come anticipate the masterpiece that will be terrence malick's TREE OF LIFE.

I mean he might make something truly great in about 10 years.

I never want to watch TTRL ever again. I'll keep calling it a "masterpiece" or whatever if I never have to see it again.

maybe we could add some Rodgers & Hammerstein to the soundtrack

Maybe that makes any sense.

i'd agree with morbs' ranking if he had new world at the bottom

from the F'book posting of a "critic" (his ratings are on a scale of 4 skulls) who wants to know why ToL was well liked by some:

Even the symbolism is cliche, with abundant use of water, beaches, deserts, forests, and doors (the most hilarious was the mask drifting through the water, worn by no one and yet "worn by everyone.") By lack of narrative, I had to do a head count to be sure that it wasn't one of the three sons who had died because of the lack of character distinction.

...

i enjoyed this movie but goddamn are those sean penn parts toward the end some goddamn bullshit

― latebloomer, Wednesday, January 4, 2012 10:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

ive heard this a lot, and its interesting to me. i think that's the part of the movie hoberman (iirc) was referring to when he called the movie 'kitsch' and its also the one with the most emotional weight, for me - the one sequence where the imagery feels emotionally potent, instead of just surfacey pretty - but i guess that might just be what kitsch is? it definitely didn't bother me, at any rate

DOH definitely the worst Malick film although I haven't seen New World since 2006.

I'd rank them:

Badlands
TOL
TRL
NW
DOH

Badlands is the most accessible. I could watch "The Thin Red Line" every day, though. Possibly all day, every day. Was it Rosenbaum who noted its elliptical, Mobius Strip like qualities? Where you can just sort of drop in at any point?

"Days of Heaven" is beautiful, but I never want to watch it. "New World" sort of splits the difference between small-scope Malick and epic/profound "TTRL" Malick, but I don't find myself returning to it much, either.

y'know, the dinosaurs aren't the only "effects" in this film.

http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/below-the-line-the-effects-of-the-tree-of-life/?hpw

you don't say.

some ppl seem to not know

yeah, they just ripped off The Fountain

this was screening @ a college near me last night, 1st time ive rewatched it since june or w/e -- i like ryan's idea abt the beginning into the 1st sean penn scenes being abt the mother's death. that def at least feels supported by his mood waking up etc & as a clear jumping off pt to dream abt/recollect his past & esp to key in first on how his mom felt re: the grief of losing her other son/his bro

i think i appreciated it generally a lot more than i did initially -- maybe primarily cuz i knew what i was getting -- i think ppl are obv fine with non-linear storytelling but non-narrative storytelling(? - sorta not even the right word) is v uncomfortable for a # of reasons

anyway, it didnt feel long @ all, bring on the 6 hr cut

I need a 95-minute 'Waco family' cut.

I'm on board with Alfred's ranking except that I still haven't seen TTRL.

morbs otm

this post from the forum i linked above gets at some of the problems i had with the movie - especially the comment about 'constant wide-angled voluptuousness' - ive been finding malick's idea of cinematic 'beauty' to be increasingly fatuous, the cinema needs remarkable images but it takes more than photographing something prettily to hit the mark. he used to have the ability, days of heaven contains images i'll never forget, but when i think of tree of life or the new world it's all just indistinct steadicam goop, a natgeo special with some big stars wandering around.

I do, however, think your argument for this particular film has a lot to do with the fact that most of the movie is comprised of immediate, obvious, and emotionally/intellectually comforting words, images, and music. Several critics have used the term "kitsch" to describe it, and I strongly concur. The argument that "one must experience and appreciate this work emotionally rather than critically" is one that is regularly adopted by adherents of kitsch to explain why, say, Norman Rockwell or Thomas Kinkaide must be appreciated. "Don't think about it, just enjoy it!" So much of this movie was immediately recognizable, it could've come straight out of any corporate "green energy" commercial (happy people dancing in sprinklers in manicured lawns), New Age posters with "cosmic" visuals and flying orcas (no orcas in this film, but Mrs. O'Brien does waft aloft), and any high-tech nature/space imagery since Cosmos.

Milan Kundera offered a famous definition of kitsch: "Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see the children running in the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running in the grass! It is the second tear which makes kitsch kitsch." It's also the operative context for this entire film. Yes, one can take the images at face value and bask in their warmth and recognizability, and perhaps even draw a powerful emotional experience from it. But that doesn't make it great art; it doesn't challenge or stretch or enlarge our understanding of ourselves or the world we live in.

For me, the film lacked a crucial sense of awe. For all its nonlinear construction and unexpected juxtapositions, it always had a feeling of familiarity and obviousness. The sense of uncanny symmetry or unusual beauty we associate with Kubrick or Tarkovsky (or even earlier Malick works) simply wasn't there; it all seemed demonstrative, reaching for effect. (What does it say about a film that the only way it creates suspense is to tease us with children playing with deadly objects?) The handheld camerawork even grows monotonous with its constant wide-angled voluptuousness; there's little sense of shaping or modulating the visual information; it lacks any dynamics. Even the cosmic imagery, with its billowing vapors and fluids (inspired by the much more profound work of Jordan Belson) lacked a sense of mystery--its organization seemed strangely literal; as if we should be surprised or moved to contemplation by gazing at a meteor slowly receding towards the earth after the film depicts the age of dinosaurs; as if every oceanic documentary in recent memory hasn't equated hundreds of glowing jellyfish to stars in the universe.

