942 The Tree of Life

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

You’d think I’d hate this film, and I almost did—until I realized it’s the best New Age, heterosexual, Christian movie of the year.

John Waters in Artforum

[kemalettin]

Tarkovski meets MTV + Oediphus complex + 2001 + Jurasic Park + some Disney = Palme d'or + big orgasms in Paris highbrow audiences.

Visual poem? May be, but not my cup of tea.

You say so? I'm happy this one won Palme d'Or instead of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Don't see how French people such a stupid to not understand Nuri Bilge Ceylan's movies not worth a shit. His movies only makes sound in France lol. In last 10 20 years in World cinema being a Tarkovski fan and copying his works makes you more artsy director.

Drive was the best movie of 2011 hands down!

droool...

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Dunno if this has been posted anywhere in the previous 43 pages, but, ugh, whatever demographic these people are, I hate them all

[greggster59]

Dunno if this has been posted anywhere in the previous 43 pages, but, ugh, whatever demographic these people are, I hate them all

I always found it interesting that so many people feel a need to label things that don't appeal to them or that they don't get as BAD. I never saw the appeal of Marmite but does that mean it's awful?

[FerdinandGriffon]

Dunno if this has been posted anywhere in the previous 43 pages, but, ugh, whatever demographic these people are, I hate them all

Love it!

[Tom Hagen]

I love the girlfriend in the background making coffee or toast or whatever, probably thinking to herself, "god, there he goes again."

[MyNameCriterionForum]

I love the girlfriend in the background making coffee or toast or whatever, probably thinking to herself, "god, there he goes again."

It's probably Lena Dunham

[Johnbnb]

Some weeks ago I posted here something about that picture over the gramophone, the one taken off the wall when Jack says “Please God Kill him”. Just for the record: apparently, I was wrong about it. I made a last effort to identify it and it seems that I was lucky. I think it is a view of the Taihei-kaku – a roofed bridge in the gardens of the Hein Shrine (Kyoto) – covered with snow. Compare it with this photo (attention to the lantern). If you don't agree, please tell me. I haven't got a blu-ray so the best image of the picture I can get is pretty bad.
I found it out today and I don’t want to rush into commenting this choice.
As we are talking about bridges, two more notes about the shot of the bridge and Hölderlin’s Heidelberg, a subject mentioned in my previous posts:
1) “But into the valley hung heavy the vast/ And fate-acquainted fort…”: the huge building in the far shore is really a “fort”, Fort Wadsworth.
2) “Once, as if it were sent by gods, enchantment/ Seized me as I was passing over the bridge”: the woman who kisses RL through the curtain, that one whose kiss seems to touch Penn, is the “Messenger” (Irene Bedard). Maybe Malick was thinking in mythology. That great shot of the foam of the waves touched by the wind in the “shore of eternity” is certainly a reference to Aphrodite’s foam.

[Reliakor]

This film was a major disappointment to me after the mesmerizing The New World. Aside from the incredible Lacrimosa scene, the shots of the cascade, and the scenes dealing with the domestic drama, I found the film haphazard and philosophically inane. Malick constantly makes significations in the film, but so rarely manages to create meaning.

[dustybooks]

I feel pretty empty and dumb right now. Just finally saw The Tree of Life, expecting to find it a sprawling and maybe overreaching mess but to also find something beautiful in it. I found that, but only in the most superficial way. I was one of those jerks who thought The New World was merely OK, and I came away with almost the exact same feeling this time, except a little more bitter because the entire thesis (as I'm reading it, backed up by some of the discussion above) of TTOL just doesn't interest me. I'm aware that's a case of me projecting a desire for an entirely different movie, and that's unfair, but what can I say? I like the way that Malick's camera moves now, along with the frenetic editing, and I did eventually get somewhat absorbed in the Waco sequences, but I didn't find anything that carried me away beyond just aesthetics. The characterization just didn't resonate at all with me, except Penn's child counterpart in fits and starts, and I know it's been argued that the "people" in Malick's films aren't really the point... but I found great depth and truth in the characters in Badlands and Days of Heaven, on top of their glorious cinematography and (gulp) gracious brevity.

