[Published with the hope of generating some more discussion on what has generally been an extremely well received film. Please, be gentle]
Five acclaimed films in four long decades ensure that any new movie by reclusive director Terrence Malick is sure to cause a stir on the arthouse circuit. The Tree of Life is his latest effort, a film dominated by images of breathtaking natural beauty on a scale ranging from the intimate to the unfathomably vast. Yet these sumptuous visuals bear no tangible connection whatsoever to what could, at best, be described as the tantalizing hint of a compelling narrative. Simultaneously, over the entire film hangs a murky false profundity; an inescapable pompousness meant to convince audiences that the film is somehow important, and that one day they might get to understand why. But no one can understand The Tree of Life, because it is not a work that is designed to be understood. It is a collection of vacant and unrelated images of no importance as part of a greater whole; a briefly impressive but soon agonizingly dull film that refuses to engage its audience, and is made all the more disappointing by its fleeting flashes of brilliance.
The Tree of Life opens with a biblical quote, a sure fire sign that any film will be just brimming with self-importance. After a brief and promising prologue, the movie launches into an extended and wholly unnecessary sequence that depicts the birth of the universe and planet earth, complete with swelling orchestras, CGI dinosaurs and the hushed voices of various narrators who ask existential questions that the film will make no attempt to address. Shifting temporarily back into semi-lucidity, the film then presents a series of memories, mostly from the perspective of Jack O’Brien, an adolescent boy living in suburban Texas in the 1950s with his domineering father (Brad Pitt), kind hearted mother (Jessica Chastain) and two younger brothers. Scattered throughout these memories are sequences of a now adult Jack (Sean Penn), a man who seems to drift through his modern life without purpose or direction.
From a purely photographic standpoint, The Tree of Life is marvelous to behold. Malick’s version of the origin of the universe is filled with grace and grandeur, and is brought to life with the help of famed special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, the man responsible for the Star Gate sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Equally stunning are the sumptuous visions of oceans, forests and countless other natural wonders that Malick peppers through the film, images sure to arrest and astound audiences with their insurmountable beauty. The problem is that, pretty as the film is, these shots and sequences serve no purpose beyond the indulgence of Malick’s tedious fascination with them. Overused and under-explained, at a certain point it becomes clear that these images are irrelevant to any semblance of narrative, and their recurrence throughout the film soon becomes an irritating distraction.
Eventually the film settles in on the life of the O’Brien family, whose mother and father embody what the film simplistically suggests are the two driving forces in the universe: “nature” and “grace”. The difference between the two is whispered reverently into our ears in one of the film’s unbearable moments of voiceover. What it boils down to essentially is that grace equals good, nature equals bad. Pitt and Chastain – to their credit – both give wonderfully naturalistic performances, as do young actors Hunter McCracken and Laramie Eppler as the adolescent Jack and his younger brother R.L. Sean Penn, on the other hand, is completely wasted in a role that asks him to look melancholy, stumble around lackadaisically and barely utter a word. In its most coherent – and not-coincidentally, best – moments, the film charts his character’s childhood relationship with his father. The scenes involving the family, and especially between Pitt, Eppler and McCracken, are simple but powerfully relatable, and are captured with a sublime elegance by Malick and celebrated cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. Unfortunately, Malick’s refusal to confine himself to any kind of narrative structure, flow or detectable meaning ensures that these wonderful moments are soon or later lost in a sea of pretentiousness.
Before concluding, I feel compelled to draw a comparison with another film that I had the misfortune of seeing this week: Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Between that film and The Tree of Life, audiences can witness some of the most epic and mind-blowing images the human eye can possibly see. But that cannot make up for the flagrant self-indulgence of two directors whose styles, philosophies and bodies of work could not possibly be more different. But as terrible – and I stress, terrible – as Bay’s film is, at least it is unashamed in its awfulness. It is not conceited or elitist, and makes no attempts to hide its inanity behind its director’s reputation or an arthouse veneer. Both films were made for specific audiences who were predisposed to adore them. But at least the people who walk out singing the praises of Transformers 3 will not try to imbue it with high-brow qualities that it simply does not possess.
Many will accuse those who do not like The Tree of Life of simply not “getting” it. I maintain however that there is no way one possibly can. That is not to say necessarily that the film is meaningless; on the contrary, it is quite possible that, for Malick, every single shot of this film has a meaning that is both precise and profound. But the movie is so intentionally formless, meandering and inaccessible that it is, quite frankly, impossible to deduce what Malick may – or may not – be trying to say. More generous viewers will infer meaning, because that is what one is forced to do when presented with something that seems like it should have some. People will say the film is about life, love, existence, religion and man’s insignificance in the universe. The will say that it is about all manner of philosophical topics like these, because that is what they believe a film that looks and sounds like this should be about. But the fact is, Malick never competently communicates any of this. The Tree of Life, for all its splendour, says absolutely nothing.
Sorry, for me a film must have at least some semblance of narrative, some kind of structure, to be a proper film. I don’t pretend to be arthouse savvy, nor do I try and pretend that I understand whatever it is that Malick’s trying to say in each of his films, but I “don’t get them”. That’s a cop-out, I know, but it’s the way I feel when I watch them. I don’t become hooked by them, they don’t grab my attention and make me want to watch.
