Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life"

Cafe Society
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I wouldn’t be surprised either way if it were nominated or not nominated, but if it were nominated, it doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning. Your Cannes quote is irrelevant. That’s a committee that gets together and debates after seeing all the movies in contention. The “Academy” is a bunch of individuals, voting individually, in their living rooms or offices or kitchens all around the world. There are thousands of members, and the eclectic array of members range from Bjork to Ernest Borgnine to Quentin Tarantino to Mikhail Baryshnikov. They don’t get together and discuss what to have win. They vote for what they like out of what they’ve seen. Those who vote for Best Picture nominations may as individuals admire the film enough to give it the nomination, but it’s not going to win. Your snark about their feeling smart is misplaced.

I loved both. I saw Enter The Void twice in the theater on the big screen, and agree that it’s mesmerizing, but I saw Tree of Life only once, even though I thought it was fantastic. I meant to and wanted to see it again but never did. I hope at some point I will get a chance to see it again on the big screen. It’s just not a “home” movie to me.

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Forgot to add, I believe this has been an extremely strong year in movies. Every year is, though not all strong movies are awards movies. With the recent rule changes, no one knows how many Best Picture nominees there will be, but the voters could easily go with 10 again like last year, and not have any filler this year.

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to all you who are giving up on Malick because of your dislike of this film - Please don’t deny yourself the joy of seeing his masterpiece “Days of Heaven”. thank you.

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It was the top film of 2011 in the Sight & Sound critic’s poll. It also tied for Best Feature at the Gothams, awarded by a panel of 5 that included Jodie Foster, Nicole Kidman, and Natalie Portman. It is also tracking very well on rotten tomatoes, 84% critics. So yes they are chosen by individuals but early indicators are that it has the support of those individuals. That’s why I think the De Niro quote is relevant. It’s a movie the feels Important. Critics and Academy people want to think movies are Important, so they will gravitate to this.

As for this year in movies, what do you think the Best Picture list will look like? I haven’t watched a single movie that I would say was “amazing.” Unlike, say, 2010 which had multiple.

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The Sight and Sound and Rotten Tomatoes scores are irrelevant when it comes to Oscar voters. The Gothams may be getting closer but 3 actors out of 6000 isn’t going to mean much. If the actors throw around their weight, and they always do since there are more actors in the Academy than any other branch, they’re still likely to chose The Artist over anything else. Beginners has a better chance of winning Best Picture than Tree of Life, and Beginners probably won’t even be nominated even though it tied with TOF at the Gothams.

I posted this in the Hugo thread:

Wow, I’ve seen several dozen.

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I’m going to read through the whole thread later but I just watched this last night and I wanted to ask/say: are we really supposed to take away from this that the father was SuperPrick? Because I didn’t think so at all, and I was confused by the son’s apparently deep pain and distress over what he perceived as his father’s SuperPrickiTude.

I’m not saying the father was fantastic, but what I saw in this film was not an abusive father. Particularly when considered by the standards not only of the day, but even in some respects modern standards, the father was a flawed, misguided man who loved his sons deeply and was doing his very best to be a very good father. Not when he freaked out at dinner, but last time I checked human beings fuck up sometimes and act badly when they dont’ mean to…I did not get the impression that his father was more often Dinner Asshole than not, quite the opposite. The film conveyed much more of his father’s sometimes clumsy but unquestionably genuine affection for his boys and desire to do right by them.

Am I the only one who sees it this way?

Also, does anyone know where this was filmed? It seems impossible for it to be anywhere but the South, it was gorgeous and in my experience (very limited) the only part of the country that is that consistently gorgeous and lush is the South. It looked slightly swampy in some shots, which makes me think Louisiana. I’ve always been told that Austin is much greener than the rest of Texas, but I’ve been to Austin and I didn’t get any overwhelming sense that it was particularly lush.

Although… the pond/pool scene intrigued me because the only time I’ve ever seen anything like that (it looked to me like a natural body of water that had man-made shorelines built into it so it could be more easily used as a public “swimmin’ hole”) was in Austin and I was really bummed I wasn’t there long enough or in the right weather to experience it… so was this shot in Austin or is that kind of thing more common in the South?