I have to agree with many others that the voiceover narration motif has worn out its welcome for Malick; I disliked the v.o. in New World as well. This could easily be one of the biases coloring me here -- the God material doesn't speak to me, and I know this is the kind of statement that understandably is frowned upon a bit on this forum, but I found the film terribly overlong for its amount of content. Couldn't help longing for the relative simplicity of the '70s films, something I think is touched on in the childhood sequences. It was fun to see Douglas Trumbull's effects work and I even liked the glossy and disorienting modern-day Penn bits (his facial expressions aside), but both elements seemed to distract from the slightly more engaging main body of the movie.

Still, especially after reading virtually all fortysomething pages of this damned thread this morning, I admittedly need to make sure to see the film again in the future, as some of its images have lingered in my mind the following morning, and I can fully admit to not being ready for Stalker and Aguirre, to name two examples, when I initially viewed them. This could be another such case, I suppose.

[Mr Sausage]

Really interesting (and short!) blog post on the movie that points out things that I don't think have been said anywhere else.

[jojo]

I've been poking around Box Office Mojo lately and quite frankly I'm a little surprised it only made 13 million in the U.S. It seemed to me like there was a week where everyone was talking about it online. Okay, a lot of it centered on people walking out on the film, but still, publicity is publicity.

Does anyone here know what The Tree of Life's cinemascore rating was?

[domino harvey]

Any Baltimore/DC-area posters seen that Children's Hospital ad that shamelessly lifts just about every memorable image from the Tree of Life trailer? Some MICA graduate is no doubt having a good laugh at getting paid to put this together

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Any Baltimore/DC-area posters seen that Children's Hospital ad that shamelessly lifts just about every memorable image from the Tree of Life trailer? Some MICA graduate is no doubt having a good laugh at getting paid to put this together

We can only hope it's a student... not that that's a legit excuse, when "pros" (I use the term loosely) like John Hillcoat do exactly the same thing and get paid through the nose for it.

[whaleallright]

Yeah, this is shameful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjNVhoWqSWY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[tajmahal]

Yeah, this is shameful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjNVhoWqSWY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I don't much care about the alleged Malick rip-off, but couldn't the alleged perpetrators at least have used a tripod for static shots. Enough with the lazy hand-held, 'most movie-fans are gamers'' mentality. Static shot of a building or person, whack the fucker on a tripod. Easy peasy. Has Bourne 2 & 3 taught us nothing? Found-footage-films have failed. Music-video-as-cinema has failed. The gamer generation download illegally, so they aren't funding your lazy, film history illiterate, lo-fi HD video, (the end consumer will accept any old shit) mentality.

Blame it on a Sunday evening drinky-poo, but apart from the inevitable 'the world has gone to shit and we are all doomed' rant and rave, what I really want is thoughful filmmaking in academy ration, in glorious back and white.

Is that really too much to ask for?

[Cde.]

I saw A Separation today. Man, that movie would have been so much better if it weren't so video game inspired!

[Cold Bishop]

Doesn't someone on here have an anecdote about Jean-Pierre Gorin's film class, specifically the way he'll berate students into tears for unthinkingly using handheld cameras when a tripod would suffice. Warms the cockles of one's heart...

[Oedipax]

The unexamined/uninspired overuse of handheld bothers me as well. Particularly because the most popular cameras for making films inexpensively today, digital SLRs, are terribly bad at compensating for it (rolling shutter/jello effect).