As I mentioned over on your site, Tom, I probably won’t see this film. I may check it out as a weekly rental at some point, but I won’t be making time for a film I have a high expectation of not enjoying. That’s not to say this isn’t an enjoyable film to some, and I think your review is well written regardless of your negative opinion of it.
Viewing the Tree of Life is all about perspective, if you are a big fan of Malick, you can’t help but notice the differences in the composition and editing in his latest feature, Tree of Life is Malick’s most ambitious film, the thing I most appreciate about this very good film, but the reason why in my review (below) I bag the film so much, is because there is (still) room for improvement, the editing of the Tree of Life is’nt must mediorice, its pretty bad, as Gamble mentioned on the cinecast, then someone has a bucket load of footage and really constructs his film completely in the editing room (as Malick does) you going to end up with a film that has a vision but lacks any emotional direction, Tree of Life is visually moving but emotional cool, one of the best films ever about youth, one of the worst when it comes to ‘growing old’, Tree of Life had 5 EDITORS and it shows, I having seen, believe Tree of Life is the perfect example of why editing is undoubtedly the most important aspect of filmmaking, its the essence of feature-filmmaking (note Thin Red Line is brilliantly edited BTW) so actually I’ve come full circle of Tree of Life, I do believe that an extended cut will come out (BR/DVD) so i’m still optimistic that my most anticipated film in 4 years can still satisfy me, I just don’t want to be blue-balled with the bloody editing, (I swear the only shot in Tree of Life that is longer than 10 secs is that beautiful shot on a bird formation over an urban landscape, nice) and then Tree of Life ended, I did fill a bit empty, but I think that I wanted was more, could have watched another 2 hours, I was after an essence, an emotional connection (STILL WAITING) Tree of Life is the ultimate unfinished film 4 ME (oh and the last scene of TOL, its like Malick can’t leave anything out, where is the intrigue element, the mystery, DAMN)
http://www.thefilmtourist.com/2011/06/sff11-revie-tree-of-life.html
@Rodney, if you are even going to bother with the film, which sounds like you’ve already decided it’s not your cup of tea, you should see it in the cinema, where you are ‘committed’ to the film (no DVD/household distractions), besides, the cinematography and imagery will play 1000x better on a big movie screen than an HD-TVset.
Even I’ll agree with that. If anyone is planning on seeing THE TREE OF LIFE, do so cinemas where you can at least appreciate the often awesome imagery
I echo what Tom and Kurt have said. IF you’re going to see it, see it on the big screen.
“That is not to say necessarily that the film is meaningless; on the contrary, it is quite possible that, for Mallick, every single shot of this film has a meaning that is both precise and profound. But the movie is so intentionally formless, meandering and inaccessible that it is, quite frankly, impossible to deduce what Mallick may – or may not – be trying to say.”
the meaning is emotive not cerebral… the editing is in concert with a sense of lived-in experience… Jay mentioned in the other thread, how it is structured and edited imitates memory, when we are young it is short and erratic and then it draws out during that endless summer stretch because like in life, most of the imprints of what you come to feel about the world are made in this impressionable age. The creation story does not come first or at the end because, I believe, Malick has made it anthropomorphic, it is not creation per se, but creation as understood within the prayer of the mother, and what it comes down to is both the scale of “God’s” universe is immense but also that there are acts of random violence and random grace and the loss of her son is part of that collective whole suffering experience. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Malick is commenting on this in a way with how he structures the events, starting with the mother’s childhood, NOT the creation of the world. That mystery is contained within the human experience… likewise, the choice of not an idealized beach for the final scene, but a beach that shares space with seagulls, the sort of mongrel animals of the seafaring world, has a deliberate point to say, and in fact the final shot of the film is of a seagull (I read it as a play off the iconography of the holy spirit being a dove, and establishing his flag in the sand that the film holds a pantheistic philosophy). Malick may make you work at it, to figure out some of the imagery and the associations he is making but that doesn’t mean it is not there or so impossible to extract.
Also it is a pre-requisite that you have lived, and that you have a healthy capacity for introspection, to not just be reactionary to the world but be someone who has been still, really felt emotions, taken stock of events, confronted the deeper questions, suffered and remembered it. I don’t think it is a coincidence either that older people tend to respond to the film more favorably, people like me and Kurt who have kids and have had those experiences. If you are 19, I don’t care how worldly you are, the passage of time has not been experienced the same way someone in their fifties has… there is a richness of experience that something like Tree of Life can play off of. Malick is old, the film is in part a culmination of his memories of how life played out, the Malick of 19 couldn’t have made this.
