942 The Tree of Life

[karmajuice]

I've got a question for everyone.
I haven't seen the film yet, but it came out in one of the theaters here today. It just so happens that I hate this theater -- it's far more expensive than the other theaters, has smaller screens, and they keep a dim light on throughout THE WHOLE MOVIE for people who are eating. I avoid it unless a film I want to see only appears there.

But this is gets a wide release in July, right? I don't mind waiting if it means cheaper tickets and more favorable conditions. I just don't want to wait and have it not come out anyplace else (and maybe miss it at the one theater where it's definitely playing).
Basically, is the wide release a WIDE release, with a pretty solid chance it'll appear in any given multiplex, or a slightly less limited release?

[mfunk9786]

I'm guessing it'll be expanded, but not wide. Something like 1,000 screens, or about 1/4th of what a blockbuster gets on release weekend. That tends to be what a film like this eventually gets.

[Tom Hagen]

I'll need more time to work through all the philosophy (though I am happy to report that I've never seen a better portrait of existential thought in American cinema), but at this point I am simply overwhelmed at the rich emotional experience I had tonight. This was a secular sacrament for me, and one of the truly great film experiences of my life.

[Nothing]

He was applauding Malick for "Dropping a 20 minute experimental film into the middle of a big budget hollywood epic" and that's not really the case. It's a 20 minute almost purely abstract sequence in the middle of a 2.5 hour experimental film.

Not an entirely abstract sequence, but in essence you are absolutely right. Malick's films have been highly experimental ever since Days of Heaven, to suggest otherwise is simply to indulge in cliched 'avant-garde' prejudices against narrative in film (yawn x10).

[Galen Young]

Finally saw it last night -- shocked at how underwhelmed I was. Felt like Malick was trying to edit two or three completely different films together and didn't succeed. The focus on the children's family life was by far the best stuff, can only hope it was those parts that got it the Palme d'Or.

As pretty as the 'abstract' stuff was (loved the dinos!) -- am very surprised Malick didn't take it farther than all the Reggio, Fricke, Belson, Wilfred, etc, influences he began with -- didn't feel like he brought it any place really new. (though, if he does make a six hour film of just that kind of stuff, I'd probably watch it!) If he'd have dropped all the abstracts and side story of Sean wandering around dazed and confused, the film could have been a masterpiece. Every damn time he tilted up to a tree from a low angle with the sparkle sun flare -- it reminded me of Gaspar Noe zooming in close on every circular orfice he could find in Enter the Void! I started counting them, then lost count...

Spoiler

The Beach: Besides it being riffs on either the opening of Run Lola Run or the ending of Fahrenheit 451, all I could really think of was Stardust Memories-era Woody:

"What is that? What the hell is that? That's the silliest thing I've ever seen, what is that? ... What the hell are they doing here?"
"They wind up in jazz heaven. It's commercial! It's upbeat! It's upbeat! It's commercial!"

I have to agree with Woody's retort to that...by the time Sean was touching the woman's feet, I was over and out. Tarkovsky this is not!

[Lars Von Truffaut]

I saw this last night and thought it was incredible. Between a few posts on this thread and other reviews read, I was anticipating seeing an overly ambitious or indulgent film and coming away a bit confused. My experience was anything but. I witnessed a handful of people leaving the theater early on. This behavior is just baffling to me...

Like Circus Vocabulary, I was very moved by ToL. The acting was stellar and the cinematography was wonderful. Throughout the first 45 minutes or so my arms were crossed and I was squeezing so tightly, they would not be unhinged. This only subsided once the Waco scenes bagan and I could finally settle in. I think that the scenes in Texas with the family were not necessarily the best, but certainly were more fluid and comfortable as a viewer. We can relate to them and I wouldn't doubt that they were easier to write and film than the cosmos stuff. But that was great too! I was riveted from begining to end. I also felt the full gamut of emotions here: anticipation, joy, sorrow, wonderment, sometimes even all at once (the "Be quiet." dinner scene for example).

