The Tree of Life

[wilder]

I'd also like to ask what your interpretation of the scene is, as I've seen your criticize it but not really explain the criticism.

[...]

He's done a dramatic representation of this already, and now he does a poetic one. Here on the beach they lose the fixedness of their interpersonal drama and wander, drifting in perpetuity, but encountering each other, and, now, stripped of their family drama, encounter each other in a vacuum. And what is revealed?  The essential quality Malick brings to the foreground, the one I mean, is that, denuded of temporal agenda, they're simply happy to see each other and be near each other, kiss the hands of each other, save each other from time and pain. The dead brother is alive again. Mr. O'Brien isn't angry, or fearful, or deflecting personal insecurity.  Malick suggests that the pain we inflict on each other is a confused and human attempt to save others and ourselves from pain, and if that wasn't there, well, the world would be like his beach scene.

I know I personally respond to movies more when they engage me in an emotional way, rather than in a solely intellectual one. All I can say is that I felt nothing during that scene, and it didn't add anything to the movie for me that I didn't get elsewhere or extrapolate from the situations that were dramatized earlier. A friend I saw it with read the shot of Jessica Chastain with the two girls beside her as being representative of different possible paths or fragments herself (and also of the Holy Trinity), and I guess can see that...but it's just too symbolic for me to care about. If a movie engages me emotionally I become willing to analyze it further in an effort to figure out why I responded to it...I guess what you found "poetic" I found repetitious and stale. I don't disagree with your reading of it, but I felt the scene was too explanatory and the message it wanted to get across was taken care of more subtly elsewhere.

[Mr. Merrill Lehrl]

Oh funny, I actually edited out that first line. I don't think you have to put poetic in quotations, unless you think the beach scene is literal.

But anyway, yeah. It didn't work for you. Can't argue that.

[Gold Trumpet]

I'm jealous of this conversation. I want to see the movie now. Still, the young blood on this board is awesome!

[Pas]

I'm jealous of this conversation. I want to see the movie now. Still, the young blood on this board is awesome!

hell yeah, sundown and wilder are the shit.

Hopefully this film will come out someday somewhere else than new york

[Gold Trumpet]

I'm jealous of this conversation. I want to see the movie now. Still, the young blood on this board is awesome!

hell yeah, sundown and wilder are the shit.

Hopefully this film will come out someday somewhere else than new york

I may have to wait for DVD. If it plays against a barn somewhere, I stand a better chance.

[Pubrick]

We'll be getting this the end of june apparently.

Hopefully modage will have buzzkilled himself out by then along with all the boring semantic conversations.

[polkablues]

I'm just going to wait for it to come out on VHS. The way it was intended to be seen!

[modage]

We'll be getting this the end of june apparently.

Hopefully modage will have buzzkilled himself out by then along with all the boring semantic conversations.

I'm really hoping you can see this for what it is. You weren't blinded by Lynch for Inland. I'm holding out hope you won't need to make excuses for this either. I've given up on this lot though. 

[Mr. Merrill Lehrl]

We'll be getting this the end of june apparently.

Hopefully modage will have buzzkilled himself out by then along with all the boring semantic conversations.

I'm really hoping you can see this for what it is. You weren't blinded by Lynch for Inland. I'm holding out hope you won't need to make excuses for this either. I've given up on this lot though. 

You may be right but no one would know because your arguments are shallow and you've resorted to glib jabs.

[pete]

as far as I can tell, the usually effervescent mod in this thread hasn't really made any conscious effort to actually listen to the arguments or really has any interest in what anyone else has to say!
come on mod.

[picolas]

yeah the thing that bugs me about your nonpreciation is that you characterize the malaholicks as seeing stuff that isn't there or simply liking something because it's really good-looking.

in the context of every other piece of cinema, yes: the way malick does stuff is weird. he's actually asking the audience to draw their own creative conclusions from a series of moving images. it's off-putting to anyone who enjoys or has been brought up on 'conventional' narratives (which is probably 97% of people who watch movies). it's easy to look at an abstract poem and brush it off as a random string of words, because it may not be directly communicating ideas in the way we're used to, or through the same specific lens of [character] + [action] = [conclusion]. BUT in many cases, digging even a little deeper, you begin to notice how the words are meaningfully tied together in their own wonderful way. malick is a cinematic poet, using images instead of words. most directors use images to write sentences. (absolutely nothing wrong with that.) malick writes poems. this is NOT an "excuse" for badly communicated ideas. they're just communicated differently, in some cases more effectively than making statements. even accepting this, some people will brush off the idea of 'cinematic poetry' as breezy, flimsily-structured bullshit. this could not be less true. in a malick film, no image is random, or there just to be pretty etc.

