The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick’s (The Thin Red Line, The New World) new movie, The Tree of Life, is his weirdest yet.  Not that his other movies were that weird but this one is like his style on steroids.

There’s barely a glimmer of a story in this piece about a strict father and a son that’s kind of an asshole.  But really for the most part it’s a father being a father and an adolescent kid being an adolescent kid.  And the mother is sort of caught in the middle wanting to defend her son but also getting annoyed by him.

People are throwing this out there as the plot but what I just described is what you grab a hold of to try and not get sucked away by the all the other nonsensical shit that’s put in front of your eyes.  Brad Pitt, Sean Penn (who’s in this for maybe only six or seven minutes), Jessica Chastain (who plays the mother) and the child actors playing the kids could or could not have been in this movie.  I actually would’ve preferred if they weren’t.  Let me explain.

Like Malick’s other pictures there’s very little dialogue in this thing.  But this one seems to have the least of all of his movies.  The seemingly random edits and camera work go beyond just the characters playing and starring and walking and all of that other shit that Malick likes to show us so much.  Here he interjects shots of the ocean, the trees, a river and he even goes back and forth from the 50’s to modern day.  He likes a million shots of people just laying in the grass and caressing each other ‘n shit but with this one it’s like he couldn’t control himself and started throwing in all of these other things and forgot what he was making a movie about.

My favorite part of the film was the whole beginning of life sequence.  It comes out of nowhere (everything kind of comes out of nowhere in this one) and suddenly we’re staring at shots of space.  There’s all this gorgeous footage of the sun, the stars, galaxies, colorful gasses and other shit.  And it’s all set to this really intense opera score and goes on for like ten minutes or something.  This part was jaw dropping for me.  But then he starts showing us a CGI Loch Ness monster type thing and CGI dinosaurs walking around by a river.  This looked really bad and I never would have thought that Malick would use CGI but I guess he couldn’t resist.  There’s a similar sequence like the beginning of life one at the end that I guess is supposed to be the end of life.  There are people walking around in the dessert and on the beach.  Sean Penn reunites with Brad Pitt and his mother and younger self.  I guess it’s supposed to be heaven or some sort of afterlife.  There’s also an intense choral work being played.

I don’t really know what Malick is saying with this movie but he has both sciency type stuff, like that life came from basic elements and evolved, and also a bunch of religious stuff like there are shots of the family attending a church mass and the ending is very spiritual.  So I guess he’s saying that we can have both science and religion and that the two aren’t mutually exclusive?  Or that all life is connected?  I dunno.

I’m a Terrance Malick fan and really dig his style but this one pushed it for me.  It was boring.  There I said it.  I mean I like the way it’s shot and edited and it’s beautifully photographed.  This is such a stunning film to look at and I think that’s what it should’ve solely been.  The whole thing with Brad Pitt being a kind of mean but loving father wasn’t necessary and went on for way too long.  I would’ve loved to have seen a 90 minute movie about the beginning of life through modern day set to kick ass classical music.  Instead Malick made a film that I don’t think a lot people are going to like or have the patience for.  The crowd I saw this with didn’t seem to be into it as at least two people walked out at various points and I could overhear someone saying “oh my god” when it looked like it might have been over but wasn’t.  In her defense there are a lot to fades to black and you could really feel the length of this piece so you never knew exactly when it was really going to stay black and the credits were going to roll.  Oh that’s another strange thing about this film, there were no opening credits.  There wasn’t even a “so and so company presents” card.  It just started right up.

Even if you like Malick’s other movies this one will test your patience.  There were parts of it that I loved and parts that felt like a totally different and subpar (for Malick’s high standard that I set for him) picture.  It felt aimless and lethargic and the whisper talking narrations that he loves to put in his movies were particularly annoying this time around.  Surprisingly it wasn’t terribly confusing.  I could actually follow what was happening but you really need to pay attention.  The last thing that I want to mention is that it’s trippy as all hell.  The dream like string of images that he puts together is pretty nuts.  Way to go Terrence.  I don’t know what the fuck I just watched but I’m sure it means something.