Wow. One hell of a movie. Ridiculously ambitious, overtly symbolic (yet intentionally inscrutable), malleably allegorical, deeply personal (for each individual viewer and I'm sure for Malick). Moreso than with any new film I can remember, I was in awe of what it attempts, approaches, and represents. For its admirers, this film is simply beyond criticism.

Thoughts?

This sounds fantastic...I have a feeling it will be what Aranofsky was trying to do with The Fountain, but more successful. What do you think Qwerty?

Struggling hugely with throwing down money to see anything with Sean Penn. The guy chews scenery while flossing his teeth.

Roger Ebert strongly agrees with you in his 4 star review.

Ebert: "There were once several directors who yearned to make no less than a masterpiece, but now there are only a few. Malick has stayed true to that hope ever since his first feature in 1973. -- I don't know when a film has connected more immediately with my own personal experience. -- If I set out to make a autobiographical film, and I had Malick's gift, it would look so much like this."

And in the Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips writes in his 3 1/2 star review: "This may be the most overtly Christian mainstream picture since 'The Passion of the Christ'. Unlike that one, though, Malick's comes with a generosity of spirit large enough to get all sorts of people (including nonbelievers) thinking about the nature of faith and what it's all about". -- I'm looking forward to seeing this.

I just got back from the first showing in Chicago. I'm in such awe at what I saw that i'm somewhat speechless to talk about it. I'm going back tomorrow to see it again.

I felt that same way as I left the theater and for nearly my entire ride home. It's hard to talk about at first, when you're still trying to wrap your head around everything, and the emotions (not all good, mind you) are still so fresh. It's an incredibly humbling, life-affirming, confounding, and captivating movie.

And for anyone who has seen it, you owe it to yourself to read A.O. Scott's masterful piece of criticism from The New York Times. It's a fantastic companion piece to the movie, helping to unpack and examine a lot of what the film explores, going far, far deeper than simple superlatives and plot summaries while still retaining the familiar drive of a pointed piece of newspaper film criticism.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/movie...ick-review.html

I can't wait to see it again. Just holding out for one of my slack-ass friends to finish up their "Malick refresher" and be ready to watch it with me.

i cant believe this is only at landmark...whens the wide spread release of this?

Sorry but I hated it.
There was a guy to my right snoring away.
Should have joined him.

Saw Midnight in Paris also.
So my night wasn't a total loss

Oh, you just didn't understand it. . .



What did you hate about it?

All the ideas don't quite gel together. I don't think it's that difficult to understand what he's doing from scene to scene, and they flow into each other pretty smoothly, but it's more like a chain of ideas than a web, if that makes any sense. What he says later on in the film doesn't seem to connect very strongly with what he's saying elsewhere or earlier on.

I heard one person make the connection between the dinosaur's show of mercy to another wounded dinosaur with the moment where Jack realizes how vulnerable his father is underneath that car, but I don't think it works that well. A sad observation, contrasting primitive life's surprising capacity for compassion to the anger and destruction that will always be characteristic of any living thing, regardless of their place on the evolutionary scale, but it doesn't come off as being all that profound.

The worst is the ending, which is thin and disappointing for its lack of imagination. Not a lack of effort, it just falls flat, and I got the feeling it sucked all the energy out of the room when I saw it. Throughout the movie, people were audibly impressed by the scenes of developing life and Jack's birth and development into adolescence, a great sequence that actually reminded me of another great film I saw from the '80s...it may have been a Terence Davies film...but after that ending, everyone was just murmuring like "what the hell?" This was a theater that usually applauds after any film of merit, new or old, so the lack of enthusiasm was very unfortunate.

So not completely successful and not on par with 2001 or Solaris, films that seem all the more greater for the clarity and tightness of what they tried to say. But what works is pretty phenomenal, definitely one of the best films I've seen this year. If you're new to Malick, I still think his first two films are close to perfect and The Thin Red Line a virtual masterpiece.

Saw it for the second time today. What a brilliant and unique filmmaker Malick is.

I doubt very much that there will be a better movie this year.

Saw it last night, I thought it was incredible, both my friends left the theater feeling that parts of it were pointless. I couldn't really argue with them that they thought so, I understand how people can see this film as being over-the-top and pretentious, but at the same time to criticize a film this ambitious with those kind of problems is also kind of pointless, and I wish they had seen the movie with a more welcome attitude. I can't really analyze this film too much as it's so dense, but I'm already planning on giving it a repeated viewing in the next few days, maybe then I'll be able to explain to them why this film is so great.

art house theater posts warning that Tree Of Life may be too challenging for them:

right here!

I took my wife and 2 kids to see it on Sunday. My daughter hadn't heard of this movie or of Terrence Malick --

When I talked to my daughter about seeing this she said -- "Dad, can't we ever see a "normal" movie? I've never even seen this movie advertised" -- I commented about how we'd been driving past posters of The Hangover part II -- ( a movie Ebert described as an endurance test to see how much raunchiness you could endure ) and I said that movies that are promoted a lot aren't necessarily good. -- She was a little more optimistic when I mentioned Brad Pitt, and yes, she had heard of Sean Penn.

