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

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

im still coming to terms with the second half of this movie (not sure i ever will) but i think up through the baby section in the middle it's incredible.

Kid stealing the slip scene didn't go exactly the way it did in my childhood, but the gist was the same.

Cant stop thinking about this movie, which is v out of character.

And this is a great thread, tho it crashed my phone three times.

I'm posting this article because it's the best analysis of Tree of Life I've read. Plus, it led me to watch "Melancholia," which is also great...

http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/origin-and-extinction-mourning-and-melancholia

Grady and I went to Tree of Life when it first came out on the big screen. I remember saying after the movie "one too many shots of sea-foam, maybe?" Grady's reply was: "NOT ENOUGH shots of sea-foam," which seemed sarcastic but wasn't quite, and he was right. The sea-foam belonged right where it was in the movie... Man, now I want to view it a second time.

I love that the film can support such a smarty pants analysis, even if the essay links it to the less accomplished and less profound style of bullshitery favored by Von Trier.

I finally saw this, and I have to say that even though the 50s childhood stuff was often remarkably well constructed, the whole "process of life" universal stuff felt just like a more banal, religious version of The Fountain, right down to a tree symbolizing endless cycles of life, to images of cell-level biology bleeding into cosmic vistas, to the usage of practical effects instead of CGI. And I'm not saying The Fountain is the perfect movie or anything (it's kind of an admirable mess), but I found it curious that that movie was mostly panned and this movie was bigged up, even though Aronofsky found a more idiosyncratic (both visually and narratively) way of telling his "life endures" cosmic story than Malick did here with his naive imagery.

TBH, I was ready to forgive the movie because the 50s stuff was often so good, there the naivety worked because it was such an effective way of illumating the parts of childhood Malick focused on, but then came the final part of the movie with its religious pamphlet imagery, and that was such a turn-off. Like, after all the criticism of the father's authoritarian ways and downright abusiveness, do we really need to see these corny images of Heaven where he is forgiven and the mother is kissing him?

Also, I get it that the whole movie shouldn't be taken as a straightforward representation of anything, maybe all the images are really just Sean Penn thinkinking about Life and Stuff, but still you have to ask, is this guy's vision of the afterlife so banal and simplistic? After the carefully and often beautifully crafted childhood scenes, if was such a letdown that Malick's (or Penn's) vision of the afterlife was so dull, like screensaver images or something. Compared to this, The Fountain did the whole "triumph of life" thing much better, Daronofsky managed to find more potent and less overdetermined visual euphemisms to convey this theme. (Of course the difference is that The Fountains is not religious and The Tree of Life clearly is, but should embracing religion mean giving up imagination?)

I haven't seen any other Malick movies besides Badlands, so I'm not sure if its his signature style or something, but I have to say the incessant, rapid jump-cuts got really tiresome after a while, the speed of them almost made feel physically ill. I thought the technique worked in the 50s parts of the movie, because it's an effective way of illustrating how childhood memories bleed into each other, becoming a non-chronological amorphous shape of a sort, but I can't for the life of me figure out why the same sort of cutting was applied to the metaphysical stuff? Because, even though some of the images were corny, some of them were also beautiful (and some of them were both), but instead of letting the viewer focus on them and contemplate transcendence or whatever, Malick just bombarded us with them. It felt like he was trying to overprove himself, being like, "Didn't I do a cool shot there? Well, there's more where that came from! And more! And more!". If anyone has some explanation why these parts of the movie were cut that way, I'd be happy to hear it.

I saw an hour of this when it was screened on Film Four recently and was enraged I missed this at the cinema as Thin Red Line is incredibly boring. It looks like I missed the worst parts of it (?)

I think Thin Red Line is a masterpiece. Not boring at all to me, totally/tonally enrapturing.

Per Malick's editing, I'm not sure I was as distracted as you were (xpost) to the cuts, but I do know that at least since Thin Red Line his movies have more or less been made in the editing suite. That is, he has a loose script, but spends just as much time making his actors recite long speeches that won't make it in as impulsively stealing shots of nature that will (tons of Sean Penn were apparently excised from Tree of Life, just as Adrian Brody was more or less erased out of Thin Red Line). Out of the hours and hours of extraneous stuff as well as acting, the movie's themes and whatnot are shaped when he and his team start cutting things together. It's a very impressionistic style, and I can imagine it being frustrating for someone expecting something more linear. In fact, Badlands may be the only Malick to stick to a relatively conservative narrative filmmaking style. It's pretty linear/straight-forward in a way that none of his subsequent films are. Even The New World is a little loopy, and that one (iirc) trades in hyper-realism.

