criterionforum.org

We really watched this with different eyes if that's your response! I didn't feel any of the shots lingered and in fact the excessive cutting made me nauseous. I need a second viewing just to capture all I missed because the movie was cutting too fast for me to actually look at the mise-en-scène. Even to your point though why does the film have to feel like real life? The film has a number of fantasy sequences and as someone else here said feels like an ad for Mirror in it's approach to story so if the story treatment is so unlike real life why should the mise-en-scène? Not to be rude, but your complaints are sounding more like you wanted one thing and got an other and are peeved at that.

I haven't seen the film yet, but why does one need to know a lot about a character in order to care about them. Isn't it enough for the character to represent humanity? Do we need to know that peasant # 2 in The Potato Eaters likes to play cricket in order to be moved by the painting? Why can't a face or a person in space be enough?\

Edit-Though it should be noted that Mfunk's response to the film is not entirely dissimilar to mine with Tarkovsky's "The Mirror", namely that the memories of the Alexei character (and presumably of Tarkovsky himself) are depicted with such reverence and self-seriousness (the tracking shots, the slow motion, etc.), that I find it a little narcissistic (though I should note that I do find Tarkovsky a great filmmaker and that his "monumental" style fits perfectly a subject like say, Andrei Rublev or the philosophical discourse of Stalker). But Malick's aesthetic isn't really similar to Tarkovsky's, in fact, the former's films feel basically off the cuff, which is why I don't think I'll have the same problems with The Tree Of Life.

The issue here is the lack of association one is given between Penn and the child who portrays him in his youth. A little bit of connection between the three time periods and plot threads would have been ideal - I'm not asking for the guy's life story (yuk yuk yuk)

mfunk9786 wrote: 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.

The seemingly autobiographical details of the plot can throw this point off quite easily, but Malick's philosophical outlook -- particularly as articulated in this film -- is one of the least solipsistic viewpoints I can imagine. The Heidegger quote at the beginning of this piece hits pretty close to my own interpretation of what's going on here.

And contrary to a lot of folks, I don't take the film or the ending as explicitly Christian.

Oh, nor do I necessarily; but I take it as remarkably confused and aimless.

To push what Holly was saying isn't it knowledge enough that Penn and the kid are one in the same? They're the same person and no amount of context would change that.

But what is it (aside from his glance at a tree being planted) that connects that moment in Penn's life with the moment of tragedy in his early adulthood with the slice of his childhood that we're shown? Should we need to know? Should we even care if we were to find out? We're never given the opportunity to even consider the connection between the threads that we're given - we're just given them and asked to sit down, shut up, and be overwhelmingly, life-changingly moved by the movie. That sort of thing just isn't what I'm looking for in my cinema.

Well I can't speak for 'we', but I didn't care. I saw Penn's character as a guide to the movie and a being that we're experiencing the film through. He doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

hollyharry wrote:I haven't seen the film yet, but why does one need to know a lot about a character in order to care about them. Isn't it enough for the character to represent humanity?

Because how can one character represent the entire humanity? This was actually my main problem with the film. That it uses specific circumstances (a white middle-class family unit) and treats it as a statement about the whole human race. I feel uncomfortable that the film attempts to talk about human emotions (grief, happiness, childhood) in universal terms, but chooses to ignore the particular conditions that lead to these emotions. We don't see why

Spoiler

Chastain grieves for her son, why Pitt gets laid off work etc

. Malick is clearly more interested in general human emotions than particular conditions, I get that; but as a colored person myself, I feel uncomfortable being made to assume that a white middle-class family unit can represent the emotions of humanity, so much so that when Malick contrasts these emotions to the beginning of the universe, it just seems like he's so self-absorbed as to regard these people (or himself, if this film is truly autobiographical) as the center of the universe.

In fact, we only see colored people twice in the film. Once near the beginning in a close-up of a black woman's hands, and later in the middle of the film when the boy's exposure to the corruption of the world is seen through his exposure of poor/working-class black people (who are again only seen in the background). What's even more disturbing is Malick's interest in purity/innocence/the Fall that is a running theme throughout all his films. It definitely has been a problem for me in his previous films - The New World much more so than The Thin Red Line (where native/indigenous people embody the concept of an innocence untainted by the evils of society); but it is especially troubling for me in this film, where there is no contact with an Other at all. Malick seems to be mourning the lost innocence/paradise of childhood (another broad general term that shouldn't be applied universally) but does not explain how 'evil' (and indeed society's problems - such as theft - is seen as evil as when he uses ominous music in that bizarre sequence) comes into being, except that it is a natural reaction to growing up/patriarchy. Not that he has to, of course, but the simplistic notions of innocence/evil and the quest (indeed, through the making of this film itself) to reclaim a lost paradise seem to me to be ill-conceived and, again, self-absorbed.

