a single kernel of popcorn? Preferrably the one that didn't pop right?

[mark f]

I didn't hate the film at all, but I'm used to what Malick can do, although this goes far overboard from anything else he has done in an abstract way. Even so, I believe it's worth watching for people to make up their own minds with the caveat that if you don't like "plotless" or self-important movies then you should steer clear. However, all the reasons you loathe it are the same onesfor which it was lauded and why some love it so much. People go to movies for different reasons, now more than ever. Some very smart MoFos don't like conventional films and hate those in English even more, so maybe Malick was trying to make a non-English-language film by having so little dialogue. Even so, I plan on rewatching it again because I know I missed some things.

Also, I realize that you seem to have problems with 2001 but the only similarities I find with the films are that they cover an enormous length of history. Kubrick's film is told chronologically, has a plot and makes sense, at least to me. Malick's is more open to multiple explanations because it's more difficult to grasp its intentions than what you or I may seem to think. If you believe they also share boredom, that's your opinion, but that's exactly what it is.

[nebbit]

I don't have problems with Kubrick but Malick and this movie I did :yup:

[Austruck]

Yes, precisely. I didn't mind 2001 very much at all, although I think I was far too young the first time I saw it. I've rewatched it in recent years (more than once) and I really "get" stuff I just didn't get when I was a teenager watching it (back when the most awesome filmmaker to me was Mel Brooks, ha ha).

There is definitely a plot and characters and a story arc in 2001 that all seem to be missing from The Tree of Life. Malick's human story elements were trite and dull to me, and they only seemed more so when juxtaposed with the gargantuan, epic shots of the entire history of creation. The juxtaposition didn't make humanity seem insignificant to me in the way Malick must have intended: It just made these particular characters seem shallow and irksome and their story uninteresting.

Malick should have found a way to make that general point about humanity without actually boring his audience in the process. My two cents ... which, with another five bucks, will get you a decent cup of coffee.

[swishy]

I don't think that Malick was trying to address the origins of our planet. There's two types of viewers here... those of us who watched the film, reminisced about our own childhood a bit and wept... and then those who saw dinosaurs and questioned the filmmaker's intent.

[Guaporense]

The Tree of Life is one of the worst movies ever made. Tarkovsky would spit on it if he were alive. Also, the comparisons between The Tree of Life and 2001 make no sense at all, these two movies are completely different beside the use of long takes, attempts of "epicness" and the use of grandiose classical music as soundtrack.

[Deadite]

Totally brilliant film. Loss of innocence, emergence and development of empathy, ultimately ending with the barest implication of wisdom's beginning... and a glimpse into the sublimest connection of all.

[mark f]

The Tree of Life is one of the worst movies ever made. Tarkovsky would spit on it if he were alive.
Then he'd be an unsanitary jerk.

[Mr Minio]

Tarkovsky would spit on it if he were alive.
Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.
I find poetic links, the logic of poetry in cinema, extraordinarily pleasing. They seem to me prefectly appropriate to the potential of cinema as the most truthful and poetic of art forms. Certainly I am more at home with them than with traditional theatrical writing which links images through the linear rigid logical development of plot. That sort of fussily correct way of linking events usually involves arbitrarily forcing them into sequence in obedience to some abstract notion of order. And even when this is not so, even when the plot is governed by the characters, one finds that the links which hold it together rest on a facile interpretation of life's complexities.


I wouldn't be so sure.

[Lucas]

This film left me cold. It is very ambitious and I don't hate it. But i certainly don't love it and frankly I thought it was a waste of time. I loved the creation of earth sequence, but it's nowhere near as fantastic and thought provoking as 2001. Meh

[bluedeed]

I wouldn't be so sure.

Andrei Tarkovsky uses this forum!?!?