I also love the way the film is structured. This is the story of the eldest son. And it's obvious from the beginning that these are his thoughts, confessions, dreams, memories. It is subjective. Alan Smithee touched on this earlier. It isn't important that we see the third brother (and I'm a little surprised that anyone would have been confused that he'd died earlier). I think I even remember a shot of the three boys in the yard and one of the older two (purposely?) stand in front and obstruct his view for the remainder of it. The mother doesn't say much, because she is viewed as an angelic, graceful being. On the other hand, Brad Pitt has many lines in comparison. He is human - her foil. And still, there is a warmth and a depth to the characters (the children were great in this film).

To sum it up, I thought the film was great. Personally I prefer Badlands best, but upon first viewing it is as good as The Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven. While it isn't for everyone, I highly recommend it and feel this has to be seen in theaters to be fully appreciated (though, I guess that's just about true for most good films).

[bdsweeney]

A few thoughts I have.

Overall, I was deeply moved ... though I'm not sure if it'll resonate for me in years to come as some of Malick's past films have.

Malick is certainly trying something different here from his past films (though I'd venture that the final ecstatic moments of The New World, in terms of the revelry and combination of image, editing and music, are similar).

In The Tree of Life, I was struck by how inconsequential the narration in it is as compared to his past films ... even though narration is most often used as a way to show hindsight and The Tree of Life is completely about hindsight. Also, his past films were poetic in terms of the beauty of what was physically presented on screen and the use of narration ... but were still in terms of framing, and especially editing, quite traditional (and I don't say that as a negative ... just as a fact). With ToL, it is now the framing and editing that have a direct influence on the poetic nature of the film and is the sensation that works most directly on the viewer. The narration is there, but is almost purposely muffled ... as if Malick has almost outgrown its need. The editing in the film serves to work in a cumulative process ... the jump cuts. It's abstract to extent that greatly exceeds his past films ... though I'd not call it an abstract or experimental film. In the past, people have often referred to his films as 'tone poems'. I'm not quite sure as to what that really means, but I nevertheless feel that it is to ToL to which that phrase could apply.

I too was greatly struck by the performances of the three young boys. So very naturalistic. I've loved performances in past Malick films (Martin Sheen and Elias Koteas most immediately come to mind), but none more so than these.

But what was it about the film that I found profound? It truly feels like a very personal film ... as if this is something Malick had to make. And I don't mean because the film seems autobiographical, though I'm guessing it is because the details of the boys' life in Waco, Texas, seems so very precise. Instead, it has a sense of urgency about it, as if Malick has put all of his knowledge, effort and craft that he has accumulated in it ... but most of all his experiences ... that of loves, hopes, efforts, missed opportunities, grievances, shame, joy, hatred ... in other words, life ... into this film. And, paradoxically, the more personal he has become the more inclusive it is of ALL people's experiences.

I've never seen a film capture and crystallise the experiences of childhood so well. I don't remember my childhood as a narrative ... indeed, the majority of events are forgotten. But I haven't forgotten the experiences ... and that's what this film gets so very, very right. Most of all, the mostly moments of shame and hurt that teach 'life lessons'.

To me there was one particular moment that provided the crux and moment of change in Jack's young life:

Spoiler

When he stole the woman's undergarments, laid them on the bed and (I assume) masturbated over them. After which he felt great shame, leading to throwing the clothing in the river and being unable to look at his mother in the eye. He seemed to believe that he had done a great wrong and it was after this point that he attempted to reconnect with his father and apologise to his brother. And it was those moments by which the older Jack could find solace in the past and reconnect with it.

What I thought were flaws are the same as what have already been mentioned. The juxtaposition (or was it connection) between the story of creation and Jack's life seemed forced. Not as if Malick had badly shoehorned it in, but just that there was no emotional leap for me between the two. However, I too did love the dinosaur moment.

Also, and guess this is rather a major flaw, I didn't feel that the weight (and I'm not sure if that's the right word ... I'm grasping for what I mean without being sure) of the adult Jack's existential crisis is adequately articulated at the start of the film so as to be a spark for what we then see. And I don't mean I wanted a narrative spark or actual event to be a cause (a car crash, a letter received from a long-lost love, visiting a grave site ... whatever narrative device you like). Rather, that it doesn't resonate purposefully to the viewer. Instead, we have (as I think someone has already noted) sub-Antonioni-style shots of people walking through modernist empty space and looking mopey.

However, I do think Malick articulates his themes as the film progresses very well. And he articulates feeling and moments that are otherwise very difficult to describe.

