Tree of Life. (12A.)
Directed by Terence Malick. 2011.
Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan, Fiona Shaw and Sean Penn. Theatrical version.139 mins. Extended version 188 mins. Released on a two-disc Blu-ray edition by the Criterion Collection.
Tree of Life tries to give you the whole damn thing, the universe and all its wonders, from the formation of the planets, to microscopic organisms, to Sean Penn poncing around on some rocks. It's a cinematic miracle but unsatisfying; deeply profound and fundamentally banal. But is a flaw with the film, or with the universe?
Malick's film is a summation of a life – that of Jack who we meet as a child growing up in Austen Texas in the 50s (McCracken) and later as a spiritually adrift adult (Penn) – and a summation of all life. The majority of the film is his childhood growing up with two brothers as the oldest son of Pitt and Chastain. Attached to that we have the grown-up Penn looking forlorn in various skyscrapers and pieces of modern architecture; as well as beautiful recreations of the universe and the planets forming; CGI dinosaurs and some extraordinary natural history. It's an epic tone poem of existence. On initial viewing, it may seem all a bit random but if you look closely you can see an order to it. And that is surely intentional.
Malick has always made films that look like they come from the head of a dreamy schoolchild who can't focus in class. Even during the World War Two battle scenes in Thin Red Line, his attention would wander off to look at an interesting bit of shrubbery or a passing bird. What fans see as a profound spiritual expression of the universal life force that courses equally through all organic matter in the universe, may just be the product of short attention span."
And Tree of Life is all distraction. Having failed to get properly through a whole story since his debut, Badlands, he gives up here and floats through a drifting, freeform reverie which passes before your eyes like a string of memories. Pitt is particularly good as the distant, bitter, loving father matched up against Jack (McCracken), the defiant eldest child.
The sequence about the creation of the universe and the start of life on earth is thrown in early. It is staggeringly beautiful, like an updating of the Stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Douglas Turnbull, the visual effects master behind Close Encounters, Silent Running and 2001, who hadn't done any effects work since Blade Runner, was drafted in to help and watching these scenes is to be reminded what special effects really mean. It’s true artistry, not like the bish bosh bash application of CGI that we have become accustomed to.
But how does this sequence relate to growing up in the 50s? Well, if at all, it is in the most banal and obvious way possible – to give it perspective. It's the contrast between the smallness of an individual human beings concerns and the vastness of time and space.
Somewhere on the youtube, you can find a clip of a Piers Morgan interview with magician Penn Jillette, about his book on atheism. Piers is angered by his book and feels atheism is invalid "because I've never heard an atheist give me any answers on how we got here or what happens at the end of our life." Watching it you are struck by the mystery of where the hell does Morgan gets the nerve to believe that the Universe owes him an explanation for its existence when it is so clearly the other way round? If you were Piers Morgan surely you wouldn't demand a rationale for the unjustness of a universe that allows him to be the judge in a talent show, you'd just be extremely grateful and wonder how much longer you could get away with it.
Malick's film is wonderous and extraordinary, showing us the wonder of existence, our insignificance in the great scheme of things and the preciousness of every breath, if only we could see it. It's childlike really but perhaps that's all there is to it. And if so, isn't that enough?
But all the way through, as in every Malick film since The Thin Red Line, everybody is constantly wondering, Oh why isn't God here? What's God doing? How can we know Him? The flaw in the film is that the visuals and the sounds don't mix. You look at the film and see order and beauty, yet most of what you hear is discontent. Everybody wants the answer, and the answer is right in front of them.
I'd like to think that this was some kind of dramatic irony but it seems this spiritual quest is meant to be taken at face value. Because of its epic scope the film is most often compared to 2001, but while Kubrick's steely enigmatic approach really does seem to open up all creation to you, Malick's is cutting it down. He has a very splendid Alexandre Desplat score at his disposal but he usually prefers to go with classical hymns or overtly Christian pieces. He can't just let it be, he has to herd us towards God, even though its a God that is a huge disappointment to all concerned.
Having managed to operate a four-decade-long career in show business on just that one photograph (bearded and behatted in the seventies) Malick ranks up there with Pynchon and Salinger in the reclusive genius stakes. And to be honest you'd need to have cloaked yourself an elusive, never give interviews, only make five movies in 38 years shroud of genius to pull a stunt like Tree of Life.
