Show Posts
346
The Outpost Cafe / Did anybody see Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life"?
« on: August 15, 2011, 03:58:20 AM »
And if so, how did you like it (it's not really a film to "like", I guess you can be impressed with it)? I saw it on Saturday with high expectations and, no, I wasn't expecting an "easy" or "entertaining" film, but something heavy and with depth. I can even watch Wim Wender films and other European "art cinema" with enjoyment. But this here ...
At my snappiest I would say (and this is someone who loves Kubrick's 2001 for the story, not just the effects, the special effects guy from that film was however resurrected for Tree of Life and it shows in the - nice - non-computer-animated special effects): What a pompous, lumbering, disjointed, pretentious, self-absorbed and inanely-metaphysical piece of crap. The film is so hilariously dead serious about its opaque message (unless the fact is enough for you that God sometimes takes the life of a 19 year old for no apparent reason and saves the life of a sickly plant-eating dinosaur in North-Americans woods from a carnivore hunter dino for no apparent reason as well - I guess it is supposed to tell us that everything evens out in the end in his infinite wisdom) that the (art-cinema type) audience broke out laughing at its end, though quite a few had already left during the film.
I can appreciate esoteric films, spiritual and religious ones. In my book, the comparatively recent "The Rite" with Anthony Hopkins as an exorcist, although shamefully (mis-)presented as a horror flic, was pretty much an unabashed call to arms for Catholic faith, including its darker, "unmodern" and not scientifically explainable aspects, I still enjoyed it and found it thoughtful even though I was half-waiting for an official Vatican sponsorship to show up in the credits at the end! And I guess you could describe Malick's film as the cinematic presentation of a two hour stream of consciousness with God, bible citations, prayers, human despair and all. But it is a strangely amorphous, disconnected God he is speaking to and getting no answers from. You could replace the concept of God in this film with the Four Elements or some equally pagan-spiritual concept, it would amount to the same thing.
Brad Pitt plays well and nuanced, a stern fifties father figure, both deeply religious and aching for recognition in the here and now, but for all his inability to understand his sons (and wife) he loves them all deeply. He's the redeeming factor in the film (as are the kid actors). Sean Penn, much as I like him, rides an elevator most of the time, his face in furrows (that typical "I am so concerned"- Sean Penn type-cast look he has perfected since masticating with his chewing gum over fallen buddies in the 1989 Vietnam drama "The Casualities of War"), or wanders, face still furrowed, aimlessly on a beach that leads him to other aimlessly beach-wandering people, inter alia his mother and father, when they were young, and his dead brother (we never find out what he died of nor whether that plant-eating dinosaur, once spared by the raptor, got back on its feet again, it all ticks the "God works in mysterious ways" box) silently among them. You take your pick whether this is heaven, purgatory, the search for God of the human mind, a dream of memories or just Sean Penn walking on the beach seeing dead people and squinting his eyes for lack of shades.
This is now starting to sound cynical, so I better stop (especially after eliciting cheers from the cinema audience after quipping during the credits at the end: "I now need a shot of Transformers III!!!"), but did anyone see it here and find it rewarding?
Uwe
PS: For the record: It is exquisitely filmed, features stunning interior design to rival any Kubrick film and has great, often sparsely used music, yet which in other scenes sometimes bludgeons you Spielberg style and then rates high on the "kitsch-o-meter".
At my snappiest I would say (and this is someone who loves Kubrick's 2001 for the story, not just the effects, the special effects guy from that film was however resurrected for Tree of Life and it shows in the - nice - non-computer-animated special effects): What a pompous, lumbering, disjointed, pretentious, self-absorbed and inanely-metaphysical piece of crap. The film is so hilariously dead serious about its opaque message (unless the fact is enough for you that God sometimes takes the life of a 19 year old for no apparent reason and saves the life of a sickly plant-eating dinosaur in North-Americans woods from a carnivore hunter dino for no apparent reason as well - I guess it is supposed to tell us that everything evens out in the end in his infinite wisdom) that the (art-cinema type) audience broke out laughing at its end, though quite a few had already left during the film.
I can appreciate esoteric films, spiritual and religious ones. In my book, the comparatively recent "The Rite" with Anthony Hopkins as an exorcist, although shamefully (mis-)presented as a horror flic, was pretty much an unabashed call to arms for Catholic faith, including its darker, "unmodern" and not scientifically explainable aspects, I still enjoyed it and found it thoughtful even though I was half-waiting for an official Vatican sponsorship to show up in the credits at the end! And I guess you could describe Malick's film as the cinematic presentation of a two hour stream of consciousness with God, bible citations, prayers, human despair and all. But it is a strangely amorphous, disconnected God he is speaking to and getting no answers from. You could replace the concept of God in this film with the Four Elements or some equally pagan-spiritual concept, it would amount to the same thing.
Brad Pitt plays well and nuanced, a stern fifties father figure, both deeply religious and aching for recognition in the here and now, but for all his inability to understand his sons (and wife) he loves them all deeply. He's the redeeming factor in the film (as are the kid actors). Sean Penn, much as I like him, rides an elevator most of the time, his face in furrows (that typical "I am so concerned"- Sean Penn type-cast look he has perfected since masticating with his chewing gum over fallen buddies in the 1989 Vietnam drama "The Casualities of War"), or wanders, face still furrowed, aimlessly on a beach that leads him to other aimlessly beach-wandering people, inter alia his mother and father, when they were young, and his dead brother (we never find out what he died of nor whether that plant-eating dinosaur, once spared by the raptor, got back on its feet again, it all ticks the "God works in mysterious ways" box) silently among them. You take your pick whether this is heaven, purgatory, the search for God of the human mind, a dream of memories or just Sean Penn walking on the beach seeing dead people and squinting his eyes for lack of shades.
This is now starting to sound cynical, so I better stop (especially after eliciting cheers from the cinema audience after quipping during the credits at the end: "I now need a shot of Transformers III!!!"), but did anyone see it here and find it rewarding?
Uwe
PS: For the record: It is exquisitely filmed, features stunning interior design to rival any Kubrick film and has great, often sparsely used music, yet which in other scenes sometimes bludgeons you Spielberg style and then rates high on the "kitsch-o-meter".
overpriced:
to get sensible access to the adjustment socket screw (whose shallow depth even then still raises worries)?