The lack of linearity didn't bother me, just the fact that he didn't let any shot linger for more than 5 seconds, even though some of the shots were quite beautiful and would've been more effective if he'd let them breath. I mean, if this movie is supposed to be a contemplation on life and universe and all, he didn't give us much time to contemplate before moving to the next Significant Image, and the next one, and the next one... The idea of shaping the whole movie in the editing room is cool, but I don't think that justifies the rapid cuts. Surely the shots of nature et al that he'd done were long enough that they would've allowed for a slower pace? The jump cuts felt like a conscious aesthetic choice, not something that was forced by the material he had, so it was baffling to me why he chose to do it that way.

your complaint is similar to dave kehr's, iirc.

not sure it makes sense to say the cutting isn't motivated by the material--the style is exactly the point, even more than the "material," no? Malick's thing is less making Significant Images to be pondered than a rush of images (he'd be a great music video director), a kind of flowing signification, let's say, rather than anything you can put your finger on. im not saying you're supposed to be frustrated, but any sense of Meaning is meant to be fleeting and transitory, i think.

the funny thing is that it's not a "contemplative" movie at all. quite the opposite! The Thin Red Line is contemplative, maybe, which is why it's my favorite of his. The Tree of Life is more immediate and overwhelming.

I mean, if this movie is supposed to be a contemplation on life and universe and all, he didn't give us much time to contemplate before moving to the next Significant Image, and the next one, and the next one.

You could make a case that this is the precise point.

^^^

Okay, fair enough, but what is the point then? What is quick pace suppose to convey? That Heaven is hectic?

No, maybe that you've got one life to live, it goes by fast, and the next thing you know everyone is dead, including you, and even as you juggle a jumble of memories, loves, experiences, mistakes and regrets, you're not one step closer to understanding the way the universe works or why.

OTM.

Tho I think the aesthetic experience is the primary driver, so if someone's not responding to that, I'm not even going to try to convince them otherwise.

Well, I did respond to it, but by feeling nauseous, I doubt that was what the movie was supposed to do...

the next thing you know everyone is dead, including you, and even as you juggle a jumble of memories, loves, experiences, mistakes and regrets, you're not one step closer to understanding the way the universe works or why.

Yeah, like I said, I was fine this when the movie was depicting memories, of childhood thoughts and images and experiences meshing with each other... But what I didn't get why the same technique was used with the cosmic/spiritual stuff. Like, in the beach scene in the end of the movie Malick keeps cutting within the same "Heaven" (or whatever it's supposed to be) imagery, he doesn't juxtapose it with memories or stuff from other parts of the movie, it's just jump-cuts within the same scene on the beach, and I seriously don't get what was the point of there. From what was actually happening in the scene, it felt like we were supposed to witness the state of grace mentioned earlier in the movie, of sins forgiven (hence the mother being all cuddly with the father again) and losses regained... But the way it was presented felt stressful and chaotic, closer to music video than anything solemn. And if that was intentional, I just don't get what the intention was.

The new Blu-ray/DVD release features two versions of the picture — the 139-minute, Oscar-nominated 2011 theatrical cut and a new, 188-minute extended edition. This longer edit, however, is not a “director’s cut,” although Malick himself prepared it.

http://www.vulture.com/2018/09/will-terrence-malick-ever-really-finish-the-tree-of-life.html

Same as it ever was. https://t.co/V4PiwEryqb

— Michael Oman-Reagan (@OmanReagan) October 30, 2019

Er, not sure what happened

Shout out to my friend who once tried to torrent Malick’s The Tree of Life, downloaded 3h 8m of the trailer on a loop, and watched that for thirty minutes thinking it was “experimental” before he caught on. I have thought about this approximately twice a week for ten years 🙏

— Megan (@mmegannnolan) October 30, 2019

I suppose you're also going to shatter my illusions by claiming that the film isn't actually scored to an extended mix of 'Yackety Sax'.

prayers up for this poor bastard mentioned in the comments

another s/o to @SomeNiceFun who inadvertently watched it thinking it would be a calming film to take the buzz off an acid trip, and who was also - unbeknownst to him - was simultaneously coming down with norovirus

— Stan The Golden Boy (@tristandross) October 30, 2019

prayers up for this poor bastard mentioned in the comments

another s/o to @SomeNiceFun who inadvertently watched it thinking it would be a calming film to take the buzz off an acid trip, and who was also - unbeknownst to him - was simultaneously coming down with norovirus

— Stan The Golden Boy (@tristandross) October 30, 2019

prayers up for this poor bastard mentioned in the comments

another s/o to @SomeNiceFun who inadvertently watched it thinking it would be a calming film to take the buzz off an acid trip, and who was also - unbeknownst to him - was simultaneously coming down with norovirus

— Stan The Golden Boy (@tristandross) October 30, 2019

prayers up for this poor bastard mentioned in the comments

another s/o to @SomeNiceFun who inadvertently watched it thinking it would be a calming film to take the buzz off an acid trip, and who was also - unbeknownst to him - was simultaneously coming down with norovirus

— Stan The Golden Boy (@tristandross) October 30, 2019

grrr

Thank u for recreating the experience of watching bootleg Tree of Life

Lol

I had totally forgotten Jack shouting at his father "SHE ONLY LOVES ME!"

Extended version throws in too much that truly is too much/not enough (Ben Chaplin as abusive dad in the neighborhood). Also Chastain's mother (Fiona Shaw) explicitly diagnosing Pitt's resentments, which we can see for ourselves.

Alex Ross's Criterion supplement on the musical selections is excellent.