Tree Of Life may not be his best film but it is his magnum opus, the one he's been working towards all his career. He's been teasing us with the prospect since the late 70s when it was called Q. And having waited all this time, when it comes the big statement is all just things he said before. A character asks "Where did I lose you?" and you feel that, for all its achievements, the film has gotten away from him. It's phenomenal, but it should've been more. Perhaps that why its completion saw Malick throw himself into a hectic rush of filmmaking turning out 4 more films in the 7 years. But everything that has followed has been desperately bad, rehashing Tree Of Life's worst sequences - the Penn ones.
Malick often strikes me as a Chancey Gardiner figure, the simpleton played by Peter Sellers in Being There who, after stumbling into Washington political circles, finds his gardening tips are taken as gnomic pearls of wisdom. For all his enigmatic artistry he really is stating the obvious but in the grandest way possible. It is like kumbaya rearranged by Bach.
But I'm a universe half full, rather than a universe half dark matter kind of guy so I think we should appreciate the film for what it is, not carp about what it isn't.
Extended version.
My initial feeling would be that the film would benefit from a reduction rather than a prolonging: its message is simple enough that you could get it done in 90 minutes. Malick's original cut was supposedly five or six hours, and the presumption is that there was just so much good footage that he couldn't bear to cut it. Penn, shortly after its release was grumbling about how his role in the film had been reduced. Apparently, there was enough footage of his scenes to make a film in itself but in this version, he only has a few extra scenes.
I assumed that a longer cut would contain more special effects and nature shots. Malick made a feature-length documentary Voyage of Time with leftover footage (it got shown at the London Film Festival a few years back but has yet to get a full cinema or domestic release in the country as far as I can tell.) Knight Of Cups made extensive use of stuff I presume were shot for this project. Mostly though the new scenes are of the family in the fifties.
They certainly add clarity and depth to the family's story, the themes are made clearer. Early on Chastain's mother talks about the choice between ways to live, with grace or nature. She is open to love and the spiritual, but their father is bitter and angry and tries to get his sons to be more cynical, to toughen up to get ahead. This version does though marginalise the Penn and the creation footage, to the point where they are almost bookends. Overall though I have to say watching this was my favourite time watching the film.
Extras.
Directed by Terence Malick. 2011.
Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan, Fiona Shaw and Sean Penn. Theatrical version.139 mins. Extended version 188 mins. Released on a two-disc Blu-ray edition by the Criterion Collection.
Tree of Life tries to give you the whole damn thing, the universe and all its wonders, from the formation of the planets, to microscopic organisms, to Sean Penn poncing around on some rocks. It's a cinematic miracle but unsatisfying; deeply profound and fundamentally banal. But is a flaw with the film, or with the universe?
Malick's film is a summation of a life – that of Jack who we meet as a child growing up in Austen Texas in the 50s (McCracken) and later as a spiritually adrift adult (Penn) – and a summation of all life. The majority of the film is his childhood growing up with two brothers as the oldest son of Pitt and Chastain. Attached to that we have the grown-up Penn looking forlorn in various skyscrapers and pieces of modern architecture; as well as beautiful recreations of the universe and the planets forming; CGI dinosaurs and some extraordinary natural history. It's an epic tone poem of existence. On initial viewing, it may seem all a bit random but if you look closely you can see an order to it. And that is surely intentional.
Malick has always made films that look like they come from the head of a dreamy schoolchild who can't focus in class. Even during the World War Two battle scenes in Thin Red Line, his attention would wander off to look at an interesting bit of shrubbery or a passing bird. What fans see as a profound spiritual expression of the universal life force that courses equally through all organic matter in the universe, may just be the product of short attention span."
And Tree of Life is all distraction. Having failed to get properly through a whole story since his debut, Badlands, he gives up here and floats through a drifting, freeform reverie which passes before your eyes like a string of memories. Pitt is particularly good as the distant, bitter, loving father matched up against Jack (McCracken), the defiant eldest child.
The sequence about the creation of the universe and the start of life on earth is thrown in early. It is staggeringly beautiful, like an updating of the Stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Douglas Turnbull, the visual effects master behind Close Encounters, Silent Running and 2001, who hadn't done any effects work since Blade Runner, was drafted in to help and watching these scenes is to be reminded what special effects really mean. It’s true artistry, not like the bish bosh bash application of CGI that we have become accustomed to.
But how does this sequence relate to growing up in the 50s? Well, if at all, it is in the most banal and obvious way possible – to give it perspective. It's the contrast between the smallness of an individual human beings concerns and the vastness of time and space.
