Did anybody see Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life"?

[uwe]

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".

[fur85]

I saw it twice. It's definitely not a Saturday night good time entertaining film. I did like it but I think it's best taken more like a poem than a story. I would agree with you Uwe that if you try to break it down to a message and ask "what is he saying by that?" or "what did the dinosaurs mean?" it fails to deliver a coherent or "deep" message. However, I thought it captured the inner world of a 12 year old boy perfectly and that it presented the realm of childhood memory better than any film I've seen.

A buddy who saw it (and loved it) said he thinks of it as an impressionist film. If you don't try too hard to understand it and approach it as non-narrative you might appreciate it a bit more. Also, it is a very American film and I wonder if that had anything to do with why the German audience didn't like it. For example, it seemed obvious to me that the son died in Vietnam. Almost any 19 year old American boy who died in that era died in Vietnam. If you grew up in the U.S. in the 60's you knew someone who died in Vietnam. I thought the film explored the long-term effect of that on his brother extremely well. I only use that example because you say "for no apparent reason". Many other memories resonated with me having grown up in the U.S. during that era.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with being an American film because some people walked out (maybe 10% of the audience) when I saw it too and plenty of Americans didn't like it.

Also, I did not read the film as necessarily in favor of any particular religion though it obviously deals with religious themes.

I thought that Brad Pitt and the child actors were fantastic and I agree Sean Penn was not up to par in this film.

[uwe]

Maybe I should see it twice too then.  

You're right, the inner world of a 12 year old was captured very well and I could relate to it. And thinking about it, the way the letter came in and 19 being the average American casuality age in Vietnam, true.   And some allusions were quite elegant, the visit with his dad to the poor black neighborhood and then the public swimming pool where of course - this being the Eisenhower era and Texas - you only see white kids, the camera vainly scanning over the public bath scene over and over again in search of someone, anyone different and they are all white and look the same. His crush in school who is obviously hispanic and nothing comes of it as he's fascinated by and scared of her at the same time.

Actually, all the 50ies to early sixties era reenacting of suburban America was very well done. Realisitic and at the same time unsettling artificial - like caught in a water bubble under a microscope. Of course I did not live there at the time, but having gone to an American school with American infrastructure in a foreign country in the early seventies, parts of that era still resonated, some kids even still looked Eisenhower era, crew-cut and starched dark-blue jeans, neatly folded at the bottom legs, and all.

My issues with the movie did not stem from that, but from the "nature, creation and God"-canvas it was sketched on. 0edipal lust in fifties America and dinosaurs together is a real stretch - reptiles tend to be rather incest taboo oblivious.   I did not find the film "preachy", rather too often curiously indecisive, especially when the unstained angelic mother (who never spoke directly in the whole film, but had a voice-over with her exchanges with God, her exclamatory thought-sigh "I give you my son!" in the Book of Job-quotation-scene was perhaps a bit much for European viewers though) had her ethereal parts flowing through the screen.

I liked your comparison of it to a poem. You made me (re)think about it.

[dadagoboi]

Maybe I should see it twice too then. 

I liked your comparison of it to a poem. You made me (re)think about it.

I'd say you got your money's worth.   You might check out 'The Thin Red Line', Malick's  'Full Metal Jacket' if you will.  Came out the same year as 'Private Ryan' but very different from either of those and vastly superior IMO.

Malick has made only 5 films in a 40 year career; 'Badlands', 'Days of Heaven' and 'The New World' being the others.  All worth a look or 2.  He also did the uncredited rewrite of 'Dirty Harry.'

[uwe]

I saw The Thin Red Line so I was aware that a stringently narrative plot is not exactly his trademark! But The Thin Red Line - difficult to digest as it was - is oldfashioned storytelling compared to The Tree of Life.