Speaking of Heidegger and his interest in Dasein- Heidegger talks about a being-in-the-world, a conception of a being that is always connected to the people around him in the face of time (that is to say, death). I see The Tree of Life contemplating Time, but what about the rest of the world?

Tom Hagen wrote:

Spoiler

I am sorry that this sounds like some sort of "we are all made of stars" new agey nonsense. That really couldn't be any further from what's going on here, as much as it sounds like that's precisely what I am describing (and what Malick filmed).

But what you're describing is precisely what's being represented on film, complete with all the cliche signifiers of an afterlife such as seeing dead people as the exact same age they were last represented on film, people's hands reaching to the sky, blown-out white light, a collection of strangers (i.e. heaven or some New Age soul convention), Penn walking through a very explicit "doorway" structure to get to the beach, etc. Sometimes a duck is just a duck.

I still have yet to see the film but I wanted to be sure and draw attention to this excellent piece which was pointed to in that thread on Kehr's site. Didn't want it to get lost along the way. There's also another very nice piece here from a more explicitly Christian angle.

Tom, you don't have to be new-agey for that idea. In fact you can be rather old-agey in fact. I think Auguries of Innocence by William Blake is the perfect summary of the over-riding theme of Malick's career as director. Here's a taste of the first stanza if you will indulge me:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

There are individual ideas going through all five movies, but they are connected with the idea shared in that poem. In the case of The Tree of Life it's important not to forget, as has been mentioned here before, the Job quote at the beginning. In many ways this is an angry film and Malick's raging against god. While from past movies I think Malick finds comfort in the idea that existence is god so to speak (which could humourously lead to a Malick is god joke), but here he is supposing that the deist conception of existence is true in which case why? Why make all of these sneezes if you won't let them at least accomplish that. You may have made us small, but that doesn't make us insignificant. Malick's cries seem to me to be that of a helpless child just wanting a little bit or reassurance. We may be a grain of sand, but you make us think of that as the whole world. I'm asking why and if you're just going to tell me to fuck off and do as I'm told than I'll shout the same to you even if it's like an ant biting an elephant. Who knows maybe with enough ants the elephant will come down. This is not a christian film, but an anti-christian film.

FWIW, the review from the Catholic journal First Things was not appreciative for some of the same reasons pointed to here, but most explicitly due to the film's vagueness or obliqueness. But I doubt this was ever meant to be the kind of direct, clear presentation of doctrinal points they seemed to want. On the other side of that, however, there is no reason why an artwork struggling with notions of God should have to be consequently "anti-Christian" by definition. It's just, I think, that those kinds of overt religious struggles are more generally situated in or recognized in Judaism than Christianity (not for nothing is Job a reference here then).

Maybe I am just relating the film too strongly with the Blake poem so I immediately went to christianity when it seems to be a generally anti-deist statement at least within a theoretical exercise. Since I gave the first part of the poem, might as well give the last to as I feel it is also relevant to the film.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

I don't know if I can add anything that hasn't already been stated here. I'm thrilled by the ambition of this film and admire the idea of inserting a FANTASIA "Rite Of Spring"-style creation sequence, but the beginnings of life on earth along with whatever existentialist crisis the adult Jack is going through come off as simply superfluous to the true masterstroke of the "Texas in the 50s" scenes. Malick's handling of this core aspect of his film is a stunning achievement - the finest evocation of childhood since SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, but it even surpasses that work by dispensing with straight narrative and allowing the story to be told only through splinters of images and snatches of dialogue. There are a myriad of tiny details that Malick draws our attention to and each one feels true and profound or, at the very least, appealingly poetic. Even the surreal touches (the floating mother - surely a nod to Tarkovsky's MIRROR which presented a similar fragmented approach to childhood memories) work perfectly within the context of young Jack's story. The images and abbreviated dialogue work so well that I would say Malick's now-trademark narration does nothing to enhance these sequences and is in danger of putting too fine a point on moments already so eloquently expressed in the visual.

