I enjoy the internet's increasingly desperate attempts to convince itself that the post-exile Terrence Malick movies haven't been completely awful.

I enjoy when yoshue says "the internet" like he's not a part of it.

the world is ending today and y'all choose to bicker

I think the rapture was a publicity stunt for The Tree of Life. ohmahgah

you started it

This thread crapping here and in other threads in the Everyone's A Criticforum is getting out of hand - - make a thread in Cinemania and knock yourselves out with your blather - - leave these threads for KJ reviews and discussion of those reviews. Mods?!

Stop being so cranky and chill out.

Terrence Malick movies are always polarizing and this is no exception. It's not even out yet and people are discussing the ins and outs of the philosophy of it's dendrology! It's hard to believe that a movie starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn is garnering the type of attention that is often paid to mystical tomes and esoteric diatribes. It reminds me of how Kant's idea of inner freedom became the inspiration for creative genius; the resulting aesthetic-ethical idealism manifested in the work of Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller and many others. However, the absolute reality of nature was equally important to these poets; thus, an absolute consciousness from which the individual consciousness could be deduced was posited to eliminate the unknowable real world of the Kantian system. Inspired by this turn, German Idealism became Absolute Idealism through the philosophies of Fichte and Schelling. In their systems, the human mind is directly in touch with reality as an individual manifestation of the absolute mind. Absolute Idealism reached its peak with the philosophy of Hegel. Hegel makes the impulse of the absolute mind a gradual and self-determined process, by which the Absolute lifts itself from mere possibility and actuality to conscious, free, and necessary possession. For Hegel, the whole process is timeless, and only to a finite mind does it appear as an endless procession in time and space. Schelling, who coined the term “the Absolute,” disagreed with Hegel’s idea that the Absolute was spirit, preferring to say the Absolute is the identity of subject and object. In the late nineteenth century, German Idealism as Absolute Idealism became influential in British philosophy through the works of Bernard Bosanquet and F. H. Bradley, and in the United States through the works of Josiah Royce. Schopenhauer’s variant of German Idealism returned to the Kantian separation of the phenomenal world and the world-in-itself. He identified the phenomenal world as pure idea and the world-in-itself as a blind, illogical, aimless impulse with no ethical direction. If all goes well, the Tree Of Life may end up as a touchstone for a whole generation of followers of this dialectic!

talk about thread crap

Next time, be more concise: http://www.iep.utm.edu/germidea/.

I saw this on Monday. Sorry it has taken me so long to post my thoughts.

This is a very polarizing film - one that will certainly provoke a lot of debate and discussion. It is not going to become a crossover arthouse hit. It is slow-paced, and the fragmented plot structure makes it different than what the masses typically enjoy. However, I found myself quite wrapped up in its proceedings. It's not a perfect film, and its certainly overlong, but the pros outweigh the cons in this case. The visuals are unspeakably gorgeous and one of the biggest reasons to see the film. Every scene is meticulously photographed and there's no question in my mind that this film will have the best cinematography of the year. Brad Pitt is the other big reason to see the film, delivering one of his best performances. He is phenomenal as the stern but caring father raising his children the only way he knows how to. The relationship between Jessica Chastain, who is also great, is very interesting to watch. I thought both the mother and the father were portrayed very realistically given the time period. It isn't as if the father is played as some kind of villain, as the advertising might suggest. It's very clear that he loves his children unconditionally, but believes in raising them a different way than his easy-going and naive wife. There's an extended sequence though where the father goes away and the children are left with just the mother - I felt it showed the audience why they were both necessary parts of their children's lives and why it created a balance of sorts. Sean Penn, meanwhile, isn't in the movie enough to even grade his performance. His screentime amounts to maybe 5 minutes total.

I'd give it a B+. It's undeniably interesting, the visuals are gorgeous, and Pitt is phenomenal and makes it worth seeing. I do wish the plot had been a bit more structured though.

