Sunday 19 June 2011

Movie: The Tree of Life (2011)

Rating: B-

OK. I get it. The world is like a tree. And like a tree, it grows and spreads, and splits, and blossoms. Our lives too, reflect that. But in all that imagery and symbolism and beauty and awe, there needs to be some sense of cohesion, flow, and continuity. Somewhere. Anywhere.



Terrence Malick starts the movie off with random shots of the past, the present, and the future with some awe inspiring shots of absolute magnificence that is so randomly perplexing that while some might call it cinematic poetry, I can only describe as a convoluted collection of photographic genius that left me to wonder if this was some randomised National Geographic footage. All that was missing was the Alexander Scourby narration (although I guess these days, it would probably be done by Morgan Freeman. Haha).

Aside from the first 40 minutes where Malick tries to randomly select beautifully crafted footage to symbolise the creation of the world, including shots of waterfalls, volcanoes, and I'm sorry...Dinosaurs(?!)...There is a feebly concocted jagged story of a father (played by Brad Pitt) and his family. While some of the arbitrarily selected snippets showed a boy's struggle growing up, it's a pretty weak collection of memories for the boy to grow up to be so morose and tormented. The boy grows up to look remarkably like Sean Penn, which makes no sense because there's really no reason for him to be in the movie. Oh right...so that they could put his name on the poster.

If, somehow, you're able to see past the arbitrary randomness to the symbolic abstractions, this distorted metaphor for "The Tree of Life" is a visually stunning, cinematically perplexing experience.

~Cheers.

Blogger's Note: I loved the way Mike Ward from Richmond.com finished off his review of the movie:

"I admire “The Tree of Life” – in the same way I admire the white-haired lady in the “Guinness Book of World Records” with 28-foot fingernails. By the way, after “The Tree of Life,” you’ll probably have to cut your nails, just saying."

2 comments:

  1. I agree with you that the movie is lacking of synergy to hold everything together, but I guess a lot of artsy film would intentionally have some gaps in between to allow us to interpret the imagery or metaphor in our own ways. In this case though, the open ended imagery was way too long and too dramatic... I think it lost its momentum to keep me engage with the story, which was too bad, since the story line was not bad at all.

    I wouldn't say it's a good movie, but I do admire the top notch cinematography, art direction and editing from it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. @miffymt ... thx for the comment! I totally agree =)~

    ReplyDelete

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