This movie is for advanced cinema geeks only. It is the complete opposite of a Michael Bay movie; if you like TRANSFORMERS or AVATAR, then you'll want to avoid this movie like the plague. In fact, even cineastes who will watch any obscure film of any kind have trouble dealing with TREE OF LIFE because of its unusual layout.
The structure has already been laid out in another fine review. And everybody has laid out how clearly subjective the whole thing is. So I'll condense the properties of it.
Terrence Malick often favors non-narrative tone-poem visuals but this one is unorthodox even for him. At times it feels like Malick is imitating other directors with very different styles to get at what he's trying to say. He feels that the subconscious feelings in the images are more important than the story--in some way, the story exists as a framework to find the images.
In the case of TREE OF LIFE, Malick wants to speak volumes about small things on a cosmic scale, and the methods he employs to do it makes it seem disjointed. He uses experimental avant-garde film techniques akin to Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas to create textures and associations, then uses Godard-esque editing techniques to assemble the images in a fluctuating emotional montage that has very little logical coherency. He cuts things together based on what happens in the moments, not whether the moments have any chronological importance. So the film skips over entire sections of time just to get a few seconds of something ephemeral.
Yes, there is are reasons for it, but the question is whether those reasons justify the approach. Well, it does and it doesn't.
The film is visually amazing; all those comparisons to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY are true. But trying to blend the creation of the universe and the nature of existence with the incredibly detailed emotional experience of a family in 1950s Texas doesn't really gel. I think Malick's personally feels that the internal life of the boys and the birth of creation have the same emotional weight, and that unfortunately makes the movie kind of overwrought to most of us.
The scale, visuals, and overall vision are nothing short of full-blown astounding; there's nothing even remotely like it anywhere else in film today. But unfortunately, it's also a bit indulgent and discombobulated, making it equal parts profound and pretentious at the same time.
I like it myself, but it is an extremely acquired taste.
The structure has already been laid out in another fine review. And everybody has laid out how clearly subjective the whole thing is. So I'll condense the properties of it.
Terrence Malick often favors non-narrative tone-poem visuals but this one is unorthodox even for him. At times it feels like Malick is imitating other directors with very different styles to get at what he's trying to say. He feels that the subconscious feelings in the images are more important than the story--in some way, the story exists as a framework to find the images.
In the case of TREE OF LIFE, Malick wants to speak volumes about small things on a cosmic scale, and the methods he employs to do it makes it seem disjointed. He uses experimental avant-garde film techniques akin to Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas to create textures and associations, then uses Godard-esque editing techniques to assemble the images in a fluctuating emotional montage that has very little logical coherency. He cuts things together based on what happens in the moments, not whether the moments have any chronological importance. So the film skips over entire sections of time just to get a few seconds of something ephemeral.
Yes, there is are reasons for it, but the question is whether those reasons justify the approach. Well, it does and it doesn't.
The film is visually amazing; all those comparisons to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY are true. But trying to blend the creation of the universe and the nature of existence with the incredibly detailed emotional experience of a family in 1950s Texas doesn't really gel. I think Malick's personally feels that the internal life of the boys and the birth of creation have the same emotional weight, and that unfortunately makes the movie kind of overwrought to most of us.
The scale, visuals, and overall vision are nothing short of full-blown astounding; there's nothing even remotely like it anywhere else in film today. But unfortunately, it's also a bit indulgent and discombobulated, making it equal parts profound and pretentious at the same time.
I like it myself, but it is an extremely acquired taste.