For those questioning its box office potential, this isn't going to be a breakout hit or anything. A few people walked out of my screening during the 35-40 minute opening sequence (which is very reminiscent of 2001). It will probably find a small, devoted audience of supporters - but I'd be shocked if it did more than 20 Million at the box office (if even that).

No shit, Sherlock!



Hooray! Argos finally learned to Google.


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I just hope this turns out better than that other Tree of Life movie...



...though the Tree of Life is certainly a common image in art...



...and science...

You have your style, Bradley has his. I like them both, and pestering either of you to change is like telling a dog to stop barking.

The root of the problem with the Cannes win is that it doesn't allow The Tree of Life to branch out of the art film market. I didn't twig to this fact until I dug beneath the surface and found that I was pining for a less esoteric approach from Malick this time out. I would say that his bark in worse than his bite, but then he's always been a bit of a nut. So while not enough for a full face palm, one can't help but needle the guy for his perennial involution. He can't leave well enough alone. He doesn't seem to see the forest for the trees. But one may justifiably ask, if his introspection is evergreen - - and by gum, I say YES! If Malick wants to drag a film like this out of his trunk of surprises every decade or so, all power to him. He rises from the ashes, spruces up old themes, and proceeds to chop down his rivals. I suppose all one can really do is taste the ripeness of the fruit borne from his towering talent while resting in the shade of his filmography.

should i see this?

Tree of Life rhymes with plea of strife. Coincidence? I think not.

It's worth seeing. Visually it's absolutely gorgeous and I think it's a lock for a Best Cinematography Oscar this awards season. It's also quite interesting and thought provoking, and Pitt is phenomenal. Just be prepared for its slow pace and the 20-minute creation sequence (easily the most trying part of the movie).

I need a few days to process before I elaborate/another viewing (or two or three). But this was...wow. Beautiful, spiritual, lush, metaphysical (?????). If you can't tell, the film really just left me at a loss for words. I certainly don't understand everything that happened but I know I loved it. And the cinematography has to be some of the best I've EVER seen. Not pretentious. Just an experience. A

Well, we're gonna have to disagree. I don't think it's that simple. This was obviously a highly personal film for Malick. I never get a whiff of pretentiousness, or if you're going to define pretentiousness as Malick thinking he's smarter than the audience. Like, it's an immensely complicated movie that transcends cinematic normalcy, but I never felt like that was because of anything other than its themes. It's...challenging, not pretentious or overly arty. Calling it "pretentious" is lazy.

I'm really interested to see other people's reactions to this. I think it's one of the most fascinating films I've ever seen, in all honesty.

One shot I found truly baffling--the giant in the attic. Unless he represented how Pitt's character seemed to his sons? Mysterious, larger-than-life, etc.

Jewish mysticism depicts the tree of Life in the form of ten interconnected nodes, as an important part of the Kabbalah. As such, it resembles the ten Sephirot.

It's strange to say I have now seen Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, the long-long-gestating fifth feature by the reclusive writer/director/visionary/madman. After so long a production and so many wild rumors, it's here. Most of the film chronicles a year or two in the lives of the O'Briens, a nuclear family living in '50s Waco. (One assumes a great deal of this is autobiographical for Malick, a lifelong Texan.) Brad Pitt portrays the O'Brien father, a loving, but domineering man who, to support his growing family, gave up his dream of being a musician to accept a job in an industrial plant. Jessica Chastain is the O'Brien mother, a graceful and playful woman more in tune with nature and the beauty of the world than her husband, who is obsessed with the wealth of others and instilling a macho, dog-eat-dog intensity in his sons. Those sons are Jack (Hunter McCracken), R. L. (Laramie Eppler), and Steve (Tye Sheridan).