I’ll echo the sentiment to see it on the big screen – not just for the creation section, but even more for the section in Waco with the very young children. It literally puts you THERE with them – staring into their faces, helping them walk, etc. Perhaps I fell for this section because, like Mike and Kurt, I’m old, craggy and have a child. I know that seeing that baby’s face taking up the entire screen was a perfect, beautiful moment, so I may be biased…
The film is by no means perfect for me (I don’t quite share some of Mike’s interpretations – or at least I haven’t come to my own overly specific interpretations for many of the scenes). I do agree somewhat with Tom’s point that maybe Malick was still searching for the film in the edit stage (and I think a shorter film may have worked better for me – not because I was in any way bored, but just that it would have connected with me a bit better perhaps). However, I don’t think you should really spend time trying to figure out what Malick meant to say or what he tried to say…I think this really becomes a film about what it says TO YOU. What feelings it evokes in you, how do you perceive the nature/grace question and what spirituality means to you (I’m not a religious person myself, but I found Malick’s way of searching for spirituality, without necessarily tieing it directly to religion or even God, was quite remarkable). I know that saying “what does it mean to you” may feel somewhat like a cop out, but I think Malick has really tried to structure his film in such a way that he isn’t necessarily trying to get you to see HIS point.
By the way, I’m not a Malick “fan boy”. I love Days Of Heaven, really like Badlands and Thin Red Line and only like The New World (though I saw it before DoH and I think I need to revisit with a different eye to it).
And not to criticize your specific approach to film @Rodney (hell, we all have our ways of approaching it), but I would personally avoid trying to define a “proper” film. I’m nitpicking at your words a bit, because obviously it’s OK if you “prefer” a certain kind of film. But if you avoid looking outside those boundaries, I think you may miss a great deal of what’s out there within the art form. Not just “experimental” film, but those films that try to play with structure and narrative conventions to tell their stories or create their feelings in different ways. Those films can really surprise you. You could probably spend your whole life watching stuff within the definition of your “proper” films and be perfectly satisfied which is great, but if you’re really passionate about film (and let’s face it, anyone who writes about film for free and who puts effort into blog and forum comments typically is), you don’t want to miss those films that might be, oh how shall I put it, a bit “off the rails”.
I don’t think this is much of a spoiler, but be forewarned I guess… it is pretty clear in the creation footage that it is emulating, at least in certain shots, human creation, with sperm and egg, phallic and vag symbolism but also, what I noticed on second viewing, there is a scene of these spirals moving towards the center of galactic cloud of light, and in a later scene those spirals are drawn in the father’s engineering sketchbook… it feeds into the theme of ownership, the dad makes a big deal of owning your ideas and profiting off of them, and likewise the emphasis on property lines and keeping to your side of it (Penn in the office building bemoans how everything has become property), and here you have in the creation story seemingly the ‘inspiration’ for what he is trying to own. As some other review mentioned, this is a common theme of Malick’s work, how in a natural state the world is whole and pure and man comes in and subdivides it, parcels it out and disrupts the unity. The act of ownership of land, of ideas seems futile within Tree of Life where everything is connected and part of the same tree.
It is also not a coincidence that the acts of transgression Jack does is break someone’s window, and enter a home uninvited, essentially breaking the taboo of ownership.
Bagging on a film like this for not adhering to the standard filmic understanding of narrative seems to me like bagging on something like Leaves of Grass for not having a single coherent narrative. It’s not what the film is after. I think Bob’s comment is spot on – this film is about what it means to you. It depends on what you bring to it as much as what Malick does, and I don’t think that’s a problem. It’s simply a way of approaching filmmaking that most people don’t do. More people do it in painting or poetry, and I find Malick’s attempts to experiment in different approaches exhilarating, though I do understand why others find them frustrating. I find much poetry frustrating myself.
Ask not what the film brings to you, but what you can bring to the film.
I think in general we place far too much importance on the film itself, it is the experience, the joining of the the two minds that gives it meaning. Synchronicity is the key… between someone and a Transformers movie and someone and Tree of Life. The spark is not in the film. We can only ultimately talk about what we feel about a film, some of the craft can be disputed empirically, but poor craft does not necessarily make a poor movie experience.
For those in the mood for a R3 drinking game, note this weeks episode of the cinecast and the “off the rails” count. Fair warning.
“Ask not what the film brings to you, but what you can bring to the film.”
@Rot, this is what makes Synechdoche, NY such a goddamn masterpiece!
@Mike – Your reading of the film and the various pieces of symbolism is completely valid, and is actually extremely interested. But I don’t think that you can possibly say that that is categorically what the film is meant to mean. No one can actually know what Malick “is commenting on”, and to suggest otherwise…isn’t that kind of arrogant?
Arguably it’s a strength of the film that people can interpret it in different ways, but at the end of the day I was just so disengaged by it that I honestly didn’t care what I could infer (and for the record, there is plenty of stuff in there that I have created a meaning for in my own head…also plenty of stuff that I just dismissed as pretentious…but hey, that’s just me)
You are completely spot on (or Jay is – sorry, I haven’t read the other thread as I only just saw the film) about how the editing evokes memory. That was easily my favourite part of the film; I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done so well
As for your comment about age – I see where you’re coming from, but don’t you think it’s a little reductive? Who are you to say that a 19 year old hasn’t taken stock of events or doesn’t have the capacity for retrospection? Not that I’m say I do possess these qualities necessarily
I’m pretty confident that I’ll still hate the film when I’m forty years old…I’ll be sure to get back to you 
@Bob – You’re absolute right: if someone can infer great meaning into a work of art, it doesn’t necessarily matter what the creator was trying to say. My issue is that the film seems to suggest – with everything from its editing, music, creation of the universe sequences, and even its director’s name and reputation – that it is meant to have some deep philosophical meaning. But it’s so bloody vague! I think it’s lazy, throwing up beautiful images of trees and supernovas, because you know that arthouse audiences are going to attribute great intellectual meaning to it.
