Comments on: The Tree of Life, by Terrence Malick http://berkshirereview.net/2011/07/the-tree-of-life/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-tree-of-life Classical Music, Opera, Theatre, Photography, Art, Books, Travel, Food & Drink - Long-Form Reviews, Previews, and Interviews Sat, 10 Sep 2011 23:54:58 -0400 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Alan Miller http://berkshirereview.net/2011/07/the-tree-of-life/#comment-5069 Alan Miller Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:35:36 +0000 http://berkshirereview.net/?p=12290#comment-5069 An excellent review, which has had the effect of brightening my own more mixed response to the film. I think what people find unnerving about the film is that we are used to “serious” Hollywood filmmakers hooking their philosophical and personal preoccupations onto a genre. Even Kubrick, that other most enigmatic of directors, almost always did this, as did Malick in The Thin Red Line. Even 2001, the film The Tree of Life most resembles, is recognizable as sci-fi. Malick is even more unnerving because his film superficially resembles, at least in the Waco sequences, a fifties coming of age drama. But the family is so abstract — Chastain and Pitt seem not to occupy the same space-time — and as you say, that beautifully photographed suburban street is more the site of Sean Penn’s haunting and incomplete memories than any kind of golden age utopia. In literature, language gives the writer the ability to shade time, point of view and narrative in extremely subtle and resonant ways. Unlike the viewer of a film, a reader can “choose their own adventure” to the extent that they can speed up, slow down, reread and, inevitably, read the words in their own voice. The Tree of Life is Malick’s most undisguised attempt to bring this to the cinema, but he’s limited by the fact that we have to sit in a theatre for 138 minutes to experience it. It comes as a welcome surprise that there is space for a film “product” which simultaneously takes on the Bible and the stream of consciousness novel with total seriousness, but my problem is how do you confront the voice inside you which says that the film is moving, rich and important, but also, a least sometimes, pretentious (not the worst of sins), repetitive and close to self-parody? Malick is much looser than Kubrick, which is no bad thing, but why not fifty more shots of Chastain frolicking in the sun? Why not ten fewer? The answer most likely has to do with point of view. Human thoughts are often repetitive and incomplete. The characters in Waco are not quite able to join God or nature due to the limitations of the way they and we and Malick and the Hubble Telescope are able to imagine (and Malick’s characteristic voice-overs are fascinating — are they as lapidary as they seem?). As always with Malick, there’s no choice but to see it again and again. An excellent review, which has had the effect of brightening my own more mixed response to the film.

I think what people find unnerving about the film is that we are used to “serious” Hollywood filmmakers hooking their philosophical and personal preoccupations onto a genre. Even Kubrick, that other most enigmatic of directors, almost always did this, as did Malick in The Thin Red Line. Even 2001, the film The Tree of Life most resembles, is recognizable as sci-fi. Malick is even more unnerving because his film superficially resembles, at least in the Waco sequences, a fifties coming of age drama. But the family is so abstract — Chastain and Pitt seem not to occupy the same space-time — and as you say, that beautifully photographed suburban street is more the site of Sean Penn’s haunting and incomplete memories than any kind of golden age utopia.

In literature, language gives the writer the ability to shade time, point of view and narrative in extremely subtle and resonant ways. Unlike the viewer of a film, a reader can “choose their own adventure” to the extent that they can speed up, slow down, reread and, inevitably, read the words in their own voice. The Tree of Life is Malick’s most undisguised attempt to bring this to the cinema, but he’s limited by the fact that we have to sit in a theatre for 138 minutes to experience it.

It comes as a welcome surprise that there is space for a film “product” which simultaneously takes on the Bible and the stream of consciousness novel with total seriousness, but my problem is how do you confront the voice inside you which says that the film is moving, rich and important, but also, a least sometimes, pretentious (not the worst of sins), repetitive and close to self-parody? Malick is much looser than Kubrick, which is no bad thing, but why not fifty more shots of Chastain frolicking in the sun? Why not ten fewer?

The answer most likely has to do with point of view. Human thoughts are often repetitive and incomplete. The characters in Waco are not quite able to join God or nature due to the limitations of the way they and we and Malick and the Hubble Telescope are able to imagine (and Malick’s characteristic voice-overs are fascinating — are they as lapidary as they seem?).

As always with Malick, there’s no choice but to see it again and again.

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