We also see Jack as a sorrowful grown man (Sean Penn). He is an architect adrift in a modern urban landscape, and he is haunted by the past, including the lessons imparted by his very different parents and the death of R. L. as a teenager. Then, more ambitious still, there is a jaw-dropping sequence, partly designed by 2001/Blade Runner effects maestro Douglas Trumbull, chronicling the history of the universe, from the Big Bang up to and including the extinction of the dinosaurs. The epic, mysterious images conjured here, including a Cretaceous era marine reptile contemplating a wound on a beach, are devastating in their primal, sweeping beauty.

I'm not nearly bold enough to declare I completely understand The Tree of Life after only one viewing, but at least a few of Malick's aims are clear: he is investigating the struggle to reconcile the personal (incidental family memories, life goals) with the spiritual. He also explores parental legacies, the way virtues and torments can be passed on from generation to generation.

Though the film's galactic and phantasmagorical visions may inspire the most discussion, controversy, and bewilderment, much of it is relatively down-to-earth. Malick and genius cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki capture and explore the tiniest of moments--a child's wide-eyed, slightly morbid fascination with a cripple, for example, or the O'Brien family playing with sparklers--and imbue them with astounding dramatic potency and visual splendor. The day-to-day confusion and excitement of being young is felt throughout the film.

And though Malick's screenplay is mostly disinterested in usual storytelling and character-developing techniques, the familial dynamics, from strong compassion to simmering tension, are clear and flow through every scene, even when the scene is question is a just collection of disparate images (intimate moments, landscape photography, etc.) dancing to either a classical composition or Alexandre Desplat's original score. The viewer senses the arc of the lives being led even as a typical dramatic structure never emerges. Several strong performances help in this regard. Jessica Chastain has an ethereal and haunting presence as the idealized mother, while Brad Pitt expertly conveys a blend of fatherly tenderness and reserves of brutish anger. The three nonprofessional actors playing the O'Brien children give performances completely free of artifice. These five performances are 100 percent lived-in and a natural chemistry is felt between them. Then there is the other A-list star, Sean Penn, who honestly isn't on screen long enough to leave too significant an impression, though the actor, greying and dowdy, is certainly able to suggest his character's misery and ennui with minimal dialogue.

The Tree of Life is a film you could and should spend hours describing, discussing, etc. It's a well-acted and supremely well-shot marvel, as heady as it is beautiful as it is daring, punctuated with moments of cosmic excitement and even a bit of absurdity. It will move, frustrate, exhaust, amaze, and so on and so forth, but, divisive as it may be, it is clearly a major film by an important American artist, and those who fancy themselves serious moviegoers everywhere owe it to themselves to experience it on the big screen.

A

- I wonder how much Penn is on the cutting room floor. I'm honestly glad those scenes weren't much longer. Compared to the electricity and beauty of the '50s scenes, and, of course, the creation segment, mopey Penn bemoaning the modern world amidst the skyscrapers just isn't quite as compelling. The Adult Jack scenes have an appealing economy. They're in and out, and they convey what they need to. Showing more of his job or his wife would also be distracting. It would become another movie within the movie (Sean Penn's Ennui).

- I also wonder if Malick shot anything more with the third brother (with the random missing hair, lol).

- I love the scene with the car jack. So tense. The film has so many of these great small moments, where the camera will just dart from face to face, detail to detail, lingering here and there, and you can sense all these underlying emotions.

- Despite the opening Bible quote and other religious moments, I refuse to see this as a Christian movie. More...spiritual. The Pitt/Chastain dynamic is very similar to Penn/Caviezel in The Thin Red Line and Farrell/Kilcher in The New World.

- The New World is still my favorite of his films, then:

2. The Tree of Life
3. Days of Heaven
4. The Thin Red Line
5. Badlands

It's strange: part of me is very eager to see this again, but another part of me is slightly reluctant to. Because once I've seen it two or three times, it will become more...concrete. I'll start to memorize the various character beats and shots and music cues. Right now the overwhelming experience of it all still has a certain mystery to it. Still processing it all.