The other thing is, I just found the film really boring. As I said to Mike…I was unengaged, so I didn’t really care WHAT the film implied/could be inferred.
@Jandy – You’re right; the film definitely isn’t going for a traditional narrative. Which is fine – there are plenty of non linear, non traditional films that I absolutely adore. But in THE TREE OF LIFE, I found that the non-linear approach detracted from the strongest parts of the movie, so I do think in this case that it’s a valid criticism.
I pretty closely agree with Tom’s review. I think my Malick distaste has been well documented but just throwing my hat in so Tom doesn’t feel alone
– More thoughts tomorrow as I digest the review a bit more.
I’ll back Tom as well. People are misinterpreting vague for deep, when in reality the film utterly relies on the audience to do all the philosophical legwork.
@Tom
In one way you are right, Tom, I am being reductive, there are sure to be 19 year olds who are wise beyond their years, there are even 19 year olds with children of their own, thus accelerating this life experience… but there is also the hard fact that a 19 year old cannot have twenty years of nostalgia for that time, they don’t know what it is to feel your body slowly wear down, to see your children grow, to work at a job for decades, to feel that kind of passage of time. That is what I am talking about. I was 19 once and I feel the divide between me now and me then, it is almost like a different person altogether. I think it fair to characterize a 19 year old as being one still feeling the newness of ideas, in some form whether nihilism or patriotism, or just lust there is a fairly driven absolute forcefulness at that age, all or nothing, due in part from a lack of experience. I was certainly that way. It is not a coincidence that most of the idealists that populate Communist parties or Greenpeace are college age. An old man making a semi-autobiographical story about his experiences of nostalgia and memory and feelings of the Job-like contradictions that life contains has a particular vantage point that an older audience (not all mind you) could benefit from. The lived-in cache of experiences are more likely to mirror someone older, but it is not inconceivable that someone younger could feel it too, but would probably feel it even more intensely the older they got, because the emotive part of it is so tied with this sense of aging.
Why do things have to be answered to make it a great film? Here is another film with some spiritual questions it never answers, and I’m sure one wouldn’t bash/belittle it along the same lines as above:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUTyEEiulQk
“It is not conceited or elitist, and makes no attempts to hide its inanity behind its director’s reputation or an arthouse veneer. “
I take serious umbrage to this statement. An artist shouldn’t make their art personal and passionate because you’ll interpret them being pretentious or push the borders of narrative in their medium. Fuck off. Seriously. (That’s as gentle as I get, and more honest than silently judging and ignoring you!)
or Primer, INLAND EMPIRE, Mulholland Dr, Synecdoche NY, Hiroshima Mon Amour, The Fountain, there are a lot of great films that are opaque and that request of its audience more than itemizing and categorizing what it sees, but actually informing the meaning by virtue of their own experiences or capacity to think with the thematic content.
a lack of explicitness does not equal a lack of quality, nor a lack of sophistication… the whole Zen Buddhism tradition is built on this actualizing of meaning within the person, not lecturing from without. Film-watching is NOT a one way street, you sitting with arms folded waiting for the film to shake you into something, it is about the interplay with the images, bringing your experiences into it… some of the great filmmakers understand this and play out what I like to think of as a tacit cinema. Van Sant is especially good at this, I have heard Bela Tarr too.
@Rot, “or Primer, INLAND EMPIRE, Mulholland Dr, Synecdoche NY, Hiroshima Mon Amour, The Fountain, there are a lot of great films that are opaque and that request of its audience more than itemizing and categorizing what it sees, but actually informing the meaning by virtue of their own experiences or capacity to think with the thematic content.”
AMEN.
The problem I have with Kurt and Rot’s position in this instance is that it’s ok for the filmmaker to ask the audience to do some legwork while watching the movie, but only so long as that legwork is positive. In other words, because a viewer has a negative experience or doesn’t find anything profound with the film and just sees it as wankery, then it must be the viewer’s fault; it’s their own stupidity, ignorance and lack of culture. But if one feels moved and sees something profound in the work, it’s because the film maker intended it to be so and therefore the movie is sheer genius.
No different than looking at an Andy Warhol. Is it pretentious, lazy bullshit or is it some sort of amazing statement on culture? I think any viewer would see it as something different. If it turns him/her off, that’s OK! There’s no need for name calling and condescension. Because frankly, I looked at a lot of Tree of Life (not all of it) as pretty eye-rolling artsy-fartsy bits of lame.
