2011 piece of abstract artRating: 18/20 (Mark: 17/20; Amy: 15/20)
Plot: In the beginning, there was darkness. Yadda yadda yadda. A dinosaur farts. A kid dies. Then, darkness again. The end.
Absolutely staggering, and this despite me not listening to Larstonovich and seeing in a movie theater. I'll go ahead and get my gripe out of the way: I was not a big fan of the whispered multi-character narration in this. I almost would have rather seen the almost completely wordless series of images that this would have been. The structure of Malick's family drama is going to frustrate a lot of people who see this. It's non-linear and episodic, excluding big moments in order to include minutia and memory tidbits, blending dream with the most mundane of human interactions, piling metaphor on metaphor and metaphor. That's what it is really, an orgy of metaphor. Metaphor porn, and if you're into that sort of thing, you'll get off while watching The Tree of Life. There's a story here, but it's a puzzle, like a fragile piece of porcelain that Malick has ballping-hammered into fine pieces and many years later attempted to glue back together again. This is one of those movies that almost speaks its own language. You clutch onto what's familiar--the actors, who I thought were good only because they didn't get in the way; the gorgeous visuals that you'd expect from something Malick took this long to put together; the haunting, largely classical score. And if you're like me, while you're working hard in the beginning to clutch on to something and trying desperately to put the pieces of the puzzle together or wondering why the hell there are dinosaurs, the movies going to clutch back. This one got a grip on me and still hasn't let go. It's poetry on the screen, big and ambitious and more than a little pretentious, a visceral experience that I think I'll carry in my bones for a long, long time. Was this storyboarded?
Malick apparently has four movies in production or filming. That would nearly double his output from the last 28 years!
At some point watching this I was thinking, "man this guy took a pretty roundabout way to illustrate the oedipus complex" I didn't mind the whispering, I didn't like the beach end, and still wonder if the Sean Penn stuff was necessary. But man that eye candy.
ReplyDeleteThis seems like the kind of film I would hate, but instead, I can only marvel at its unique vision. If I were trying to give an example of how film can be "art", this would be my choice. The visual style blew me away. So many creative shots, beautiful cinamatography, and the constant originality of choice make this evocative and intriguing. The series of cosmic and personal vignettes have a beautiful cumulative effect that makes the film both abstract and very personal. Like all great art, "Tree of Life" is involving while being open to personal interprtation. a 16.
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