If this evocation of childhood was somehow lacking in impact, I would understand Malick's desire to give the film a loftier context to impart his message. But, as has been pointed out, the idea that the human condition in any era cannot be completely divorced from the creation of earth and its earliest lifeforms has already been played for laughs in Jonze's and Kaufman's ADAPTATION while the "Job" parable that Malick interjects throughout has already been played for laughs in the Coen Brothers' A SERIOUS MAN. I should add that I mean nothing derogatory with the term "played for laughs", only that these two films are as successful, if not more successful, at attaining the ambitious scope that Malick is shooting for and they do it as comedy.

Malick's creation scenes are beautifully realized, but they don't hold a candle (play-on-words intended) to the triumphant childhood segments that make up the majority of THE TREE OF LIFE. Similarly, there is little in the way Sean Penn's adult Jack is presented that strikes any kind of emotional chord (that play-on-words wasn't intended!)...

Spoiler

As has been pointed out, the death of Jack's brother happened thirty to forty years prior to the scenes of adult Jack moping around his glass house and wasting time at the office. He is obviously preoccupied with memories of his family of origin, but how does this affect the character arc Malick is proposing? Early in the film, Jack calls his father up and apologizes, but this is before the flashbacks and there is still plenty of struggling adult Jack moments to come. His moment of catharsis seems to come with the Fellini-like closing scene on the beach, but I don't know if I got much more meaning out of this than "we're all in this together". The adult Jack seems relieved after this dream/reverie, so I'm happy for him, but I don't know him.

...I do know the young Jack, however, and recognize every doubt, desire, sorrow and joy this boy experiences. The family dynamics are unmistakable and it's clear how these dynamics form the boy. What's less clear, and much less moving, is how these dynamics inform the adult.

mfunk9786 wrote: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.

Don't presume to know how other people feel about the film. There's the solution. You know that big hubbub recently about that guy who said that everyone else only loved contemplative films as if they were tasteless 'cultural vegetables'? Don't be that guy.

I am sure I loved the film in a completely different way from many other people who all loved it in a completely different way from each other. No person can ever be wrong about their own feelings; you can certainly be wrong about others', and in fact are necessarily every time you assume to know them. They should and could never feel as you do, and you should and could never feel as they do, and since the issue of 'ratedness' applies only to each person's own feelings the idea of 'over' or 'under' rated is simply meaningless nonsense, a confusion of singular consciousness in mass for a single mass consciousness. Don't do it.

mfunk9786 wrote: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.

I never for a second felt that the film resembled real life. Except when the house was filled with water, that time felt real.

mfunk9786 wrote:Oh, nor do I necessarily; but I take it as remarkably confused and aimless.

Now this is something I take no issue with. You probably did. I may in many ways, as well. In fact, in all the ways it isn't aimless I don't really find it very interesting much at all. Perhaps you should focus on how marvelously aimless the film is. It's one of my favorite instances of aimlessness in cinema for a great stretch, a stretch which I, like you, don't find is all that interestingly tied to its framing devices.

drakula wrote:Because how can one character represent the entire humanity? This was actually my main problem with the film. That it uses specific circumstances (a white middle-class family unit) and treats it as a statement about the whole human race.

I took it as the inverse - a way of one individual looking at all of existence in order to make a specific statement about his own life. The way one individual feels is a way in which any individual can feel a part of, and this seems a far more sensible approach than attempting to find the most minute unifying strand that unites all humans throughout all time. One among many is not much, but nobody will ever be more (so why attempt such a useless representation?), and each person is more than enough to create something that every person can empathize with, if only because everyone is at the same time in the same situation of both individuality and smallness. To recognize the importance of one among many is to recognize the importance of yourself, and to recognize the smallness of you among so much keeps you from searching for any nonsensical universal human truths which are relevant to no human but all of them at once, which never occurs. Your other complaints about the lack of omniscience, the lack of racial breadth, are directly contradicted by what seems to me to be a more satisfying approach, given that I am satisfied and you not so at all - that an individual speaks for nobody else in the same way that we all speak only for ourselves. Were Malick to attempt to speak as if he understood your perspective as a colored person - would you not reject that flat out? I would. He's not omniscient, after all, he's just one man amongst many, one tiny speck - and that is more than enough. And when his film explores emotions I don't ask 'Why not this other way', I ask, 'Why this way?' There's a method, and it may not be everything, but this film is, again, not everything, just one thing, and that's enough - especially since 'everything' is exceedingly impossible, especially in the sense that the film is relating to memories of an older man, memories which are filtered through his own recognition of emotions far more than a memory of the particular details which sparked each and every emotion in his childhood - and especially because those particular instances are so interchangeable, such insignificant specks which collide again and again in different shapes with this other insignificant speck which is so significant, which is his own experience. And so there you have it - whatever remains within him, as an individual, is all that matters, because it is all he could ever offer, and all anyone could offer, and to ask more is simply not sensible.