Mulholland Dr is a good example because like Tree of Life the intent for every moment onscreen is to evoke a particular emotion and if you are looking at it from the outside as a ‘poorly made’ film that, for example has this disjointed scene with the detective agency that goes on and on and doesn’t seem to add much to the plot, you are seriously missing the point. I know, because the first time I watched it I hated it, loathed it, considered it the worst film of that year (coincidentally I was also in my early 20′s, knee deep in academic indoctrination). I rewatched it again probably 8 years later and LOVED it. I could see that it was playing with dream logic, and the narrative thread was heightened emotion, and if you let that emotion take over, turn off your cerebral brain, stop thinking of it as a movie in an archival sense, the experience is unlike anything. Lynch wasn’t being a lousy director who didn’t understand pacing, was delving into obvious imagery… he was doing it intentionally… because, in that respect, dreams ARE obvious, the intensity of the emotions motivates the creative decisions, not some pre-set concern for how sophisticated a presentation of the ideas ought to be. That said, there is an internal logic to Mulholland Dr, it is tethered to a story (something that agitated the dream sequence, and you get glimpses of it within the film, and can pick it apart afterwards and see it).
Tree of Life is the same way. Mostly you feel it, it is designed to reproduce memory and experience and tap heightened emotions and it has ZERO concern about cinema history, or proper pacing and structure. Fuck that. It is pulled by sentiment forcefully, but at the same time, it is not “off the rails”, Malick spent A LONG time making this film, many edits, many decisions… he tried to create a emotive experience but nestled in it are things you can extract and think about… I think it is absurd to say it is coincidence that the creation story is immediately preceded by a prayer for an answer to the suffering, and not think that it is more than a literal depiction of the creation of the earth but something embedded in human experience (I am not aware of sperm flying through space, either). That the father’s notebook has an entire page full of the exact spiral shape that is CGI’ed into creation part and that the voiceover during the notebook shot is about ‘owning your ideas’… to think that is random, vague ideas is absurd… it is making a particular point that you can mull over.
I have to say, I didn’t notice Tom’s “conceited or elitist” statement the first time around. I’m totally fine with you not liking the film, obviously, but I do have to say I’m not a big fan of that sentence at all…
So Bay gets more of a pass because he admits he’s dumb and revels in it, but Malick is “elitist” (man, have I come to hate that word – or at least how people are using it) because he aspires to create art and express himself? I never felt that Malick was being pretentious – I don’t think he’s pretending any of this as it really feels like a truly personal film from him – or that he felt he was better than anyone who didn’t “get” his message. I really believe he doesn’t give a crap if anyone fully gets what he did. But that doesn’t mean he thinks he’s better than you.
I was gonna dive deeper into the topic of how using the word “eilte” in the political landscape allows people to feel better about not trying to understand things, but I’m getting off topic. If you didn’t get anything out of Tree Of Life, that’s OK – Malick won’t think less of you.
Curiously however, Mulholland Dr. has an actual plot that almost makes perfect coherent sense. Really, it does.
I’ll let Anthony Kusich do it because he does indeed the best job I’ve ever read on the subject: http://www.awardspeculation.com/mulhollanddrive.html
Andrew, I don’t mind people not liking Tree of Life. Or Warhol. Or whatever else. I do mind them dismissing it for not adhering to rules it never wanted to follow. You’ve said a few times you don’t like poetry. Fine. There’s a lot of poetry I can’t stand, and I don’t mind saying it at all, and I don’t think it makes me less smart or less cultured of a person. It just doesn’t speak to me. But that doesn’t mean it’s pretentious wankery, it just means it doesn’t speak to me. Tree of Life doesn’t speak to you, or Tom, or Goon, or Matt. That’s fine. But that doesn’t mean it’s pretentious poppycock, it just means it doesn’t hit your particular buttons the way it hits mine and Kurt’s and Mike’s.
That said, I do tend to revisit films and literature and poetry I don’t get or don’t like every five years or so to see if something’s changed. Sometimes it does.
at the risk of sounding like a pretentious douche (ok, too late), how about Artistic Honesty?
Hell, I’d say John Carpenter, Sam Fuller, Terrence Malick, Paul Verhoeven, Michel Gondry, Alexander Payne, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese and yes, even someone like John McTiernan or John Frankenheimer have it. Even if these directors make a movie or two that falls out of that (Rollerball Redux?)
To be bluntly honest, I’m not sure where I stand on Michael Bay. I’m thinking that Matt Brown would make the argument that TF2 stands for this more or less putting him in to the above.
Directors (imo) who don’t: Ron Howard, Rennie Harland, Joe Johnston, Lars Von Trier (even though I like his films), James Cameron (ditto)
Primer, Mulholland Dr, Synecdoche NY, Hiroshima Mon Amour and The Fountain are films I enjoy. I don’t really compare any of these films much to Tree of Life for two reasons. One, superficially, they tell a bit more of a narrative. A story with interest, a build a plateau, a climax and a resolution. Two, the emotion that Rot is talking about is imperative I agree. But while just looking at someone staring at a sunset does evoke some sort of emotion, it’s isn’t heightened or something that exceeds my everyday life (depending on context of course).
When I see a movie and I’m intended to feel something, I REALLY WANT TO FEEL IT. In Tree of Life, I didn’t really feel much of anything. A little nostalgia, some beautiful screen shots that I’ve seen before in the BBC Planet Earth series, some “lovely” poetry, and some good acting. But for the most part, anything I felt was minimal at best.