But really. To call The Tree of Life one of the worst films of all time is to completely deny that the film, while maybe not successful for you, attempts a unique and very cinematic vision. Whether you agree with any of the content or not, it's something very cinematic and untranslatable into another medium. Remember, "Cinema is a matter of what's inside the frame, and what's out" - Martin Scorsese. Malick's film founds itself on the concept of making logical connections due to the way that shots are edited and composed, and sometimes emotional ones. The Tree of Life is at least a film, with a comprehensive understanding and experimental approach to the medium. You can't deny that there are a massive number of films that are much less cinematic, or have a lack of understanding of how to shoot and edit a movie. Regardless of content, unlike a great number of films released today, it is a film.

[Mr Minio]

Andrei Tarkovsky uses this forum!?!?.

Nope, he "posted" these thoughts in his book Sculpting In Time.

[bluedeed]

Nope, he "posted" these thoughts in his book Sculpting In Time.

His book? Sounds like a hipster.

[Rikki Tikki Tavi]

Disgusting, i was almost sick, possibly the most pretentious self - absorbed film ever made

[Rikki Tikki Tavi]

Bluedeed I understand what your saying, it is A film and has cinematic quality, but that's all, in a way it makes me dislike it more, save for the big bang sequence (shoulda just been that)

I now feel slightly nauseus just from recalling this film.

[Lucas]

@dvd 29 I agree with you man. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Other than the beautiful photography the movie is pretty empty. Almost Completely hollow. It's not a bad movie,but it was a drag to watch, that's for sure.

[Daniel M]

Sad to see so many people hated the film, disappointed with the amount of comments in here from people who fail to even appreciate the film on at least one level and give it totally undeserved ratings. For me, this is a great film, when I first watched it I appreciated it more than flat out enjoying it, but another viewing I enjoyed it's beauty much more, it's a powerful and moving film that I think in many years to come may be regard in a true masterpiece :)

[Rikki Tikki Tavi]

Thanks NBAluke nice to know not just me., yes so empty, they tried too much and failed, theres something called subtlety the makers of that film no nothing of, eugh i hated it, never again, even if i sense something remotly similiar i,ll back away, so very pretentious

[bluedeed]

Thanks NBAluke nice to know not just me., yes so empty, they tried too much and failed, theres something called subtlety the makers of that film no nothing of, eugh i hated it, never again, even if i sense something remotly similiar i,ll back away, so very pretentious

Would you feel that the film was less pretentious and more subtle if not for the creation of the universe and birth of consciousness parts?

[Rikki Tikki Tavi]

Would you feel that the film was less pretentious and more subtle if not for the creation of the universe and birth of consciousness parts?

Ive been thinking about this and the films not that fresh in my mind but id say NO the creation parts were good, the big bang part felt like a film within a film, it is all the rest thats pretentious, theres only so many time you want to see a close up of a hand brushing someones cheek, and the whole feel of the film felt remote and far away and sombre, it didnt touch me in any way, like it so desperatly wanted to.

[Thursday Next]

It's taken me a while to get round to watching this.

It is interesting, visually, in the sense that it's portrayed as a sort of montage of memories (and dreams) of the main character, impressions of life, and I thought it was successful in portraying impressions of a 1950s childhood, well acted by the main child actor and Pitt.

With the scene on the beach, I wondered whether the whole film was intended as his life flashing before his eyes before dying (although if this is the case, why start it in the way it was started, why include nothing from his later life?).


It's too bad that Malick doesn't succeed in connecting those profound questions with the story that he's telling. The images about the origin of the planet are visually spectacular, but also quite hollow and useless. Sean Penn gets a screen time of about 10 minutes and during that time, all he does is look tormented and the questions that the characters ask themselves don't really feel like they make sense in the characters development, but seem to be asked simply because Malick wants to ask them.

I think this hits the nail on the head. This film doesn't feel 'joined up'.

The scenes of space and cells were nice to look at, but unless Malik went up on the hubble telescope, he can't really take credit for them, and he hasn't even done a good job of making them relevant to the human story. (Which is in itself barely a story.)

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.

2.5