JeanRZEJ wrote:Your other complaints about the lack of omniscience, the lack of racial breadth, are directly contradicted by what seems to me to be a more satisfying approach, given that I am satisfied and you not so at all - that an individual speaks for nobody else in the same way that we all speak only for ourselves. Were Malick to attempt to speak as if he understood your perspective as a colored person - would you not reject that flat out? I would. He's not omniscient, after all, he's just one man amongst many, one tiny speck - and that is more than enough.

I agree with you, but only in half, because:
1. Malick does attempt to be omniscient, at least in the scale of the film. If the film were just about the 50's family, I might completely agree with you. But he positions the camera as being there from the beginning of time through prehistoric life. He does try to relate/compare his individual existence to the infinite breadth of nature. My question is why aren't other human beings included in this breadth? Aren't other human beings part of nature too? I see the film as attempting a totalizing view of history (which is problematic in itself, and extremely outdated in our postmodern world), except that this 'totality' seems myopic, solipsistic, which brings me to the next point-
2. He has attempted before to relate individual experience to people of other cultures in his previous films (The New World/The Thin Red Line). Although you understand from the get-go that his portrayal of indigenous people is squarely within his limited point-of-view (contemporary white middle-class male perspective), there is an attempt to reach outside his limited perspective. I may not necessarily agree with that portrayal, but at least it was an attempt to relate himself to tangible issues. The problem I see in this film is this: again, he relates individual experience to something he cannot fully understand (Time/religion), but I am just uninterested in seeing a film so dedicated to something we truly cannot fully understand, as compared to something we can at least attempt to understand (other people) - through discourse. It's just like the opening quote of the film- Job can never understand God's intentions- the people demand answers from God, but God never answers. At least in other people, we can expect an answer, although we know fully well that these answers never tell the full truth.

On a sidenote, why doesn't Malick show the future at all? (I don't see the ending as visions of the future) Again it seems to confirm for me that he views History as a totality culminating in Sean Penn's character. There is no future in this film or, at least, the future matters a lot less than the past (his past). At least in 2001: A Space Odyssey (another film that I dislike immensely, but for other reasons), Kubrick attempts a vision of the future (no matter how cheesy it may look)...

I should also say in response to you that I'm not at all blaming this film for not being what I want it to be. Malick definitely has a fully formed aesthetic/worldview here. It's simply that I don't agree with it.

The future has nothing to do with the themes of the movie though. Given that it's about the general feeling of anguish that Malick's experiencing against god the future doesn't really matter as it will either be more of the same, he'll die, or he'll somehow get his answers. The future just has the same questions as the past and the present. Notice how he doesn't explore the present either and just uses it as a gateway to the past where his questions can most easily be phrased.

drakula wrote:I am just uninterested in seeing a film so dedicated to something we truly cannot fully understand, as compared to something we can at least attempt to understand (other people) - through discourse.

Dude, are you kidding? That IS what the movie is about! Haha.

Since there's been some questions as to Malick's religious views, thought this would be worth mentioning:

The Malicks' 1998 marriage was the third for Ecky and Terrence Malick, who both attend services at a local Episcopal church. Kelly Koonce, the Episcopal priest at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Tarrytown, plays the clergyman in "The Tree of Life."

It doesn't surprise me that he attends a liberal, mainline Protestant church. I could see something like Tillich being right up Malick's alley.

What did work partly in his previous films as a contrast to human condition (the snake on the hill in The Thin Red Line…) is pure parody here - what a piece of esotheric bull****. Time to make a new translation of this.

Yes, if only Malick would have shot and edited his film in a style that is nearly opposite from his own.