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Even though Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, the film is still such an extraordinarily ambitious work that Fox Searchlight can use all the help it can get broadening it behind Malick acolytes (like me). So they’ve drafted two directors who have a kinship with the young demo that drives movies to big grosses. Check out this short video, as The Dark Knight Rises director Chris Nolan and The Social Network’s David Fincher explain why this is required viewing.
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Terrence Malick’s film, “Days of Heaven” is among my top 10 favorite films of all time. His direction is paced but ultimately mesmerizing. His influence on Fincher is obvious in the films “Zodiac” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” I plan on seeing “Tree of Life” as soon as it opens in my town.
will it be released in 3D?
Malick’s visuals spoke to me more vividly than the comments of the other directors, heartfelt as they were.
I’m sorry, but how is intellectualizing the film even further going to enhance its appeal. Don’t they know that people go the movies to watch straightforward and silly. Does the average moviegoer even know who Kubrick is?
The film is a total over-bloated mess. Lazy, and cliché-ridden from the writing to the direction to the photography to the set-design to the costume design. And now lap-dogs Fincher and Nolan?! Haha.
You gotta love Hollywood.
Wow. I’d hate to see your idea of a good director.
hahaha, agree Jack.
Saw this last week. Wouldn’t call it cliche-ridden. Some scenes are just amazing to look at. But the complement stops here.
If Mr Malick’s aim is to make the audience feel for, and be in awe of, his meditations in “life”, it fails completely for this viewer. The film’s tone is just too self-important (verging on pomposity). A few extra “supernatural” scenes (there are two) will elevate the film to something more spiritual, methinks.
He should’ve just just cut out all the scenes in which Sean Penn wandering around looking morose in the “soul-less” urban setting.
Antonioni did all those (bored) to death scenes better back in the 60s.
Good one!
This film couldn’t be more over-rated. In fact, I think the only reason people give it good reviews is because they don’t want to appear as if they don’t get it. The only time I’ve seen more crack-inspired editing was in reviewing a hack film student’s “experimental” film. I admittedly enjoyed seeing the birth of the universe, but as a whole, the film felt like someone forgot the stedicam and the script, and when Terrence decided to wing it…he realized he wasn’t very good at it. Days of Heaven and Thin Red Line were amazing films, but Tree of Life is just plain bad.
–Blah.
Let me get this straight, the guy that blew the Zodiac story (and makes EVERYTHING into a morose music video), and the guy that has to invent an all-in-your-head-dream-movie to kill an ALREADY dead wife, these are the BIG THINKERS of this generation, and they’re going to bat for a long-winded, “let’s shoot it tomorrow” kind of conceptual planner. Get a load of yourselves guys. No wonder there are no new ideas happening this generation. This is an adult circle jerk. Bring us the filmmakers of tomorrow!
Malick directs like a poet (Theodore Roethke comes to mind), and Thomas Wolf’s story telling. Malick
is not for the average movie-goer, but he shares universal emotions on the screen, fresh impressions, a lyrical camera interprets a moment, a puzzle explored, never exploited, a puzzle left open to another interpretation. THE TREE of LIFE is natural, soulful– a visual poem, yet aural and very connected to life as we know it and knew it. The world takes so little time to savor and enjoy anything anymore! This is a film to be savored. Rather than get lost in this movie…. Let yourself be found in it.
Great, so two of the most pretentious and over-rated directors in Hollywood are going to tell me why another pretentious movie from another pretentious director must be seen?! And, I’m going to listen to them?
Trust me, I don’t need these two arrogant clowns to convince me to see a movie. In fact, I did see “Tree of Life” and, IMHO, it is just more pretentious drivel from Malick.
If you already castigated Malick for creating “pretentious drivel” (i.e. Thin Red Line, The New World), then why’d you see Tree of Life? I can’t say that Malick is a genius, but he does engage the viewer in a different way. Although, I think he’d be better off making shorts… the visual potency of work wouldn’t be lost, and the narrative conventions of a short are less strict.
I just want to see the film Malick directed (already) with Ben Affleck, and then see if people continue to genuflect to him; will that get a release?
