Beautiful and ambitious, pretentious and disconcerting, closely controlled yet free flow, "the tree of life" is contrary to what it is that you've never seen before. Yet it is very well developed highlight of Terrence Malick quite far - all four characteristics, il is made over the past four decades.
All its aesthetic and thematic signatures are previous films such as "badlands" and "the thin red line": yet dreamlike details, an obsession of metaphysics and the emotional, an ability to create suspense in a peaceful atmosphere.
It is simultaneously haunting and complicated because it encompasses nothing less than the nature of existence itself. As writer, Director, Malick varies by far of intimate moments with a growing family in the 1950s in Texas at the dawn of time – complete with impressive images of the cosmos, and Yes, these dinosaurs you have certainly heard - and vice versa.
"The tree of life" is deeply spiritual, but Malick is not to preach. Instead, it gives you the feeling that it is really asking questions whose answers can be unknowable - it is their there for himself and for us all. Of course, we will never know his intentions: Malick is notoriously vague, which is admirable from the point of view artistic, but probably frustrating for those who would like to know what the hell it means by this.
But if you are open to allow scrubbing of imaging on you, allow yourself to get swept in the rhythms and undulating fluidity, the film tones you will be seduced. And even if you are not a spiritual person yourself, given the type of search alienating frequently marks voices of the characters in "the tree of life", you're unlikely to find religious themes of the film.
"Lord, why?". "Where were you?"asked the mother of the family, played as a vision idealized maintain femininity by Jessica Chastain. "Who are we for you?" To respond to me. ?
Malick offers a fascinating contrast between the heavy, eternal concepts and down-to-Earth childhood memories: extracts from the lights, scintillating sounds, trees and sky and grass, the voice of the mother. (The technical elements here are simply staggering, including Emmanuel Lubezki, production of Jack Fisk design images and Alexandre Desplat scores). These moments are deliberately impressionistic - and "the tree of life" feels lost plotless and sometimes complaisant - but they all represent a representation specifies how our early memories may return to us in fragments. Some are idyllic, while others are scary.
Finally, "the tree of life" became rooted in the reality of the family O'Brien: a father (Brad Pitt), mother (Chastain) and three boys. Pitt makes the character a daunting figure, an arbitrary mixture of toughness and tenderness, and it is probably the best work of his career. Chastain, a newcomer to the screen, balances out it with sweetness and grace, but with a playful character and a face open, expressive; also you have the feeling that she wants happiness for her children, in any form that it is for them.
But Hunter McCracken, the young actor playing Jack, the eldest of three sons, has a presence surprisingly confident and impressive, particularly given that this is his first film. McCracken holds more than his own opposite Pitt, with whom he has repeatedly clashes: it really is the star. Jack will grow up to be played by Sean Penn, an architect of Houston, which is still shaken by a family tragedy in decades later. It is one of the weaknesses head here: Malick has set Penn at his disposal, and all what he does is ask walk around moping in costume Armani.
Yet, "the tree of life" has changed my mood for the rest of the day, too - and when you see many movies, more likely to flee your memory, leaving a trace on your heart and mind, which is rare nary. And it cannot easily be dismissed.
"The tree of life," a Fox Searchlight Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for some thematic material. Length: 138 minutes. Three years and a half stars out of four.
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