I’ve read a few reviews, think I have a general sense of what this movie is about, and I’m disinclined to see it. Just doesn’t sound very good to me. I’m a lifelong agnostic. But now, a (devoutly religious) friend is urging me to watch it.
I’m really interested in hearing what you folks have to say about it. Will this film make me think, or roll my eyes, or both?
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I’m a pretty hard-core atheist and I loved it. I believe it’s one of the best movies of the year, so beautiful and touching, with great acting and great visuals and a moody, personal sensibility that I deeply admire.
It’s usually easy for me to watch a movie and be drawn into it even if I don’t agree with/not into the central conceit. I don’t believe in ghosts, yet I love The Others and The Orphanage and The Haunting. I don’t believe in aliens, yet I love Attack The Block and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and District 9. I don’t believe in angels, yet I love Wings of Desire and Heaven Can Wait and Dogma. That holds true for more real-life movies too. For instance, I don’t care about sports, yet I love Moneyball and Friday Night Lights and North Dallas Forty. And on and on.
My love of The Tree of Life is not going to get me to believe in god anymore than my obsession with Attack The Block is going to get me to believe in aliens, but I can love them both as (very different examples of) superior filmmaking, storytelling, acting, directing, all the rest.
It’s weird how this film keeps generating new threads. It’s almost like discussion of the movie insists on being presented in disjointed narratives.
Thanks. I’m off to the earlier thread.
I have no interest in that other thread. To me it’s yet another example of what I call a DPL (“Look at me, I’m Dumb, Proud of it and Loud about it”) thread. There are way too many DPL thread in Cafe Society. I try not to encourage them by bumping them.