In Synecdoche, Primer, Mulholland, etc, I actually care about what happens to those characters. Their emotion is my emotion. When Brad Pitt yells at his kids at the dinner table, do I feel the hostility? Yeah, but I also think to myself, how typical. A 50′s father explodes at the dinner table. While that may have been something interesting, memorable or life changing for Malick as a kid, I see it as cliche suburban story telling.
” because a viewer has a negative experience or doesn’t find anything profound with the film and just sees it as wankery, then it must be the viewer’s fault”
no fault, just no synchronicity. You are all welcome to your opinions about the film, I don’t doubt them, but what I do doubt is any inference from them that the film itself is wankery as some objective fact. The reason for the objections to this lie largely in the fact that the film is DESIGNED in such a way as to rely a great deal on what each person brings to the film. Without synchronicity of course it seems like a hollow shell of an experience, you are missing an important part of it. It would be Malick’s fault, I suppose, if his intent was to set before you a complete thesis for you to sit and reason out and maybe titillate your cinephile tastes with some nods to films of the past, if he tried desperately to create a nuanced script, with dialogue that was as biting as anything from The Wire, and that allowed character arcs to develop … BUT HE NEVER EVEN ATTEMPTED THIS!!!!
He made a poem, ciphers to his own lived experiences, his feelings about religion, about aging, about justice, about suffering and if you don’t feel the same, I don’t think he gives a shit, I don’t give a shit… other than when someone tries to insist that he is failing at something he never attempted to do. Poetry aspires towards something numinous, to succeed as art it has to make a connection with what the viewer feels in that same numinous realm of experience. It either happens or it doesn’t. You can describe your end of the experience, but you are not describing the quality of the film in any other form than as a straw man to satisfy your disappointment.
What is substantive about the film cannot be attempted by film criticism, anymore than deconstructing a poem according to its word choice, its grammar, its novelty.
Feel it, or don’t feel it.
Rot’s comment about synchronicity is exactly right. It’s almost pointless for two people who had distinctly different feelings towards the film to discuss it. The reviewers must also be in synchronicity or they’ll just be arguing their emotions which are impossible to contradict.
That said, despite what Malick’s intentions are, the end result is what the viewer takes from it. I’m not necessarily agreeing that the movie is pretentious wankery and that Malick was lazy while making it; knowing everyone would come out and love the shit out of it because he’s an elite artist. But if someone sees an image of a theater mask floating in the water with whispered words about birth and the sun or whatever, these are some instances that just make you wonder what the hell was he thinking; thereby making me think a lot of the rest of the film in similar light. Not that that particular image is a deal breaker necessarily, but there are several shots with varying degrees of this type of… let’s not call it “wankery,” let’s call it “artfully-inspired, audience-interpretive imagery,” and that kind of stuff (in a movie, on stage, hanging on a wall or otherwise) can really be off putting for a lot of people. Others will look at that and say, “wow, that is so impactful!” Both people are right.
When I see a movie and I’m intended to feel something, I REALLY WANT TO FEEL IT. In Tree of Life, I didn’t really feel much of anything. A little nostalgia, some beautiful screen shots that I’ve seen before in the BBC Planet Earth series, some “lovely” poetry, and some good acting. But for the most part, anything I felt was minimal at best.
See, and this is where I think in some ways talking about this film doesn’t really get us anywhere. (Not that I think it’s not worth talking about, but that talking about it tells more about ourselves and our reactions rather than the film itself.) Because where what you felt was “minimal at best,” I was so overcome I couldn’t talk about anything for at least an hour or two after it. I couldn’t have begun to get out of my seat before the credits ended, and I couldn’t properly form words to even approximate the experience I had felt for a few days. How can you and I talk about a film that elicited such opposite reactions to the point that it seems like we watched different films? (This is an actual question, and an important one for the whole act of film criticism, I think.)
and just to be clear Andrew, Kurt and I are on the defense not offense end of this… Tom is the one claiming an objective fact: “But at least the people who walk out singing the praises of Transformers 3 will not try to imbue it with high-brow qualities that it simply does not possess.”
I am perfectly fine with people not liking the film, it just bothers me when people tell me, on wrong premises, that I shouldn’t like the film either.
“Because where what you felt was “minimal at best,” I was so overcome I couldn’t talk about anything for at least an hour or two after it. ” — Yep, What Jandy said. This was my reaction as well.
… it is not degrees of value on a spectrum of craft, it is seismic shifts according to emotional synchronicity.
In a 2+ hour movie, the shot of the theatre mask floating is the only 5 seconds of ‘bad filmmaking’ — That is the only image in the film that is jarring from the experience, and I’m not ready to burn all the prints (and HDDs) of the film quite yet.
“artfully-inspired, audience-interpretive imagery,”
Er… I like to call that using simpler names: Painting, Sculpture, Cinema, Music.
Tree of Life finally comes out today, so I should be able to throw my two-penneth in soon!
Tom, Gamble, Goon, Andrew
vs,
Kurt, Marina, Jandy, Me
Choose your side wisely David
Or join me in the middle David. Nobody else seems to want to…
I love portions of the film, aren’t as inspired by others (mostly in agreement that I didn’t connect emotionally to the individual characters), but think it’s wonderful that Malick is going for such a personal film.