Last question for the moment: has Malick ever made a film that wasn’t presented like some kind of half-remembered dream? The style has its charms, but it can also be dull, repetitive and frustrating. I think it worked pretty well in this film but I agree that a lot could have been tossed out. Does he do his own editing? I’d be curious to know what his shooting is like… I’ll bet his scripts and the actual shoots are much more linear and plainly understood than the final films are and the dreaminess is largely created in the editing room… I also think he’s gotten much worse in the era of digital editing: making that many cuts when you had to do it with real film and tape would have been too crazy making.

Oh, I just answered my own question: Badlands. Excellent film, and I had no idea it was his. Still dreamy and the odd partially-heard conversations, but much less so.

I have to say I loved loved loved the costumes in this film. Her dresses were some of the most gorgeous examples of that mid-century style I’ve ever seen. Helps that Chastain has a model’s body and pulls them off perfectly.

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Me too. I was not sure how the film intended us to regard the dad, either, for the same reasons you mentioned.

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Texas, mostly.

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Finally saw this tonight after reading how it’s supposed to be one of the best films of the year and was loved by the critics and all that. Man what a boring piece of pretentious art school crap. Beautifully filmed, yes, but completely pointless and a waste of time. I have absolutely no idea what any if it was supposed to mean or what the audience was supposed to get out of it. What did the brother’s death have to do with anything? What the hell was with the beach!? Why ten minutes showing the creation of the world. Who cares anyway?

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“What’s it about?”
“About 140 minutes”.

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I’m with DrDeth and Eyebrows of Doom. It’s beautifully photographed. The rest of it is just bloated as all get out.

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Yes, and it’s interesting that so many film critics did not write about the plot. Oh they went on & on & on about the director and his* ouvre*, the actors, the cinimatography, etc, but not the plot. Makes me think they had no idea either.

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I think he should have cut everything except the dinosaurs.

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Dinosaurs running through door frames on the beach while stars collide. Now that’s a fuckin’ movie. And all I need is 60 million of your dollars to make it a reality.

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Let me get my little joke out of the way, then I’ll be serious:

So, I watched this yesterday while my girlfriend slept in, and when I told her about it, she asked what it was like and I said, “It’s like Malick watched 2001 and decided, ‘that made entirely too much sense, I can do better.’”

So, honestly, I slept on and off through it, so I’m going to give it another try, but even though I normally enjoy artsy-fartsy shit in movies, and even though I really did enjoy Thin Red Line, this film really makes me believe that Malick has some sort of narcissistic disorder. He no longer seems to be trying to communicate, but simply has decided that his job as a filmmaker is to give us all a glimpse into what is going on inside his head. That’s not necessarily a value judgment, just an observation.

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Ok, it’s been nearly 2 years and I finally got around to watching it. Here is a question. Which one of the boys is Sean Penn supposed to be? I thought he is the eldest ithe one who gets killed in Vietnam? But my GF tells me that no, it’s the middle boy.

I like artsy films but this had a lot of superfluous parts, the big bang bit for instance.

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Finally got around to seeing this film last night. Thought it was brilliant, though at the same time, extremely confusing.

Visuals: awesome. Style: incredibly amazing.

Characters/story: Umm, hmm. Okay, it’s basically a family drama, in fact one of the most basic family dramas (kid gets killed, everyone reminisces about happier times) but in a way, it’s more of a mystery story. Granted, the primary mystery was trying to figure out what the hell is going on… but that’s Malick for ya.

As for all the negative reactions/reviews, IMO that’s a point in the film’s favor. A movie like this almost requires that some people hate it with a passion – general crowd-pleasers like Forrest Gump are inherently superficial, as time has proven. But then, I’m a sucker for self-indulgent, pseudo-philosophical claptrap. I mean c’mon; we’ve all heard the joke about telling a story from the very beginning – “First, the Earth cooled, then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat…” – but how often do you actually get to see it?

Sean Penn was Jack, the oldest kid. I’m still unclear on exactly which younger brother got killed – not that it matters much, those little snotrags all look the same to me.