Comments on: TREE OF LIFE

By: GREG W. LOCKE

GREG W. LOCKE — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:18:40 +0000

by focusing on the boy who dies, you’re focusing on a very small element of the story. but you wouldn’t know that, because you wrote your review before finishing the film. poor terry … this is what you get in America when you follow your unique vision. (i know that last bit is gonna make you mad, and you’re gonna wanna lash out and post my private info on your board again, but i really think that, had you finished the film and thought about it and talked about it with others, you’d have a much different reaction. the point of me maybe/maybe not pushing your buttons with that last bit is that i feel artists – especially ones like terrence malick – deserve to have their work respected. am i wrong? what if i reviewed your book after only reading half of it, and then had a pretty big and loud opinion that focused on one small element of it? then i posted that review in a public place … would that make you feel good about me as a critic? would you not feel disrespected, like i cheapened your hard work? as a professional critic, i’m sure this is something you’ve given some thought to.)

for what it’s worth, the middle brother dying is simply the catalyst for adult jack looking back on his life (we don’t see the kid die and we don’t know how he died; all we see is how it influenced the lives of our three principles – jack and his parents. jack, mostly). it’s the thing jack never got over – the thing he could never make any sense of, and now he’s having something of an existential crisis of the undefined as he gets older and wonders how he got to where he is (a successful architect living in a big city). i could go on and on, but it sounds like you’re over it. it’s an impressionistic puzzle/riddle/meditation/whatever … i had to see it a few times before it made complete sense, but it does, and i’m glad i gave malick my time and patience, as i consider him to be one of the great living artists. it’s all there on the screen and it’s a big, big, big story from a master – you don’t get that every day/year.

when i saw that you wrote it up, i was hoping you’d have examined the film from a female’s perspective. as a whole, it is what it is (a movie about pondering the mysterious/unknown parts of life), but i imagine it’s a very different viewing experience for a woman than it is a man, and that’s something i’ve been curious about all along.

below is a review i wrote a day or so after my first screening. i’ve seen it three times since and have been writing notes all along. there’s so much to say about this movie … i just really hope you’ll go back and re-watch it, front to back, with your thinking cap on. to me, it was like reading a really great, long, sprawling abstract poem for the first time. i had to live with it and revisit it before it really revealed itself to me. that alone is quite an accomplishment for malick.

http://www.zecatalist.com/uncategorized/the-tree-of-life/

By: Michael Baker

Michael Baker — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:37:17 +0000

Malick’s brother Lawrence killed himself at age 19. The scenes in the movie (that aren’t dinosaur related) are supposedly drawn from Malick’s childhood in Waco, and are probably pretty personal and meaningful. I agree that as a plot device this sort of thing is hackneyed, but I think this is a different case. You can quibble whether it worked in the film or not, of course.

By: Jessica Hopper

Jessica Hopper — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:15:49 +0000

I am holding steady at a little more than half way through and what you write about the final part makes me at least curious. Hmmm. Thanks for such a thoughtful comment!

By: B C

B C — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:38:37 +0000

I think the thing about that entire movie is also this really obvious way of Malick working through a total fear of death. With its dead son hook right off the bat, that “I give you my child” Virgin Mary moment, and the inevitable let’s all gather at the table on the shores of Galilee and Heaven reads like this blazing “OH NO” of existential crisis, which brings me to the other bit about this movie. The mom is such a wooden character, save for those endless closeups of her line-less face, and the fact that she is essentially incidental to the entire storyline as anything other than a symbol is such a bummer of a lazy trope to put to use. Still, I would say the movie was most effective in that last chapter when it got into the struggles with masculinity and the nature of violence, sexuality, shame, etc. I mean, the kid looking at the slip laid out on the bed, and then cutting to him burying it under the log before throwing it into the river? Maybe Malick would do better to keep things a bit more micro rather than hitting the grandiose Oneness of the cosmos and merciful dinosaurs.