And, goddammit, he's trying for something.

Malick has made a truly ambitious film that moved me greatly ... and I thank him for it.

[Michael]

I apologize for deleting my previous comments. In re-reading them, I felt embarrassed by the whiny tone and also afraid I was being unfair to Malick and most of all, wasting your time. After watching a marathon of Malick films from Badlands to The New World, I got too "Malick-ed" out by the night I first watched The Tree of Life. To be fair, I gave ToL another chance.

Now having seen the film twice, my feelings and thoughts remain the same. It's still okay, not the ambitious, mind-blowing masterpiece (since Kubrick) that so many critics have claimed the film to be. I just can't see what's so ambitious about it. Have they forgotten PT Anderson already? Talking about ambitious, fresh, untouchable big-studio films that actually succeed, Punch-Drunk Love is a perfect example. I think this is almost a perfect movie in the sense that there is nothing that I can think of that needs to be taken away or added. But not so with ToL, in which I could think of many scenes it could survive without.

There is a quiet masterpiece somewhere in the middle section of the film - the children and the life in Texas. I was tremendously moved by the children - what amazing, sensitive performances. The Texas section could stand out as a masterpiece on its own but unfortunately it got intruded by the rest - the cosmos / dino silliness, Sean Penn moping around and the ending that reminded me of certain TV commercials of 1980s. During the cosmos / dino section, my partner turned to me and asked scarcastically "Aren't we watching the History Channel?". That was pretty much my impression too. The first dino was impressive, vaguely detailed and beautiful as it was lying wounded, but the other three were terrible, looking like the dinos you find in Disney Animal Kingdom. If I was the director, I would have not bothered with the trio of dinos at all but still kept that first one which I think is more than enough.

The moments I love:

Spoiler

fireflies twinkling in the dark
mom floating
the shadows of children playing
Snow White in the glass coffin
roadside BBQ
the family dinners

Watching the film was very frustrating and it reminded me of my experience with Wong Kar-Wai's messy and incoherent but beautiful 2046.

ToL is definitely worth a watch, especially in theater if only for the divine Texas heart of the film.

[mfunk9786]

Michael, you're allowed to dislike or be underwhelmed by this film. You don't seem to be comfortable in your own skin since developing that opinion but I don't think anyone's about to chastise you for it.

[Michael]

Michael, you're allowed to dislike or be underwhelmed by this film. You don't seem to be comfortable in your own skin since developing that opinion but I don't think anyone's about to chastise you for it.

Being a huge fan of Malick, I felt very uncomfortable expressing my disappointment with ToL without really understanding why. It was a shock to me that I felt that way about a Malick film that I had to give ToL another chance only to confirm / understand my initial thoughts and feelings. How could this film that seems to be Malick's most personal be his worst film (to me, of course)? I was not confident enough to discuss the film until now after having seen the film twice.

[rs98762001]

Michael, you're allowed to dislike or be underwhelmed by this film. You don't seem to be comfortable in your own skin since developing that opinion but I don't think anyone's about to chastise you for it.

I will. He compared Tree of Life unfavorably with Punch Drunk Love. Oh dear me. And in other threads there are people going on about the respective genius of Derek Cianfrance and JJ Abrams. I'm beginning to think that Nothing is actually the voice of reason on this board, which is a quite terrifying prospect.

[Michael]

I will. He compared Tree of Life unfavorably with Punch Drunk Love.

Come on now. I was not comparing ToL to Punch-Drunk Love. I was using Punch-Drunk Love as an example of what I think is an ambitious big-studio film. Critics are painting ToL as the most ambitious film since Kubrick which I think is a crock of shit. The word "ambitious" pops up in a lot of reviews of ToL . So would that be okay with you if I compared ToL to Kubrick as many critics have done?

[matrixschmatrix]

Michael, you're allowed to dislike or be underwhelmed by this film. You don't seem to be comfortable in your own skin since developing that opinion but I don't think anyone's about to chastise you for it.

I will. He compared Tree of Life unfavorably with Punch Drunk Love. Oh dear me. And in other threads there are people going on about the respective genius of Derek Cianfrance and JJ Abrams. I'm beginning to think that Nothing is actually the voice of reason on this board, which is a quite terrifying prospect.