An amazing movie; I was a little surprised at the scarcity of dialogue, but the images said a lot about the characters (and the creation of the universe)-- yes, an unconventional but rewarding movie that I'd like to see again -- certainly not your typical movie to take teenagers too, but my kids did get into it too.

I saw it again today. I've read the Book of Job 5 times in the last 3 weeks to help me understand the film. I think I get it now. Masterpiece.

yeah this movie is great. so visually wonderful, and that evolution/creation of life bit is especially incredible. i agree the bit at the end with penn is kind of lame, but i plan on seeing it again. great sound too. kind of pissed the theater i was in had shitty speakers.

I just saw this and I don't really know if I liked it or not. I think I need to see it again. Visually it was stunning, the celestial images in the universe montages were spectacular as was the general look of the whole film. It also brought back some childhood memories which I had not thought of for a long time which was nice. I am still confused by the overall message or even the central theme of the film. I did not really like the ending either (pretty fucking lame really). Definately need to watch it again to soak it all in once more.

I have not seen it, but I heard it was absolutely horrible. I was told that every person coming out of the theatre was remarking that it was the worst film they'd ever seen. So much so that the strangers began discussing with each other how bad it was. Not a soul liked it.

Surprised to see the acclaim here. Be interested now to see how I would react to it.

Haven't seen it either but it got pretty good IMDB (8.0) and metacritic (85) scores, so i don't believe that nobody liked it.

One of the most divisive films released in recent memory. It's Malick going full-throttle with his vision for cinema, and I absolutely love it. For anybody who isn't into his aesthetics though, it is very easy to understand the push in the opposite direction.

It's a beautiful and moving piece of work though, and I hope many more people continue to really give it a chance to hit them instead of disregarding it with commentary about its "pretension" etc.

I dunno. This is what I was told. Perhaps it was a small crowd. Regardless, I doubt he'd make it up. Claimed he'd never seen anything like the reaction. He wanted to leave early, but he was hoping that he would see some point to the film prior to leaving, but no luck.

I've run into similar experiences - when I watched the Oscars in 1997, I was in a room crammed with people who hated Fargo. Some were Tom Cruise fans rooting for Jerry Maguire (I still remember one who kept saying "Fargo was just WEIRD") and a few were big fans of Raising Arizona who thought Fargo was nowhere near as good. I was the only person there that liked it...but I think it's safe to say that Fargo is far from despised.

There were a few people in my theater who left, but I think it was for the better. There's nothing worse than watching a move and enjoying it, but the people surrounding you hate it, it just makes the experience miserable since they critique every little sequence. Same thing happened in my theater for Black Swan and 127 Hours, people just need to research movies better before they make the trip.

I think this was the most common (first viewing) reaction I saw from most people I know. It's pretty much how I reacted, and again, the film's major problem besides the ending was how the ideas didn't quite gel together, which may be why the central theme or the overall message might seem so diffuse or too difficult to articulate. I think the ideas within each scene are fairly clear, and the flow from one scene to the next is fairly smooth, even with Malick's editing style (something that's been debated over on other blogs and sites), but this is why the film seems more like a 'chain' of ideas to me than a coherent 'web' - as the film progresses, what's on screen doesn't flow back to earlier ideas/concepts very well, and I think the problem grows more apparent the later you get into the film. Watching it again helps, especially if you need clarification, but even when you finally make those conceptual links, there may be some disappointment. I liked it, I still think it's a very good experience with some incredible moments, but I'm very reluctant to call it a complete success.

i wouldn't call it a complete success either but so much of it is fantastic. i think it's fair to say most of the bits with penn kind of suck outside of the visual splendor of the architecture. and yeah the part on the beach is kind of stupid. but i think the nature vs grace theme holds up pretty consistently throughout the movie.

it certainly is polarizing and a lot of people will hate it. it pretty much forces you to take a stand ... i doubt many people would sit through all of it and say "it was okay." it uses film as a medium for art more so than any movie i've seen in awhile, and it's aims are very ambitious... so i think criticisms of pretentiousness are beside the point.

Saw it last night in a little art-house theater in Glasgow.

I couldn't stop smiling for the first hour or so. I don't know why, but the film really hit me hard. Yet, when it finished the audience sort of a laughed and many people commented on how it was the worst film they had ever seen. Now I get that people might have not liked it, but I didn't really expect the type of people who go see this movie in its opening weekend in an art-house theater to absolutely reject it in this way. It was confusing.