It seems to me that most people who love the film love the idea of the film, its ambitions and trappings, rather than its execution. Evangelicals seem especially prone to celebrate its laudable intentions, and leave it at that. Maybe the eternal perspective is actually new and paradigm-shifting for some, the idea that individuals are wrapped up in a cosmic story. As a middle class father with a troubled midwestern upbringing who has a profound love of nature and a taste for mysticism, I am definitely Malick's ideal viewer. But maybe I'm too close to the material? I wanted to lose myself in the film and its imagination, but it always felt naive and preening, imploring me to join it rather than fascinating or compelling me.

well, i kind of disagree with that.

I think it's a bit of taking on the proponents of the film rather than the film itself to say that we're "supposed" to be transported by it, or the whole "dont think, just see how beautiful it is."

I think this approach ignores the hints of discord in the movie, and particularly how those hints of discord, how they are hidden and discovered as a process of growing up, are an explicit subject of the movie. How parents fighting can be so hugely disturbing, or when the mother shields her children from the man having a seizure.

Secondly, i think the movie, for better or for worse (I can see both sides), simply DEMANDS to be interpreted. I get impatient with the "pretty pictures" or "national geographic" comments because i think the editing and structure of the movie are so obviously very careful and deliberate and interlocking. This is a common problem with criticism of Malick. I find his movies the very opposite of vacuous pretty pictures, and if anything they are images overdetermined with meaning and context. Honestly, I think it's just being a poor watcher of movies to think the images are simply aiming to be pretty.

And as far as kitsch goes, well i just think that term is maybe not so helpful, laden as it is with a lot of (Bourdieu-ian) stuff i'd rather leave behind.

Secondly, i think the movie, for better or for worse (I can see both sides), simply DEMANDS to be interpreted. I get impatient with the "pretty pictures" or "national geographic" comments because i think the editing and structure of the movie are so obviously very careful and deliberate and interlocking. This is a common problem with criticism of Malick. I find his movies the very opposite of vacuous pretty pictures, and if anything they are images overdetermined with meaning and context. Honestly, I think it's just being a poor watcher of movies to think the images are simply aiming to be pretty.

im not saying thats what hes aiming for, im saying its what hes producing. i agree that his imagery is overdetermined! such that i can't respond to it at all except in the interpretive fashion he demands, which i find oppressive. and since the movie's being praised in many corners for simply being beautiful, what's wrong with examining why a movie that bursts forth with 'beauty' can leave viewers like me so unmoved?

you found the question of kitsch useful earlier in the thread...

i think that's all fair. i find the movie kind of oppressive myself, despite admiring it.

i was thinking about it in the shower just now and i guess im not satisfied with the glibness of my natgeo comment. its just that ive been trying to figure out what it is that makes images in the cinema remarkable - why days of heaven, which i havent seen in about 9 years, sticks in my head but his more recent pictures dont.

i am attracted to the idea in the post i quoted that his imagery has become unmodulated - tree of life and the new world were shot almost entirely with steadicam, and it creates what i consider a monotonous visual sensibility. its not a narrative thing, because there's lots of non-narrative cinema whose imagery is very striking to me. it may be a human thing - the structure of tree of life is so confounding to me, there are scenes that are very moving and authentic but i feel like terry's ambitions end up strangling the simple domestic story i was being drawn into. and i never really managed to find the humanity in the new world (i had a much easier time with TTRL)

i doubt i would be convinced by an argument that malick's shooting style (suddenly veering off to shoot butterflies and birds and shit) means that there is no planning or construction in his movies, but i think people find it easy to take that and use it as an easy way to dismiss, i guess, the interpretive challenge that his pictures pose

and the nature of that interpretive challenge really niggles at me. i do think some people find themselves sort of liking the movie uncritically as an "experience" because they find it unpalatable to publicly not like the movie and be seen as someone who cant handle serious, challenging cinema. and i dont blame them for that reaction, because this movie doesnt have a lens through which to view it that suddenly imbues you with the 'correct' reading of the film (like all art), yet the structure and ambition may make you feel like it's some puzzle that needs to be solved (which i don't believe was malick's intention).

it's pretty antithetical to my sensibility, which i guess is that i need to be enticed a little bit to start digging underneath the text - this movie just hands you a shovel at the outset and tells you to dig for china, but no matter how much i contemplate the movie it never becomes more rewarding to me

and something about that makes me wonder if im cut out for this kind of picture - something about it seems to encourage people to think about it as a litmus test for a certain brand of cinematic ambition, independent of its qualities as a film, and im not sure if that isnt a weird impulse. if you think a hot new comedy sucks, do you then start asking yourself if you don't like comedies?

(i talked about this a little upthread, but the kitsch question is interesting to me precisely because i dont really see much kitschiness in the movie, and i suspect i would like it more if i did!)

