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EXCLUSIVE: After opening Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life in the U.S., Fox Searchlight presidents Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula have acquired the U.K. rights to the film from Bill Pohlad’s River Road Entertainment, which financed the film. They’ve dated the film for July 8 opening in the U.K. The film, which stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain, opened right after it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Its four screen average of $93,230 per theater beat Searchlight’s launch of Black Swan. The film has added eight markets and will add another 12 this week to a total of 22.
“We knew this was an amazing film from the moment we saw it,” Gilula and Utley said. Pohlad added: “Fox Searchlight has been an extraordinary partner distributing our film in the United States, so we’re thrilled to have them release The Tree of Life in the United Kingdom, allowing international audiences to experience Terry’s beautiful and affecting masterpiece.” Pohlad produced the film with Sarah Green, Pitt, Dede Gardner and Grant Hill.
I saw the film at its Cannes premiere, where I think I actually glimpsed Malick as he took in the cheers. Much like Pohlad said in an interview we did about the long road to bring that film to the screen, it is one of those movies where you can’t help but factor your own baggage from your upbringing and your experience of raising your own children into how you evaluate what you’ve seen. Scenes from the movie play back in my mind still, even though I’m not sure I fully understood everything I saw. It’s nice to be challenged that way on occasion in a theater.
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YES!!!!!!!
This movie was a pretentious, disjointed compilation of canned photos, bad CGI, and an unapologetic lack of storyline. It seems those at Cannes and the subsequent critics are so scared to say they “didn’t get it” that they defer to the party line consensus that it was a “masterpiece.” Pathetic really.
I can hear any vile on this movie, at the end of the day it’s not for everyone, but I really can’t stand anyone putting the word “pretentious” on it. Isn’t it even more pretentious to declare it to be? Like if you knew better than the guy who’s put a whole movie, a whole side of his life into it to tell you his point of view?
You can say that Casshern is pretentious, fine, because obviously its makers had no idea of what they were playing with, but ToL, seriously? Tell me you don’t agree with it, tell me it doesn’t resonate with you, I can totally get that. But pretentious???
Go buy yourself some openmindedness next time you get some popcorn, you’ll see that the world is more than the sum of its parts.
Why is that some people, when confronted with an artist’s work with which they don’t connect, feel the need to attack the character of those who have a completely different experience? I was moved to tears often by The Tree of Life, will watch it many times before I die, and felt no need at all for an apology for its lack of storyline. I have no motivation to be part of a pack – not of Cannes jury members, not of critics. Instead I’m deeply grateful that Terry Malick pulled off this miracle in an age when miracles are extremely rare.
You’re right they should have remade George of the Jungle instead.
wahhh! wahhh! my life sucks so i dump on everything to feel better about myself.
So what’d you really think?
Agreed. Easily one of the most pretentious films I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen quite a few that would qualify. I’ve seen all of Malick’s films (and enjoyed a few of them), but don’t have the desire to watch another after enduring the torture that watching Tree of Life was.
You’ve enjoyed a few of Malick’s films? Surely he’s not yet made enough for any amount to be described as a few?
I really don’t understand the cries of pretension with this film, I don’t really see it pretending to be anything other than what it is whether people enjoy it or not. It seems that pretension is so often the easy response if people won’t or can’t voice the issues they may have with something like this.
The Emperor has no clothes!
Saw it this weekend, stunningly beautiful film.
Or maybe they got its deliberate lack of convention and liked it.
I was in Cannes but didn’t see it. A close friend, who has impeccable taste, told me the next day, “I just watched the first $50 million, 2 1/2 hour screensaver”.
I usually like Malick’s work, but this was like watching paint dry.
It’s very simple. If you think Tree of Life belongs in a typical multiplex and should be marketed to regular audiences, then it means you haven’t seen it yet. If I were an exhibitor I would not play this film. I wouldn’t carry it even if I were offered a 100% take. The customer backlash wouldn’t be worth it. When I saw it at the WP Landmark people were storming out during the first act. The only way I’d carry it is if customers had to read a disclaimer beforehand explaining that it is a slow paced art film that doesn’t have a narrative structure.
And before any angry nuts attack me for this, I actually liked the movie for the most part. I’m a Terrance Malick fan. But never in a million years would I recommend it to anyone unless they fully understood that it’s more like watching a laser show set to Pink Floyd at the Griffith Observatory than it is a movie.
TOL certainly had it’s flaws, but like any great poem, sections of the work are so visceral that they will stick with me forever. Of course considering the definitive nature of your comment, appreciating something paradoxical probably isn’t your strong suit.
By the way, the bulk of the movie had a pretty basic unapologetically linear storyline, the kid was losing his innocence in case you “didn’t get it”.
The movie was brilliant at times, visually stunning, dreadfully indulgent, too long, and annoyingly and intentionally incomprehensible in places.
It will stay with me. But that doesn’t mean it’s a great movie. At all.
I love Malick. I am now in love with Jessica Chastain. The kids in this movie were phenomenal.
But ultimately, it’s a noble failure. And I think that’s how history will judge it.
I read the script. Never went anywhere but it was poetry. What I worry about on these boards are comments from people who want to feel like artists so they say they loved it.
It is often funny to me that there are so many industry artist that rip down instead of celebrate another artist victory in 1, getting their film made, and 2, the fact that this film was no a popcorn cookie cutter ‘big picture’ attempt to capitalize on it’s stars.
Certain art isn’t for everyone, but it is for someone. So please those who are quick to rip certain movies that are gentle in approach or slow to build or just plain weird as hell, remember your project will be on the critic’s block very soon.
GOD CAN
Am I the only one that saw this and thought….”hmmm, interesting, but didn’t Kubrick already do the exact same thing decades ago, and probably better, when no one had done it yet?” and then, “hmmm…reminds me of Pink Floyd’s The Wall,” and then, “…yeah, reminds of that a little too much.”
I found the whole thing informed by too many other films, and not in a cool, inspired, take-it-to-a-better-more-challenging-place way, but in a blatant he-just-did-what-these-other-guys-have-already-done way, adding some closeups of cellular mitosis and mitochondria-in-action notwithstanding. And don’t even let me get started on the cardboard cutout Freudianism that would have been insightful and thought-provoking, oh, maybe 40 or more years ago.
I really, really, wanted to like it. I gave it every chance I could think of…and I just kept getting reminded of better films that had already done every trick in this film. Hence, disappointment.
Grace and/vs nature. Should have/could have been better.