People like... different things?!?!?!

[rs98762001]

He compared Tree of Life unfavorably with Punch Drunk Love. Oh dear me.

Come on now. I was not comparing ToL to Punch-Drunk Love. I was using Punch-Drunk Love as an example of what I think is an ambitious big-studio film. Critics are painting ToL as the most ambitious film since Kubrick which I think is a crock of shit. The word "ambitious" pops up in a lot of reviews of ToL . So would that be okay with you if I compared ToL to Kubrick as many critics have done?

My tongue was partly in cheek. I find Punch Drunk - and most of PTA's films - little more than awkward, student-level pastiche, but I will agree with you that there's little connection between Tree and Kubrick either. What I found ambitious in Tree was not so much the ideas (which verge from the transcendent to the banal) but the fact that Malick dispensed almost entirely with conventional notions of narrative. However I understand that, to some, that makes for an aimless two hours.

[knives]

What do you mean by dispensing conventional notions of narrative. Maybe it was told in a Malick way, but the film is told in a conventional structure with maybe the exception of the ending.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Sublime snit between Adrian Martin and Dave Kehr over TofL, beginning here. Enjoy.
Let's just say Dave is not a fan, but Adrian is. Which should come as a surprise to precisely no one. And, in fact, there are some interesting points made in the chowder of vitriol, floating around like crumbled oyster crackers.

EDIT: I guess I should do you all the favor of linking, so you don't have to fish: Adrian, Dave, Adrian. Some appalled responses follow from Kehr regulars, leading to my favorite: "just go away and leave us alone."

[CircusVocabulary]

During the cosmos / dino section, my partner turned to me and asked scarcastically "Aren't we watching the History Channel?". That was pretty much my impression too. The first dino was impressive, vaguely detailed and beautiful as it was lying wounded, but the other three were terrible, looking like the dinos you find in Disney Animal Kingdom. If I was the director, I would have not bothered with the trio of dinos at all but still kept that first one which I think is more than enough.

I don't think you understand these scenes. Malick isn't just showing you "the History Channel." Think about what he is saying with these scenes without getting hung up on how the dinosaurs look, as if Malick was going for the spectacle of "some crazy dinosaurs" instead of a point.

I was using Punch-Drunk Love as an example of what I think is an ambitious big-studio film. Critics are painting ToL as the most ambitious film since Kubrick which I think is a crock of shit.

I agree that Punch Drunk Love is ambitious, but it isn't a big studio film (and nowhere near as radically ambitious in form as Tree of Life). I don't know how you don't see the ambition in this film. It is a one of a kind. Maybe you haven't made all the connections in the film because you also mentioned you didn't feel like the Sean Penn parts weren't developed enough...except that the entire film is about how and why he feels like he does.

[JeanRZEJ]

I love Punch-Drunk Love and The Tree of Life for essentially entirely opposite reasons, so I can see why someone would find a split between the two. Not sure about the whole 'ambition' thing or how I would quantify it, so I guess that will be relegated to the realm of 'incommunicable impression'.

In Punch-Drunk Love PTA inverts the tropes of the romantic comedy to amplify the romantic and comic effects of the same genre. Instead of a lovable protagonist making all the right moves you have a guy with anger issues struggling to make the moves who is swept up by a female who makes all of the first moves. His anger issues provide the instability required for the types of unexpectedly explosive gestures he makes - gestures which happen to be romantic even as they are troublingly unstable. So, in essence, you have inversion and organic heightening reorienting itself within a given genre. Drastic inversion and violation of certain inane 'rules' of 'likable characters' and such could easily be seen as ambitious, not to mention the great attention to color and visual motifs, so I have no arguments there, but what I see as the most defining shifts in expectation are direct contrasts of existing and stale standards.