(and for all my bitching, this is a movie that i end up thinking about a whole lot, and ive only seen it once. so that must mean something right?)

i may have already posted this but during my rapturous period w/this film i argued that theres s.thing very textual abt it, that i seems to desire to be read rather than seen and that almost despite the intensity and beauty of its images whats really impt is the structure and the editing of the various scenes and images. id like to see the movie again but ive been trying to fit the larger structure of the movie into an idea of thesis/antithesis/synthesis but id probably have to reread hegel/kant to make it work (lol).

im interested in the idea of kitsch that the kundera quote gets at and yr sense of the movie being beautiful but monotonous. many of the images in the movie seem rooted in an idea of beauty that is 'subjective yet universal' which leans them towards kitsch even as the images themselves are 'purposive without purpose'. in order for the images to be universal and communicable they have to be familiar and preconfigured which can limit the ability of these parts of the film to carry the shock of the new or the unexpected. does this make the film bad tho? idk

i just like how the camera slid past everything. there was this way in which it seemed to want to look in a particular way but didn't always necessarily care what it was looking at. many surfaces slipping over each other. i didn't really feel like anything needed to be deciphered, or that it was this enveloping experience. sometimes i'm walking home and the sky is turning pink and reflecting in all the windows and i think, i wish i had a camera, or maybe what's beautiful about this wouldn't translate into a photograph or what would it mean to have this image of this when i can see it now. this film made me think of this kind of situation, the parts where the boys are swimming in the river, and how i feel like i have memories like this but no way to prove it.

this movie just hands you a shovel at the outset and tells you to dig for china, but no matter how much i contemplate the movie it never becomes more rewarding to me

yes, absolutely. though this actually APPEALS to my sensibility, as i've always been drawn to puzzles and explicitly philosophical films. i certainly feel for anyone who has to sit through this movie and doesn't enjoy that a little bit.

however, I almost want to suggest that Malick (who i presume has a sophisticated grasp of theology) has maybe couched the terms for interpreting the movie in deliberately anachronistic and even confrontational hermeneutic terms (I've often felt his movies aren't as gentle in intent as they seem, almost passive-aggressive if you will). these movies don't really countenance or even take regard of the possibility for cynicism. i get the feeling that part of what he's been refining and perfecting (ironically) in the last few movies is an very conscious move away from consciousness, away from a deliberate artfulness or knowingness or sophistication. and all the more interestingly given the lie by the highly formal and constructed nature of his films.

i hope i've expressed that clearly, and i think that's the point at which you can call bullshit or be intrigued by his later films.

Finally got around to this. Malick, fuzzy-headed as ever. I pretty much agree w/Soto & Morbs, and with the critique quoted above re: kitsch and the received symbolism of it all. The boy's-eye-view middle section has some fine filmmaking in it, though the characters remain distant as people -- felt a bit like looking through a stranger's family album. But on the grand ambition and spiritual insight front, I just don't think he has much to say. Tarkovsky was mentioned a few places above, and if you stack ToL up against, say, Andrei Rublev -- which is the kind of film it begs comparison to -- I think it seems awfully thin. Malick is a serious artist and all that, but in those ranks, he's a real lightweight.

having lots to say /= profound

I'm thinking quality, not quantity.

Almost walked out because the trailers thought I was the type of person that would be interested in whatever the fuck Tree Of Life is

― mercy mercy me, that beanfield milagro (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, December 11, 2010 6:52 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Eventually saw this and is p much my favorite movie of 2011.

yeah, dinosaurs were cool

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRVOYPgIdHCMxCN8mwtKJDoHkdPoQHWwnJiisfAVG-Sve-0Lmro

ya know it

Whiney otm

smfh @ you all

literally the worst film i've ever sat all the way through

What's the best movie you've walked out on?

i don't tend to walk out of movies :( i am working on this

I didn't think you watched movies, lex

what gave you that impression?

i'm not enough of a film buff to post on the film threads here and i don't see as many as i want to but i watch them!

lex, I get why you don't like this and I can appreciate it, but is it really necessary to chime in with every revive to remind us how much you hated it?

hes only done it twice...

True, my bad, I guess it was every Oscar thread and end of year film thread he popped in to mention that he hated this.

xps I just never see you talk about them

oh i'm quite bad at seeing them at the same time as everyone else and i don't "anticipate" them as such so i tend to revive film threads like a year afterwards when i've finally got round to them

or when i see people praising tree of life and am consequently enraged

just such a weird film to be "enraged" over

Nah, this is sort of a quintessentially love-loathe type movie. Which I love.

"enraged" is a pretty strong emotion. are you sure you didn't mean "irked"?

Not seen it but I'm guessng most of the art house 'moves' would enrage anyone who wasn't used (or simply liked) them: 'static' images, alienated relationships blah blah

Good video for Explosions in the Sky from The Tree of Life's second-unit cinematographer:

http://portable.tv/music/post/the-best-extended-music-videos/7/

So the dinosaurs are the brothers, right

yeah i've thought that in the past. not sure it really "maps" on to it perfectly but it's certainly a depiction of the central relationships which occur over and over.

Ok, and brad pitt is evolutionists