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Ironically this thread made me like both of you more

So it seems from this thread to date that I'm the only person to have seen the feature length version with the Blanchett narration?

The film is full of incredible footage, but there's a a lot about it that is simply not good. The narration is even more vaporous and pretentious than usual, and it's all over the film, adding nothing but flatulence. "Mother? Where aaare you? Where am I? Where are weee? Are we theeere yet?"

There are also incessant interruptions of extremely ugly contemporary footage (gesticulating street loonies, close-up drunk-cam wedding ceremonies, cattle slaughter) presented in ultra-degraded SD, which, if Malick is trying to make some kind of point about the fallen nature of modern society, seems to me aesthetically dishonest. These interludes don't help the otherwise chronological structure, which in isolation would have been nicely unemphatic, and seemed like little more than filler to me - they must account for at least a quarter of an hour of the total running time, all told. And I'm guessing that the early man sequence is much more extensive here than in the shorter versions, as it did go on and on, only drawing comical attention to all the artful posing required to obscure any and all genitalia.

Yeah, I think literally everything that you're unhappy about was absent from the narration-free version- the modern footage in it was brief, and filmed in the same ecstatic style and with (to my eye) the same filmstock as the rest of the film, and was (as best I can recall) mostly a little girl running around on a lawn. The early man sequence seemed brief and pointed, and the whole thing has lived well in my memory; it sounds like the interpolations in the Blanchett one are almost entirely bloat.

zedz wrote:So it seems from this thread to date that I'm the only person to have seen the feature length version with the Blanchett narration?

No, I saw it at the London Film Festival last year too, and I can't disagree with anything you said in your post. Some lovely footage of course, and meditative as ever, but in an era when nature documentaries and commercials mimic Malick's modern aesthetic so readily, much of it just seemed redundant. I'd certainly be curious to see it again in the version matrixschmatrix describes though.

Yeah, the version matrixschmatrix describes sounds like a vast improvement. Here's hoping that eventually sees a release.

zedz wrote:There are also incessant interruptions of extremely ugly contemporary footage (gesticulating street loonies, close-up drunk-cam wedding ceremonies, cattle slaughter) presented in ultra-degraded SD, which, if Malick is trying to make some kind of point about the fallen nature of modern society, seems to me aesthetically dishonest.

It's footage shot by a photographer, Lee Jeffries, known for his portraits of homeless people and street prostitutes. Several years ago he was contacted by Malick, who then sent him the SD camera he used, called the Digital Harinezumi. I think it's the same one used at the beginning of To the Wonder. There's a Facebook post about it here where you can read a bit more about it and see some of the footage. Pretty harrowing stuff.

I personally love what Malick has been doing with the GoPro and other non-professional cameras in his recent films. I especially love the opening of Knight of Cups, with the children playing in the yard, so reminiscent of Tree of Life except shot like a home movie rather than a big budget film. In general he seems to use these cameras for their primal/visceral quality (think of Fassbender's introduction in Song to Song, riding on the motorcycle), as if we were seeing a direct recording of reality unfiltered by film's more seductive tendencies (which is itself a type of aestheticization, admittedly). I'm often reminded of Godard's use of DV in films like Eloge de l'amour when I watch recent Malick's recent work, which is about the highest compliment I could pay it.

French blu-ray - yes I can see it says DVD on the spine, but there's a separate listing for the DVD edition.

Here is the Blu-ray cover/artwork:
https://www.facebook.com/OneBigSoul.The ... 5819802507" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm very tempted to buy this French Blu-Ray, but I'm wondering if there will be forced subtitles? I've seen this on DVD way back.

I've been told that the US release is supposedly set for October (not sure how accurate that info is though). Anyway, what I'm most concerned about at this point is having the most versions available, preferably on one set. I wonder what the likelihood is of multiple versions turning up on any of these forthcomings Blus.

I will wait before jumping on the French release, which is likely only to have one version (though my hopes of finding a multi-version release somewhere are probably too high anyway).

I wonder if Criterion gets this.

Costa wrote:I wonder if Criterion gets this.

That would certainly be the best case scenario, especially with all the different cuts of this floating around. Probably the only shot of seeing them all released on video, unless the releases of the film vary from region to region enough to patch it all together.

So...no bluray release? Seems like there hasn't been word of this film all year.

Hopefully it’s featured on the Criterion release of Tree of Life.

I was assuming Broad Green's drama was what was holding up its home video release. :-k

The 90 minute Cate Blanchett/theatrical cut has been out in France on blu-ray since September. (It's markedly different than the 45 minute VO-less IMAX 3.56:1 version I saw theatrically.)

Oedipax wrote:The 90 minute Cate Blanchett/theatrical cut has been out in France on blu-ray since September. (It's markedly different than the 45 minute VO-less IMAX 3.56:1 version I saw theatrically.)

Region locked, or region-free?

Region B, according to Amazon.