With The Tree of Life there is little reference to popular film genres, you have a formal framing device which presents a framework for the extreme broadening of the narrative scope (quite the opposite in the comparatively minimalistic structure of PDL) and an aesthetic derived mostly from a variety of camera angles and moves impressionistically edited together to evoke a feeling, rather than a dramatic heightening. Central to this is the way the actors behave - instead of flipping the expected behavioral qualities of the characters you have perfectly typical characters whose portrayals become atypical through certain strategies of removing dramatics, either through Malick's by-now well known technique of having actors perform scenes without dialogue that they had previously performed with dialogue or through capturing what seem to me to be the lingering ends of scenes that may have contained dialogue, conveying the body language of an actor who performed a certain scene as opposed to transposing the expected dialogue onto unconventional character traits in PDL. All of these anti-dramatics create something superficially 'superficial', which I find to be one of the most rarely captured elements in cinema, what is commonly termed 'pure cinema', a non-dramaturgical flow of images and sound that doesn't rely on or is at best punctuated by text (I found the voice overs pretty sparse and succinct, myself). For me, PDL is 'ambitious' in heightening the central elements through unconventional means which other films capture in lesser measure and The Tree of Life is 'ambitious' in abandoning these central elements altogether and focusing instead on the impressions which are largely antithetical to the framework of a film like PDL. I don't even know how to quantify either in terms which would be comparable, but I don't think either reflects poorly on the other.

I agree that Punch Drunk Love is ambitious, but it isn't a big studio film (and nowhere near as radically ambitious in form as Tree of Life). I don't know how you don't see the ambition in this film. It is a one of a kind. Maybe you haven't made all the connections in the film because you also mentioned you didn't feel like the Sean Penn parts weren't developed enough...except that the entire film is about how and why he feels like he does.

Agreed, which is not to say that I think the entire film conveys things in the sorts of direct and readily recognizable dramaturgical terms that PDL does. It is at best implicit, and to that point I don't think the recognition matters as much as the impression, which matches the lack of Penn's character to convey much beyond what we can get implicitly. I don't think that we explicitly know what these events mean to Penn and I think it is beside the point to know. One life in the universe, one man's opinion in the universe - these are elements which we can experience implicitly but which dissolve into meaningless once we get into the particular details. It's more about the way in which such an experience could be viewed than the way it is actually viewed by a character in the film, I think. In support of this: the 'climactic' moment in the film (for me) focuses not on Penn's character but on the way his mother reacts to the events shown, even as she was for the most part a secondary character in the film. Penn's character, like the viewer, doesn't have direct access to these feelings, but this secondary implicit access is, I think, of primary importance in the film.

[Tom Hagen]

Sublime snit between Adrian Martin and Dave Kehr over TofL, beginning here. Enjoy.
Let's just say Dave is not a fan, but Adrian is. Which should come as a surprise to precisely no one. And, in fact, there are some interesting points made in the chowder of vitriol, floating around like crumbled oyster crackers.

My favorite part was Rosenbaum dragging the bored, puzzled responses to Godard's latest into this for some reason.

[Michael]

.I agree that Punch Drunk Love is ambitious, but it isn't a big studio film (and nowhere near as radically ambitious in form as Tree of Life). I don't know how you don't see the ambition in this film. It is a one of a kind. Maybe you haven't made all the connections in the film because you also mentioned you didn't feel like the Sean Penn parts weren't developed enough...except that the entire film is about how and why he feels like he does.

With Adam Sandler and following up to the commercial success of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, I thought PDL was big-studio I remember seeing it in a multiplex cinema unlike ToL which is playing at a one-screen art house.

Spoiler

Perhaps I was not viewing the ToL in the right frame of mind. During the beach reconciliation sequence, I was fighting to find emotions - to be moved by this guy moping miserably throughout the earlier part, a very brief part, of the film only to find him way later in the film meeting his family and folks from his life "reconciliating". I was so absorbed by the long middle section - the family life in Texas - that Sean disappeared from my mind and when he reappeared, I was jarred. I don't know why but I felt the sense that I was supposed to feel something, to be moved and touched during that beach sequence. I felt completely alienated. This sequence gave me the weird vibe of those Pepsi (or was it Coca Cola) TV commercials of 1980s. My partner found it New Age-y goo goo. I was far moved by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek dancing to Nate King Cole even after leaving a trail of dead folks in Badlands more than anything in ToL.

Believe me. I wanted so desperately to love the film.

[mfunk9786]

I think that's really all the film had going for it, ultimately. That people were so desperate to love it. Some people forced themselves to love it, and others held the film accountable for not holding up its end of the bargain.

