I'm thinking about it. Was it good? I've gotten mixed reviews so far.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

I'm thinking about it. Was it good? I've gotten mixed reviews so far.


Yes, it's now one of my favorite Malick films; if not my favorite.

ARRRRGH, it doesn't open in Toronto until the 10th. Stupid Canada!

>> ^Sarzy:

ARRRRGH, it doesn't open in Toronto until the 10th. Stupid Canada!


I don't want to give anything away, but Rosebud is the sled.

SPOILER ALERT

Seriously, do not read further if you don't want the movie spoiled. You've been warned.

Here are my thoughts to kick this off. Today I'm a different audience goer than I was when I was first introduced to Malick's films. I remember seeing Thin Red Line in the theaters and thinking, yeah it's good but I like Saving Private Ryan more. Mainly because TRL didn't have much of a traditional 3 Act plot. Back then I also hated pretentious movies. Today I still dislike them, but not as much. I do dislike them when I feel the filmmaker is trying to outsmart me, or worse purposely trying to confuse me hoping I'll think the film is smart if I don't understand it.

This isn't the case with Malick. His films always seem genuine. As for Tree of Life, the critiques have been incredibly harsh and the one word used to describe it over and over is pretentious. In Cannes, where he won the Palme d'Or, the film was apparently met with both boos and cheers. Some have even eviscerated it for being preachy and overtly Christian. The title itself is a reference to the tree in the Garden of Eden found in both Genesis and Revelations.

I think we've become too cynical towards Christianity and religion in general. It's easy to politicize it and dismiss a very important mythology that can stand opposite of science. His reference to the tree of life, in my opinion, is a reference to creation and destruction. To beginning and ending. It's a metaphor for individual life as it is blinked into existence and then blinked right back out again. A transcendental metaphor that's smartly weaved in Malick's film. And it's not meant to preach the gospel of the bible, but to educate us on the mythology surrounding life and death.

He starts with a quote from Job that's essentially the part after god has tested Job and taken everything from him, and he speaks to Job directly after Job questions him, and god says (paraphrasing here) where were you when I created everything. In other words, Job asks "why me" or more specifically to the film "why didn't you intervene", and Job tried his entire life to make his existence what he wanted it to be, which for him was that of a pious one devoted to god. Then god smites him for no good reason outside of a game he plays with satan. When Job asks why, god answers by rhetorically questioning why Job didn't intervene when he was building the universe. It's not that he's asking why Job didn't help, but the futility of asking why things happen, as if there's no reason to it. As if life exists with loss and gains, and you have to affirm it as such. There is no why.

That's a great way to look at the film. The first hour or so takes us through a familial setup where we see a young boy's family in the 60s and his modern family today, both of which are experiencing suffering and loss, and both are questioning why, and then we see from god's perspective the size and wonder of the chaotic universe (and presumedly its creation) juxtaposed with the individual suffering of this one family. A dangerous universe. We see how all life has suffered through history (specifically focusing on the dinosaurs in the film at one point). It's all incidental. It's all without reason. It just happens, and we must affirm life this way.

Later in the film it focuses more on the 1960s family, and specifically from the perspective of one of the sons. His mother (Jessica Chastain) coddles him and his brothers while his father (Brad Pitt) is a phlegmatic and hard-nosed authoritarian that keeps his emotional distance - both the embodiment of being affected by passion and fear and emotion. At one point one of the sons dies. The boy we experience the movie through is always questioning why. He asks his mom why she couldn't save his brother. After a life of living under his father's violent authority, he asks why his father doesn't just kill him or kick him out. He suffers and then he questions why he's suffering, and then there's moments where he questions his own choices why he doesn't do things to ease that suffering - for instance at one point he considers dropping the car on his father who is working underneath it (effectively wiping out of existence one source of his suffering).

At one point in the film I felt as if Malick gave us a sneak peak at his intention for the film's message. At one point someone says something to effect of, "We should be good to everyone we come into contact with." This is the salient point. We can't control the suffering. We can't control the despair. Life comes with loss and bad things happen. We have to affirm it as such and make our moments as happy as possible, and also make the moments of other people's (and creatures') lives as happy as possible because they're experiencing the same kinds of suffering that you and me are experiencing. They, too, are incidental.

Malick truly demonstrates this point, I think, when he shows the boys strapping a frog to a rocket and sending it up into the sky. They added to the suffering of that creature even though they themselves are suffering. They didn't touch that creatures life in a way that enriched it, they only added to its suffering - and there was no justice, no penance. Their actions were considered incidental. At most they could be punished by their parents, but nothing intervened to stop them. Their actions were allowed to happen. In the end, I think that's the point of the movie. That we should remind ourselves that we have precious few moments on this earth, and instead of questioning why and giving into bad emotional cues (fear and anger) and acting out on those bad impulses, we should enjoy those few moments and ensure that we make them for those around us (animal and human alike) good as well. It's the classic path to enlightenment that surrounds the story of the Fall (Garden of Eden) where in order to get back into the Garden we must all transcend fear and desire. We must affirm life with suffering.

Anyhow, that's my two cents. Use it to buy a stick of gum.

[/nerd]

sean penn makes me frown

Long, slow, boring, massive tangents, non-sensical jumps around in time, preachy, plotless... I could go on.

Look, I have no problem with people who want to make films like this, but as a lover of the traditional three act Hollywood style, I just want somebody to warn me! Do I have to memorize the director's names to see through the marketing hype? Or should I just assume that any film that wins an award at Cannes is something I should avoid?

>> ^MaxWilder:

Long, slow, boring, massive tangents, non-sensical jumps around in time, preachy, plotless... I could go on.
Look, I have no problem with people who want to make films like this, but as a lover of the traditional three act Hollywood style, I just want somebody to warn me! Do I have to memorize the director's names to see through the marketing hype? Or should I just assume that any film that wins an award at Cannes is something I should avoid?


Most people who see Malick's name knows the film may lean toward the philosophical, but TOL was by far his most abstract film to date. I loved it (for reasons mentioned above), and I don't typically like films without a classic 3 Act narrative.

First off I think its a beautifully shot film. The use of natural light in all the scenes. The space stuff that was just incredible.

But it's flawed and lacking in ambition.

I understand Malick was essentially channeling his childhood, his brother a guitar player went to Spain and committed suicide. Much of the shots of his childhood and mother are very influenced about how we remember events, the slight of hands, the lack of narrative for purely idealized scenes.

I think treating his parents in such clear cut lines diminishes the impact for me, the father is abusive but there is only one film to really show that. Some scenes of the kids succedding at school to then not being acknowledged by the father could have helped here. His mother is essentially an atypical angelic character which is just lazy.

I understand what he was trying to do, I understand the sincerity which alot of people mistook for prentious. But I don't think it builds up a very defined picture of the family, the lead child especially lacks any dimensionality, seems to be constantly brooding.

There are alot of unnecessary scenes as well. Whole sections dedicated to the kids playing that go on for too long. It felt like he shot much more and then cut around stuff so much feels disjointed. But this could be deliberate as well since this is like recollection of memories by Sean Penn. But it doesn't travel in time, so my weird assumption by the end is that everyone died at one point. I would have liked more time phases. But it looks like he focused specifically on time period.

The ending is the worst, where it just jumping into straight Judeo Christianic scenes. The dinosaurs?? Why? What did add? I wanted to laugh when I saw it.

Favourite moment, the child playing guitar with his father on the piano. Beautiful.