It’s lonely here in the grey zone, but there’s a whole lot less yelling and screaming than in the the black and white ones.
We’ll crack a couple of beers, put our feet up and watch the carnage…
Actually Bob, believe it it not, I’m somewhere in there as well. I didst loathe the movie. But most parts just didn’t resonant with me. I still enjoyed most of it on the surface.
you’re just in denial, Bob
God damn it, my local cinema isn’t showing it! Going to have to make an hour long trek over to Nottingham or Sheffield at the weekend.
Andrew’s too much of a cinemagraphy addict to completely dislike it.
“The problem I have with Kurt and Rot’s position in this instance is that it’s ok for the filmmaker to ask the audience to do some legwork while watching the movie, but only so long as that legwork is positive. In other words, because a viewer has a negative experience or doesn’t find anything profound with the film and just sees it as wankery, then it must be the viewer’s fault; it’s their own stupidity, ignorance and lack of culture. But if one feels moved and sees something profound in the work, it’s because the film maker intended it to be so and therefore the movie is sheer genius.”
This, 100% this. Malick fanboys come off so much like the most severe of religious apologists. “You’re reading the Bible wrong and you’re praying wrong. See, you’re not feeling God’s presence… he’s not revealing himself to you because you’re not giving yourself up to him completely first! You have to get down on your knees and offer yourself up to him in order to know like we, the enlightened, know”.
I’ll defer to the Sloan line “It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans…” but in this case I hate the band more. Malick fans are definitely worse than Whedon fans though for their condescending tone towards the unbelievers.
Lynch fans are also apologetic in this same style but aren’t even a fraction as annoying. If you don’t like a Lynch film it’s usually okay with them, if you don’t like a Malick film, you “don’t have a soul”, a phrase I heard from around 4 people after seeing TOL, including someone in this very thread.
What about Fellini fans then? Eh? Eh?
@Kurt & Mike – I agree, not all films have to answer the questions they pose. In fact A SERIOUS MAN (which I adored) is an excellent example. But I think there, the film is intentionally undiscernible in a funny way…the humour comes from the fact that neither the protagonist nor the audience can explain the purpose of half the stuff that is happening. But in the case of THE TREE OF LIFE, I think that it’s vagueness/indiscernible nature is one of the reasons it (in my opinion) just isn’t a good film. It suffers because it seems so aloof, refusing to engage it’s audiences in what Mallick might have intended it to mean (again, this is strictly my opinion) and as such makes for an extremely frustrating viewing experience.
As for Mike’s examples, I’m a big fan of PRIMER and SYNECHDOCHE (although as Andrew said I don’t think they’re entirely comparable with the TREE OF LIFE – PRIMER is think is discernable (it’s just bloody hard)). MULHOLLAND DR. on the other hand is a film that I despised on first viewing (for much the same reasons as the TREE OF LIFE, compounded by the fact that I really liked the first two thirds). That being said, on repeat viewing I came to appreciate it a lot more (although I still wouldn’t quite say I liked it). Perhaps the same will eventually be true of THE TREE OF LIFE, although at this stage it’s hard to imagine.
@Kurt, Mike & Bob – The conceited and elitist line was kind of a dick remark, I’ll admit., and probably aimed just as much as the audiences who enjoyed the film as it was at the film itself. But it is legitimately how I feel about both. I suppose I do admire Mallick for making the film personal, but at the same time it was a decision that came at the cost of me enjoying the viewing experience. You’re right Kurt, he doesn’t HAVE to make the film in a way that I won’t find pretentious. But if that’s how I feel about the film, then that’s what I’m going to say about it.
And don’t worry about the profanity
I’d rather face the colourful language than get ignored .
I think at the end of the day, Jandy said it best – this is a film that just didn’t speak to me. Part of it is probably my youthful cynicism, but I’m still comfortable with the stance I’ve taken.
Interesting debate here.
@Tom–I think your review is pretty brilliant; you articulated some of the reasons why I was disappointed with TOL but was unable to fully express to myself, although I don’t believe I disliked the film as much as you did.
I happen to be a Malick fan, and The New World is one of my favorite films of the last decade. One of the problems I had with TOL was, where in The New World Malick appeared so sure-handed and poignant with his imagery and technique, TOL often felt clumsy and immature in these areas…almost film school-esque at times: Sean Penn lighting a votive candle on his kitchen table, him walking through a door frame on a hilly coastline, the controversial theater mask shot. My old roommate made a short film for his film program a few years ago, and he used a door frame on the beach shot, too. Later I helped him carry a couch from our apartment to put on the sandy shore for another scene. Lemme just say that my old roommate is no Malick. There where instances in TOL that felt like parody, so much, in my opinion, that it crossed the line from nitpicking to flaws.