[Alan Smithee]

Malick is probably one of the best at using hand held(or body mounted steadicams) along with Von Trier. For someone who's renowned for his impeccable photography he uses it an awful lot. It has it's place and I think it's more of an intuitive place rather than just being judged against whether or not a tripod would have sufficed. Von Trier has spoken about it as sort of a dance with his performers, a way for him to get as in the moment as they are. Maybe I'm just of a younger generation but I don't really have a visceral reaction to it. I've never referred to it as "queasy-cam", it's never been disorienting to me. I do hate when people use it disingenuously to make something seem more "real" or "gritty". Shooting a static shot with a fairly stable hand held though will never really bother me.

(I do hate that Levi ad though)

[colinr0380]

Von Trier's steadicam use (apparently inspired by Homicide: Life On The Streets!), and handheld camera use in general, is most effective when used to express a contrasting psychological, internal state as well as a confusing external one (Von Trier's fractured editing between different takes is something which helps to highlight this dissonance).

And, while I know he can be a divisive filmmaker, any discussion of steadicam should also note the contribution of Darren Aronofsky and his cinematographer Matthew Libatique in attaching cameras to his actors in particular scenes in Pi and Requiem For A Dream, something which seems to crop up everywhere now, perhaps most obviously in a Mark Romanek directed music video for Mick Jagger.

EDIT: And I forgot the usage of the technique from many decades earlier - Harvey Keitel's drunk scene in Mean Streets!

[Kirkinson]

And, while I know he can be a divisive filmmaker, any discussion of steadicam should also note the contribution of Darren Aronofsky and his cinematographer Matthew Libatique in attaching cameras to his actors in particular scenes in Pi and Requiem For A Dream, something which seems to crop up everywhere now, perhaps most obviously in a Mark Romanek directed music video for Mick Jagger.

They certainly made it more popular than ever, and I presume it's easier to do now with good stabilization technology, but it should be noted that this technique predates the 1975 invention of Steadicam. The earliest film in which I can recall seeing it is Seconds, and I'd be very curious to know if anyone can think of an earlier instance.

[domino harvey]

Frankenheimer's own Seven Days in May made two years prior comes immediately to mind

[Drucker]

I just read (for the second or so time) parts of this thread related to the film after it was actually released, and just wanted to throw in some quick thoughts. I've never seen any Malick movie before this afternoon. I had the most vague sense of what the film would be "about" and "like" but honestly, this film was a lot more straight-forward than I'd been led to believe (especially by the friend who hated it, thought it was masturbatory, and claimed there was 30 minutes straight at some point of the camera just moving through trees).

I will say that I enjoyed the film immensely. Again, I just re-read/scanned some older posts, and can see where some people didn't much care for it (whatever Penn's role is in the film, the CGI dinosaurs and the worthy/un-worthiness of the opening and closing sequences), but personally, they didn't bother me (and as my girlfriend pointed out-it was nice to see the beauty of things that are actually around us). Again, in my short few years I've been into film, I find only recently have I come to enjoy some less-than-straight forward movies (and there have been plenty, such as Last Year at Marienbad, that I turned off after 10 minutes ((though I'm also getting better at finding when I'm in the right mood for certain movies, ie. not after getting home from work and being hungry!!)) )

But I digress, I thought the acting and the portrayal of family life was wonderful. I certainly look back and wish I hadn't treated my little brother as harshly as I did, and certainly wish I hadn't said some things to my parents that I've said. It did a great job of using the hardships that can occur in family life as a way to show what the kids, rather than the adults, were going through. When we get to the end, it doesn't have to totally link up or click, because we often group memories together and lump in times of our lives when thinking back about it, which is all that I really think Penn's character is doing throughout the film.

Regarding the religiosity of the film, I certainly felt some of it was in your face, but then again, if it was really overly religious, would it have shown something more traditionally "secular" like the big bang? I don't know. Honestly, I was raised Jewish and am now an atheist, so perhaps there was a lot more to this story that is meant to directly connect with God and the church, but I wouldn't know it! (Though it did occur to me the WHOLE story could be a modern Gob).

[matrixschmatrix]

(Though it did occur to me the WHOLE story could be a modern Gob).