I honestly cannot wait for the bluray.

you go to glasgow and see movies?


but i shouldnt talk, i saw bloom and the station agent when i was in dublin

Of course - I'm not a club going person, I don't feeling like drinking alone at a bar (at least in Glasgow), and there weren't any good shows last night, so I caught a flick at one of the city's most beloved movie theaters.

you need to club while in europe, the invented clubbing

can you expound on this a little bit? a friend of mine told me to read Book Of Job and go see it again... curious. plus, i don't wanna read any part of any bible ever again.

nevermind, i just read up on Book Of Job and now understand it's connection. even without that framework and watching this as an atheist was a little tricky, yet the movie really affected me in ways a movie never has before.

saw the film today. It was beautiful, intriguing and challenging. The near 140min runtime might have been a bit much, but the entire time, I couldn't help think about my relationship with my dad, my childhood, the skies, the earth, the universe, life.

i love that it's a religious film without religion. It's an exploration of our lives focusing more on the creation of things than the rules and legalism that currently exist.

Ebert's review of this film is stellar: "It created within me a spiritual awareness, and made me more alert to the awe of existence. I believe it stands free from conventional theologies, although at its end it has images that will evoke them for some people."

man the balls on this movie...its nice to see there are still film makers going out there and trying to go full boat and put their vision out there unabashedly

i also couldnt help to think of my family and relationships to my brother, mother and father and God

theres so much beauty in this movie that its too much to take in on one viewing and its no surprise how much the movie gets by with its visuals seeing as the guy who was one of the head guys on 2001, trumbull i think his name was, helps mallick on this one

speaking of 2001, someone mentioned upthread how this movie is a not as clear in its message as 2001..what?! 2001 is my favorite film of all time and ill be damned if the first time i watched it i didnt think to myself what the shit did i just watch?! this movie does the same thing to me but at the same time i know much more what mallick was after as opposed to kubrick

theres so much thats stuck with me since seeing it...2 voiceovers in particular the one right at the beginning about man has 2 paths to choose from, that of grace and that of nature - the other being where jack is asking God why do i need to be good when you arent and those scenes with the formation of earth and dinosaurs look better than any cgi bullshit thats out there

i also found it interesting that mallick choose 2 guys in penn and pitt who as far as i know are staunch atheists for such a "religious" movie

i also found it particularly interesting in the casting of Sean Penn, since it was such a muted performance from him.

i believe someone said upthread (or i might be thinking of someone verbally told me) they werent looking forward to Tree of Life because Penn is in it.... but it's not the same Penn we know from his other roles or his rants outside of film

i'd like to see this film. am i correct in thinking that i should just go in with the idea of simply sitting back and letting it wash over me?

yes absolutely

i at times felt like i was watching a "planet earth" episode as opposed to a movie with some of the stuff they got on film

i also wanted to add to my earlier comments about this film

im not ashamed to say i got a tear in my eye a few times in this movie - and i have to say its the only film i can remember where i didnt cry or get emotional because of what happens to the characters but because of the emotions the movie makes you in your life relate to it

nagode, i feel exactly what you're saying.
i have a hard time describing this film, i end up saying "i dont know, its just beautiful"

it's like listening to a song that just sounds so beautiful, it makes you want to cry. that's what this film is like.

luckily this is playing in my city.
sadly i don't have a day off to see it for over a week.

PTO...watching this movie will feel like work!

so you're saying call in sick?

yes...make a day of it

http://dubfeatfind.appspot.com/

whats the better pairing: horrible bosses or bridesmaids?

i can vouch for Bridesmaids being hilarious.... and there were scenes filmed in Milwaukee (the apt is in bay view neighborhood)

i really dont know how a movie with bateman, sudeikis and charlie can be bad to be honest

i'm torn.

saw it sunday. good movie at minimum. don't think it reached the level of greatness for me. the spirituality of it was lost on me aside from the man-nature relationship. and i felt the sean penn scenes were superfluous. and i question both the flow and the ending. that said, obviously beautiful visually. good acting, excellent representation of childhood. and the brad pitt character was well nuanced. would have been more interesting had the family dynamic matched that level of nuance

3 early walkouts in the theater i was in. morons

2 walkouts in mine. i hope they didnt get refunds.

i had 2 in mine...a teenage/early 20's couple...i get why people walked out on it...but you should know before going in what you are going to see

Completely awesome. I was enrapt the whole time (Except for the two minute pee break I took just as Pitt got back from being around the world) and even as I admit I'm not religiously-educated enough to get the Job references or maybe smart enough to get the ending after one watch, I can't help but say if this isn't my #1 come next February, than it's been a very good year for film indeed.

What I thought was interesting was how you come to love the boys so much, that the smallest of incidences can bring you to the edge of your seat or make you almost sick to your stomach. For the former, when the one boy was coaxing the other to stick the piece of metal inside the lamp and I was on the edge of my seat going "Please don't get a shock!" and you think of movies where killers are hiding behind a corner with a gun and there's nowhere near the tension I felt watching these two kids screw around. Then, when the one boy starts to be bad and they blow up the nest and frog, it almost made me physically ill to go from an upbringing of beauty and see it corrupted by the outside world.

I drove home with this huge smile on my face and felt like it renewed my appreciation of what a miracle everything in the world truly is.

Sounds like a particularly bad Pitchfork record review. Tell me you didn't just use the phrase 'malleably allegorical' without any hint of irony?