Tom, you used the description “agonizing” in your review, and that’s exactly the turn some of the sequences took for me after some time. At the beginning of the creation sequence, I was very much into the movie, taking in the visual splendor. But there was something off about the rhythm or pacing of those shots to me–a lack of elegance, maybe– and about ten minutes in it became disengaging and, frankly, boring. The experience slowly became tedious and unpleasant. In contrast, sequences of similar austerity in 2001 kept ratcheting up the level of engrossment, even with the slow pacing. Although more playful than austere, the space station/shuttle sequences in 2001 are the definition of elegance. Even in The New World…some of the sequences in that movie, heightened by the graceful editing and score, were quite invigorating and moving. The film-making in The New world felt light and effortless compared to the heavy-handedness of TOL.
I actually admire Malick for trying something so ambitious, but it didn’t speak to me either, and not just due to insufficient life experience. Even younger people have the faculty for abstraction
Interesting article Tom, I’m looking forward to seeing this
Saw this film on the big screen and it is a must! I put Malick on the level of Tarkovsky. They both put philosophy on screen though Malick is more lyrical with his images. The images in their films are specific and labored. Tree of Life is Malick’s best film to date and his most ambitious. I hung on every image and sound track. In short to me, Malick made his version of Carl Sagan’s doc series, Cosmos. My interpretation of his narrative was to correlate the beginnings of the universe, space, time and the earth with the beginning of life (as he knows it). Then portray his ideas, theories, dreams etc. of death, the afterlife and the soul. To me, without Sean Penn’s character, Malick’s images of afterlife, etc. would be viewed as “factual” in concert with his images of the universe and nature. At least that’s how I interpreted the film after one viewing. The “beach” scene blew me away. Notice that the “people” that come together look at each other like “familiar strangers”. Amazing!!
@Kurt Actually, Synecdoche, NY specifically uses Carl Jung’s Model of the Psyche. It was dumb luck that I was studying Jung months before I saw the movie. Kaufman never admitted it in interviews, but it’s all there. Tom Noonan was Caden’s “shadow”, Diane Wiest was Caden’s anima/animus and a bunch of other things that I now forgot. My only proof is that Carl Jung’s Redbook was published a couple years ago and there were lectures in NY based on his book. Among the guest speakers was Kaufman along with other academics that followed Jung’s work. So I think basically Kaufman used Jungian analysis to artfully portray Caden (a version of Kaufman) in that movie.
I have yet to revisit Synecdoche. Even though I loved it, it was too maudlin. But I can’t wait to revisit Tree of Life.
Carried over from a GOOGLE+ dicussion….I totally see David Cox’s point – http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/jul/11/tree-life-terrence-malick in TREE OF LIFE as a ‘commercial for living life, without the ‘product/commercial-goods attached):
But I fail to understand how someone could ‘not know this’ going in to a Malick film. All of his films, from the more ‘plot heavy’ works of Badlands and Days of Heaven to the more image-and-voice-over-heavy works of Thin Red Line, The New World have always had ‘life is more important than God or knowing if there is a God. Ergo, Life is God’ as one of the central theses….The good and the bad happen to the just and the wicked. I like the way he tweaks his look at this theme with each film. Really that is all I can ask of an Auteur, the same way that Wes Anderson or The Coens go about their business.
Finally watched it and I’m pretty much on Rot and co’s side I have to say. I had problems with elements of the film: some of the imagery is a little cliched (hands through wheat etc.) and the mother grated occasionally – she was just a bit overly touchy-feely and ‘floaty’ (no pun intended) for me, never all that natural. But I actually didn’t find the film nearly as random and pretentious as many had made out though. I was expecting a huge collage of miscellaneous natural imagery with little or no purpose, but to me the really ‘unrelated’ shots only came briefly in between clear segments of the film to break them up and they usually fit the mood of the preceding scene. I actually felt it had quite a clear structure to be honest. The film probably would have worked effectively without the ‘creation of the universe’ segment but by God those 15 minutes or so were bloody impressive.
And as has probably been mentioned in this thread (I haven’t read through it all) I found it made me consider life and the way our lives are formed more than actually ‘say’ anything complex. It didn’t offer me a big bold message, it just made me stop and think about what makes me me. Also, because I’ve only recently got married and the question of children is bandied around a lot, it made me think about my role as a husband and my possible responsibilities as a future father.
The finale didn’t settle well with me though it must be said. I’m not a religious man which didn’t help, but it’s imagery felt a little trite at times (as has been discussed). I preferred the naturalism of the family life sections.
I found the experience intoxicating as a whole and despite the odd film-school moment and the occasional wanky voiceover it was still beautiful, fresh cinema that allowed me to think about the bigger picture without forcing any easy answers down my throat.
hello everyone!
The tree of life – finally watched it! 5 years of waiting.
is it pretentious – not
do i like its philosophy – yes
i like film idea(s)
do i think it is propaganda – no
do i like jump cuts – very much indeed (in some scenes)
i dont have problems with any of stuff that other people dont like, but i have a huge problem with editing in overall (and cgi – i HATE cgi).
cuts in the middle of scenes, sentences (wtf) i found on net articale that states that malick tried to do that to remove false situations/acting/emotions and editor was horrified (you cant improvise all the time). maybe if they planned smth., they and we could have a great film. memory is fragmented so is the editing – yes, but i think it is a result of improvising. improvising doesent equal experimental.