Strong and Moving!

A Major Disappointment

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

"The Tree of Life - for most people either one of the best or one of the worst films they've ever seen. Completely incomprehensible to some but visually stunning to all. This highly ambitious project by Terrence Malick goes back all the way to 1970s but finally saw the light in 2011 baffling the audience with it's combination of family drama, existential themes and what seems more like a nature documentary. Even today most people don't know what to make of it..." The rest of this video essay about this movie you can see/hear in a video I put a link to at the end of the review. A must watch after you watch the movie. There is just so much to take in with this movie, you just have to look deeper beyond it's face value. And even then there is so many ways you can interpret it. A truly unique piece of art you can experience by yourself now."The Tree of Life - Crafting an Existential Masterpiece"

This is Terence Mallick's magnus opus in my opinion- and yes, I am aware of the fact that this is Malick I speak of, a man who has made some masterpieces. Tree of Life encompasses everything- from the search of purpose and meaning to the beginning and end of time itself. Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain and the kids all are more than competent and would have jumped at the chance of working with a master. Beautifully shot as only Malick can(the camera flows so smoothly) and containing what I consider one of the most important sequences(beginning of time) ever put on film The Tree of Life is a work of art.

The Tree of Life isn't a movie by conventional standards, but an art piece of random pieces of footage that says "look at me and come up with your own answer". It is a pathetic excuse for a movie. It lacks even the most basic components necessary to call something a movie. It is the only movie off the top of my head that i have called pretentious, because this is the very definition of the word.The Tree of Life is a jumbled mess of footage from 2001 A Space Odyssey, to some family from Texas. Why do i need to see the creation of the universe and life to understand the hardship of a 1950's family? I don't know. Why should i care about anything that happens to these people when the lack of any kind of narrative, or structure robs me of understanding why i'm watching them in the first place? I don't know. Why does Sean Penn show up like 5 times for completely pointless scenes that have nothing to do with anything? I don't know. What was the ending? I don't know.This is literally all this movie is. Footage without any kind of cohesion that insists that its greater than it is. But it's nothing. It does nothing, it shows nothing, it says nothing, it's a great big beautiful spectacle of nothing.

I believe that the brilliance of The Tree of Life can be even better appreciated after watching Malick's next three films. Those prove that by having characters express their internal feelings with whispers as voice-over narration over beautiful cinematography, doesn't necessarily make a great movie. There's other filmmakers inspired by Malick's Thin Red Line and Tree of Life also doing likewise. Though, no film pulls off all the Malick ingredients as well as The Tree of Life.I read that Malick has spent many years preparing this film and that might be the difference between the Tree of Life and his following films which came in quick succession. I've heard many complaints about the Tree of Life from Malick fans, and those the viewers I was mostly concerned about... not about Hollywood viewers who can't stand deep cinema anyway.The typical problem critics have is that this film doesn't fit into their world view. It's clearly religious in nature and many viewers feel that placing theism with evolution is a contradiction. Though, that isn't necessarily true. I won't get into the religious aspects of this film because I'm testing the art and not religion.Let's just give one example. I mostly hear Malick fans laugh at the dinosaur scene. To me it's clear that Malick was referencing 2001 A Space Odyssey the way Kubrick used apes... but now he's using dinosaurs to make his own point with the brothers in the story of Tree of Life. It's about how aggression moves you ahead in the food chain vs. the meek, which on the surface is the opposite of what the Bible says to progress. But, what kind of progress are we talking about here? Spirituality isn't about material progress, not even just about life on earth. It is obvious that Malick gives you a big clue at the very beginning of his film by taking a quote from Job's story in the Bible. Despite this, many critics feel there's no place for the scenes representing the creation of the universe and life. However this is exactly what Job is about in the Bible. Job is frustrated and struggles with the pain he experiences and this is when God expresses poetic verses, giving him a grand perspective of life in context of eternity. This is clearly what Malick does in Tree of Life when the mother is particularly struggling with the unexpected death of her young son. The first hour or so of this film is maybe the highest standard of cinema I've seen in a long time. The rest of the film doesn't disappoint me, but it does make it difficult for other viewers who didn't like to watch how the father dominates his family aggressively. But, if you can get through those moments easily, the father is later admitting how ''stupid'' and weak he was in the past. This for me was a very moving scene and shows how even those you write off have time to grow. This movie mostly does it for me due to the beautiful cinematography and the classical music soundtrack that perfectly goes along with the poetic insight. Malick is clearly inspired by Tarkovsky, and while many other directors were also influenced by him, this is the closest anyone has come. Tree of Life is typically similar to Mirror and while English audiences might find Malick difficult to watch, the Russian film Mirror (Zerkalo) is even more challenging.