Somewhere on the youtube, you can find a clip of a Piers Morgan interview with magician Penn Jillette, about his book on atheism. Piers is angered by his book and feels atheism is invalid "because I've never heard an atheist give me any answers on how we got here or what happens at the end of our life." Watching it you are struck by the mystery of where the hell does Morgan gets the nerve to believe that the Universe owes him an explanation for its existence when it is so clearly the other way round? If you were Piers Morgan surely you wouldn't demand a rationale for the unjustness of a universe that allows him to be the judge in a talent show, you'd just be extremely grateful and wonder how much longer you could get away with it.
Malick's film is wonderous and extraordinary, showing us the wonder of existence, our insignificance in the great scheme of things and the preciousness of every breath, if only we could see it. It's childlike really but perhaps that's all there is to it. And if so, isn't that enough?
But all the way through, as in every Malick film since The Thin Red Line, everybody is constantly wondering, Oh why isn't God here? What's God doing? How can we know Him? The flaw in the film is that the visuals and the sounds don't mix. You look at the film and see order and beauty, yet most of what you hear is discontent. Everybody wants the answer, and the answer is right in front of them.
I'd like to think that this was some kind of dramatic irony but it seems this spiritual quest is meant to be taken at face value. Because of its epic scope the film is most often compared to 2001, but while Kubrick's steely enigmatic approach really does seem to open up all creation to you, Malick's is cutting it down. He has a very splendid Alexandre Desplat score at his disposal but he usually prefers to go with classical hymns or overtly Christian pieces. He can't just let it be, he has to herd us towards God, even though its a God that is a huge disappointment to all concerned.
Having managed to operate a four-decade-long career in show business on just that one photograph (bearded and behatted in the seventies) Malick ranks up there with Pynchon and Salinger in the reclusive genius stakes. And to be honest you'd need to have cloaked yourself an elusive, never give interviews, only make five movies in 38 years shroud of genius to pull a stunt like Tree of Life.
Tree Of Life may not be his best film but it is his magnum opus, the one he's been working towards all his career. He's been teasing us with the prospect since the late 70s when it was called Q. And having waited all this time, when it comes the big statement is all just things he said before. A character asks "Where did I lose you?" and you feel that, for all its achievements, the film has gotten away from him. It's phenomenal, but it should've been more. Perhaps that why its completion saw Malick throw himself into a hectic rush of filmmaking turning out 4 more films in the 7 years. But everything that has followed has been desperately bad, rehashing Tree Of Life's worst sequences - the Penn ones.
Malick often strikes me as a Chancey Gardiner figure, the simpleton played by Peter Sellers in Being There who, after stumbling into Washington political circles, finds his gardening tips are taken as gnomic pearls of wisdom. For all his enigmatic artistry he really is stating the obvious but in the grandest way possible. It is like kumbaya rearranged by Bach.
But I'm a universe half full, rather than a universe half dark matter kind of guy so I think we should appreciate the film for what it is, not carp about what it isn't.
Extended version.
My initial feeling would be that the film would benefit from a reduction rather than a prolonging: its message is simple enough that you could get it done in 90 minutes. Malick's original cut was supposedly five or six hours, and the presumption is that there was just so much good footage that he couldn't bear to cut it. Penn, shortly after its release was grumbling about how his role in the film had been reduced. Apparently, there was enough footage of his scenes to make a film in itself but in this version, he only has a few extra scenes.
I assumed that a longer cut would contain more special effects and nature shots. Malick made a feature-length documentary Voyage of Time with leftover footage (it got shown at the London Film Festival a few years back but has yet to get a full cinema or domestic release in the country as far as I can tell.) Knight Of Cups made extensive use of stuff I presume were shot for this project. Mostly though the new scenes are of the family in the fifties.
They certainly add clarity and depth to the family's story, the themes are made clearer. Early on Chastain's mother talks about the choice between ways to live, with grace or nature. She is open to love and the spiritual, but their father is bitter and angry and tries to get his sons to be more cynical, to toughen up to get ahead. This version does though marginalise the Penn and the creation footage, to the point where they are almost bookends. Overall though I have to say watching this was my favourite time watching the film.
Extras.
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Terrence Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New extended version of the film featuring an additional fifty minutes of footage
- Exploring “The Tree of Life,” a 2011 documentary featuring collaborators and admirers of Malick’s, including filmmakers David Fincher and Christopher Nolan
- New interviews with actor Jessica Chastain and senior visual-effects supervisor Dan Glass
- New video essay by critic Benjamin B about the film’s cinematography and style, featuring audio interviews with Lubezki, production designer Jack Fisk, and other crew members
- New interview with critic Alex Ross about Malick’s use of classical music
- Video essay from 2011 by critic Matt Zoller Seitz and editor Serena Bramble
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones and (Blu-ray only) a 2011 piece on the film by critic Roger Ebert