[knives]

Isn't that overly dismissive mfunk? I know someone for example who had never even heard of Malick before seeing this and was absolutely enthralled (though he felt that the first hour was too slow). While I'd place it in the middle of his oeuvre I thought it was still entertaining and good. Certain aspects particularly the musical structure I would go as far as to say is Malick's best stuff while others (the sentimentality) are not. For me this is just the logical conclusion of Malick where his best and worst aspects are magnified to a very interesting extreme. It's still a good movie and occasionally great even if it ultimately doesn't hold together.

[mfunk9786]

Maybe I'm just still feeling spurned by this film, but I truly feel that it's one of the most overrated works of art I've ever been exposed to. I'm not going to go out on a limb and profess to hate it, or call it one of the worst films of X amount of time, etc - but the first and last 20-30 minutes of the film are utterly abhorrent attempts at developing a thesis for a film that has none. By deciding to create a film about childhood and parenthood, Malick won't allow himself to revert into the horrors of actual plot the way he so successfully did in films like Badlands and Days of Heaven; instead, he has chosen to approach this subject matter in the most inaccessible way possible as a "fuck you" to the audience disguised as an artistic decision. Nevermind the fact that the often-beautiful center of the film contains less actual insight into what it is to grow up in a 'typical' suburban family than your average episode of The Wonder Years, Malick sees fit to bookend that open-ended poem with the cinematic equivalent of a high school philosophy class having an open discussion, with the desks all arranged in a circle. We're exposed to Sean Penn's character in a series of brief but neverending moody Sean Penn glances, set years after the opening event of the film. Despite the jarring disconnect between these two time periods, we're expected to immediately make the connection between the opening event (which, by the way, is staged in a way that is utterly lacking in explanation, and worse, emotion) and Penn's modern-day whirlwind of skyscrapers and pouts. The 'big bang' (I guess that's what we saw) portion of the film is somewhat acceptable until the dinosaurs arrive, offering approximately 1/100000th of the philosophical and metaphysical insight of the opening act of 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially at one particularly laughable point involving a wounded dino and a would-be predator. The film then splits open into a lovely-but-repetitive and overlong series of interludes of young Penn's memories, featuring excellent performances and cinematography (but sparse and unrealistic set design - never before have I seen children playing games with more rusty tin cans, or a family with less substantial possessions aside from nice and neat furniture in their spotless home). Presenting this sequence at such a distance from the viewer removes any actual feeling that might have come from sharing Penn's childhood with us, and makes one utterly baffled once the denouement rears its ugly (and I mean ugly, absolutely nightmarish from every possible angle - scientifically, philosophically; even religiously) head. We're asked at that point to not only care about Penn (we don't, still, after seeing his slice of life) but to also care about his less-seen brother, his fate (fuzzy is putting it mildly, we know nothing) and Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt's ability to find peace. Making matters more confusing is that we're still seeing an adult Penn, decades-removed from the events that set everything into motion, being given no idea why we're supposed to connect that particular moment in his childhood with that particular event (though a large one) in his early adulthood, with this middle-aged adult that we are never even given the opportunity to get to know. The last five minutes are a hoot and a holler, too; I can just imagine Chastain going up to Malick at some point and saying "...are you really sure this is what you want me to do?"

I know that Malick is a recluse, and apparently a very normal and humble person, but this is the work of a frightening narcissist - someone who is of the belief that their entire being - their childhood, their flaky philosophy, their hazy take on Christianity - is something that any average film-goer could even begin to care about. I found out while watching The Tree of Life just how little I did.

[knives]

I don't think it is about childhood or growing up particularly to be honest. If it's about anything I would suppose it's anguish with maybe a bit of bitterness thrown in. Childhood is just the setting and a very good one for me. As to the rest of your claims. I don't feel I can make the best defense of them, but why is the sparseness of the family setting or the rustiness of the cans a thing? That seems like picking up on the smaller details to ignore the forest or however the saying goes. Though the other things you are talking about suggest that we watch Malick films for drastically different reasons.

[mfunk9786]

It was more of a stray observation, to be honest - but when we're given a meditative pace and lingering shots, it becomes increasingly irksome when faced with a heavily scrubbed mise-en-scène. It goes from jaw-droppingly lovely to distractingly and distancingly unlike anything that feels like real life.