Kubrick was/still is the ultimate mainstream/art house American filmmaker of the last 50 years… no film is the same, no retread of previous work, no remakes, no sequels…
Sorry, Barbara. But all that esoteric crap is just that– crap. Lofty excuses for if/when a film fails to engage, connect or attract an audience.
For my money, the real artists are the ones who can tell original, moving stories (i.e. not Michael Bay) that speak to a broad audience (Spielberg, Weir, Pixar).
There are several talented artists out there who make poetic, lyrical films with a distinct voice– which then may make the festival rounds but fail otherwise.
Those directors deserve credit for sticking to their guns and vision (same as Malick) but also need to own it if they fail to engage the unwashed masses, which is who the medium is intended for, and who ultimately exact judgment on a film’s success or failure by showing up at the theater (or not).
@David, you make some strong point. I quite like The Tree of Life. Learn to express your opinions without trashing others. While you comments are insightful, they are ruined by you being a troll.
…Failed to engage the unwashed mashes?
David, it’s hard to be immensely critical of your take on Tree Of Life because honestly, it’s as narrow-minded as the eye of a sewing needle.
Malick has made a film in the Hollywood system, yes; that doesn’t translate to the film being REQUIRED to engage a widespread audience — your purported ‘unwashed masses’.
Box office performace is not the sole arbitrator of what makes a great film — unless you’re an account at Fox Searchlight or an investor in the project. Then perhaps your personal monetary stake might lend a little less shameless credence to your take. Everyone’s gotta eat after all and there’s a mortgage to tend…
But one can easily make a weighty argument that box office should be of zero consequence when judging the quality of any particular work. Often these days, box office is looked upon as the only redeeming factor to judge a work; given the lackluster fare of some of the biggest earners in recent memory, that’s about the only quality they can cling to.
Unbiasedly however, the film’s meant to be viewed; expectations beyond that are nothing more than your preconceived notions about a great many things which you apparently know little about.
Some historical perspective maybe.
Let’s start by proclaiming that your assumption that studio films are only intended for mass audiences as valid is true. Is it then possible that from these, ahem, humble origins, born of another time and era before television and the global onslaught of visual mediums, that the intention of said medium could actually ‘transform’ over time? Say, be different now than it was in 1925? That this transformation wouldn’t only be inevitable, but necessary?
After all, don’t we clearly see this transformation in other visual mediums like painting, photography, the web?
Painted works (all styles) were once exclusively the wards of religious institutions and the wealthy. Portraiture itself was a way of advertising wealth and social status. That’s why there are thousands of Queens and Dukes and Friars and Madonnas and Mistresses and depictions of the Crucifixtion hanging in the Louvre and other museums in Europe.
Then, damn these Impressionists came along wanting to paint landscapes and contemporary life scenes and holy shit, all hell started breaking loose…What would they thought of Picasso or Rothko?
Similarly, what would those daguerreotypists of the 19th century thought of Man Ray’s photograms or Pixel Photography? Would the audience for their daguerreotypes would’ve bought in to this weirdness? That cross their mind even?
Then there’s this internet thing that allows you to visit Deadline and share this opinion of yours.
The IPTO created by the military was intended to network radar systems across the country in the event traditional communications networks collapsed; i.e., the Soviet Union unleashed a nuclear holocaust.
Not exactly the marketplace of Google and Amazon now is it?
You see where I’m going here, David? So don’t judge Malick’s movies by what you ‘think’ they’re supposed to be or how they’re supposed to be received.
Leave that to the money men where it belongs…and don’t fault the artist filmmaker for railing against that model from time to time.
Looks to me here that we’re split down the middle. Now hasn’t this all been a big waste of time?
It’s like watching Brad Pitt narrate a 2 hour segment of Planet Earth…
Some will love it. Some will hate it. Sounds like art to me.
Good for them, for helping a fellow filmmaker out.
This is offensive, story is king good sir. You should be ashamed of yourself for such blasphemy!
Totally shitty movie this “Tree of Life”.I miss Kubrick at his best….at least we have the Cohen brothers.Just saw “Mr.Nobody”from 2009 and must say that film had a lot more to offer on life and reflecting upon it.