for example a lot could be said about the alligator from the opening shot of Thin Red and how it relates to everything that's happening there. in very broad strokes, it's an embodiment of natural destructive forces. it's a cold, vicious machine from the same forces that might coalesce to form a beautiful bird (parrots being another motif). at the same time, its slow submersion into the swamp waters is undeniably graceful, even serene. so right there, in a few pretty economical seconds, you have the opening paragraphs of a rich philosophical statement about what it means to reconcile the violent and peaceful forces of the universe. and if you can communicate all that in a few seconds rather than having a scene where soldiers watch an alligator and talk about it, why not? that's cinema in its purest form. this video is a good introduction to just how fantastically detailed and well-realized all this malick stuff really is:

i LOVED ToL because it spoke to me on a cosmic level, frame after frame. not just in a visually magnificent way, but in an active way that i was being asked to participate in. it is an experience, but it's certainly not intended to be a 'turn off your brain, forgive the simplicity of the ideas and let it happen, maaaaann' kind of experience. this is a real investigation of existence. it's what movies are for. it's what LIFE is for! even if you don't get it or don't want to try to figure it out (which doesn't take much effort beyond trying), i find it odd to actively hate on malick. i think maybe it stems from a misguided image of who malick is. it's easy to project ideas onto him because we don't know him in a 'conventional' interview-style sort of way, but his films reveal more about him personally than most directors, even some of the really good ones, would. moreover they reveal stuff about everyone. most people who like ToL see their own specific experiences in it. that's not a happy coincidence.

some random observations, SPOILS:
- the jellyfish blew my mind coming on the heels of the galactic formations. the resemblance is huge. they're all little floating universes unto themselves.
- the mother in the glass coffin in the forest was amazing... that's almost exactly the image i got when death became a new concept for me.
- i think people are taking the ending too literally. i don't even believe it's about an afterlife. penn experiences the beach and then returns to his everyday being. it's more a fantastical plane of existence penn is touching for a moment.
- i love the characterization of the meteor as graceful. i think rock is a good representation of the neutral ground between nature and grace. shaped by immense pressure, but docile.
- the giant old man face going "i'll see you in FIVE. YEARS." cracked me up.
- so glad lena from super mario bros. gets to be in an(other) important film.
- maybe more later..

i mostly came here to post this INSANELY DETAILED blog analysis of not only tree of life, but every other malick and how it relates to tree of life:
http://nilesfilmfiles.blogspot.com/

i've barely scratched the surface but so far so good.

[Pubrick]

i mostly came here to post this INSANELY DETAILED blog analysis of not only tree of life, but every other malick and how it relates to tree of life:
http://nilesfilmfiles.blogspot.com/

Oh my god.

That guy is my newest and greatest kindred spirit, my soulmate, the blogger with whom I share a profound mystical understanding. He will sit at the right hand of malick for sure.

the justification for his malick obsession through allusion to kubrick or rather scorsese's realisation about kubrick, the overarching perspective that explains, justifies and redeems a filmmakers entire output, the unbridled faith in an artist's vision....  that is one of the best analyses of a filmmaker I've ever seen.

[modage]

We'll be getting this the end of june apparently.

Hopefully modage will have buzzkilled himself out by then along with all the boring semantic conversations.

I'm really hoping you can see this for what it is. You weren't blinded by Lynch for Inland. I'm holding out hope you won't need to make excuses for this either. I've given up on this lot though.  

You may be right but no one would know because your arguments are shallow and you've resorted to glib jabs.

[socketlevel]

***SPOILS***

The Eastern European women I know are badasses who do fashion photography, techno music videos, wear leather jackets, dye their hair all the time, and work their asses off.  See, that's entirely different.  Be cool if you used an established director as a reference point for what you mean.

These are the same women I mention, just on a different day. When they make a movie for them, not the industry. Funny thing is I can't really point out an established director because the majority of them get through this phase long before they make a feature. lol, low blow i know but kinda truthful.


Regarding the rolling of my eyes. Maybe i wasn't clear. I've had that reaction to the beach thing so many times. but if i saw a film tomorrow that had the big ol' puffy cloud, it's true, eyes would roll.

The bubbles and butterfly while used before arn't examples of my issue. They are real moments, even if slightly overused in cinema. I recall similar moments of that in my childhood; as I'm sure everyone does. however, moments of release in my life are not on a beach. I've got my own issues like everyone and when i can put aside my pain to be a better person and love those that are around me by being a more nurturing person, i don't envision myself walking around an isolated beach with the dead souls of my past. But for some reason, time and time again that's what people use to show said transcendence in cinema. Why? Simple. It's easy and a cliched metaphor. This is Terrance fucking Malick man, he coulda done that shit in outer space or the back of a Volkswagen and it would have been better.

think about the ending of 2001, a clinical white hotel room that cuts to a planet sized super baby.  Shot unlike anything ever before, cutting from the protagonists POV, which becomes the new shot and he walks into frame older each time. That film was very much about evolution, release, rebirth and renewal too. Yet it was inspired from somewhere magical. TOL has a bunch of beach hugs. Characters dropping to their knees, holding up their hands to the heavens as they walk through empty doorframes... it's laughable.

With all that said, quite honestly I'm glad you got a lot out of it as i wish i was in your shoes.

I'm jealous of this conversation. I want to see the movie now. Still, the young blood on this board is awesome!

hell yeah, sundown and wilder are the shit.

Hopefully this film will come out someday somewhere else than new york

I may have to wait for DVD. If it plays against a barn somewhere, I stand a better chance.

In Toronto it's been selling out like crazy in the two theatres it's in; even matinees. If that's any indication of the demand for the film, I wouldn't be surprised if it gets more and more theatres.

We'll be getting this the end of june apparently.

Hopefully modage will have buzzkilled himself out by then along with all the boring semantic conversations.

I'm really hoping you can see this for what it is. You weren't blinded by Lynch for Inland. I'm holding out hope you won't need to make excuses for this either.

For the record, I am one of the malaholicks and I didn't like this film.

[Mr. Merrill Lehrl]

yes, those are glib jabs.