All of the above.

The Tree of Life  

Sunshine Landmark, July 9, 2011

Movie #42 for 2011

Usually I’ll give a middle star ranking to a film that I feel myeh about - I neither love it nor hate it so the middle sounds about right.  Tree of Life, though, I both love and hate equally fiercely, so ends up in the same place for completely different reasons.

Terrence Malick (who is more a film creator than he is a writer/director) has made an abstract visual poem that is as unconventional as it is ambitious.  I like that about it - good for it - but it’s also not that easy to watch.

We get slices of narrative - Jack is a sullen, angry young man in 50’s Texas with a sensitive, nurturing mother (JESSICA CHASTAIN, The Debt), a frustrated, bullying father (BRAD PITT) and two younger brothers.  As a grown up (played by SEAN PENN) he continues to struggle with his father.  The universe carries on, indifferent and majestic, and dinosaurs, apparently, have feelings.  All with that trademark Malick breathy, poetical, pretentious voice-over.

  

It has echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, nature documentaries, “Walking with Dinosaurs”, and that sequence from Adaptation that Charlie Kaufman dictates to himself about the creation of the universe and his own birth (which he then derides himself for being ridiculous, but then includes in the film anyway). 

Some aspects of the film are subtle and moving while others are crashingly obvious and condescending, which is an uncomfortable mix.

As a writer Malick is bold - his themes are nothing less than the interconnectedness of all things and the meaning of life - but he’s a bold director too.  Color and texture are palpable and rarely is the camera still, adding a restlessness and an urgency to things that would otherwise be sorely lacking.

Beautiful?  Yes, but also crushingly pretentious.