Thursday, May 19, 2011

Terrence Malick The Tree of life


From the Academy Award nominated Terrence Malick now comes a new story of life entitled “Tree of Life” an upcoming American drama film featuring strange and sci-fi elements starring the acclaimed actor Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain. The said film is been premiered in the night of the Cannes Film Festival and mixed reactions is been hear to it.

The movie, if it wasn't already abundantly clear, is polarizing. It's also difficult to summarize. The plot, such as it exists, begins with a father (Brad Pitt) and mother (Jessica Chastain) raising their family in 1950s Texas. One of their sons eventually dies, while another grows up to become a sad-faced man played by Sean Penn. Before flashing back to the midcentury storyline, the film takes a hallucinatory trip into the creation of the world, complete with wild astral projections and a journey down an evolutionary road, from the rise of jellyfish to dinosaurs and beyond.

A summer blockbuster, this one ain't. Here's what the critics have to say about it.

" 'The Tree of Life' is shaped in an unconventional way, not as a narrative with normal character arcs and dramatic tension but more like a symphony with several movements each expressive of its own natural phenomena and moods. Arguably, music plays a much more important role here than do words — there is some voice-over but scarcely any dialogue at all for nearly an hour, whereas the soaring, sometimes grandiose soundtrack, comprised of 35 mostly classical excerpts drawn from Bach, Brahms, Berlioz, Mahler, Holst, Respighi, Gorecki and others, in addition to the contributions of Alexandre Desplat, dominates in the way it often did in Stanley Kubrick's work. " — Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter


" 'The Tree of Life' is a gargantuan work of pretension and cleverly concealed self-absorption, featuring some absolutely gorgeous photography ... Malick, characteristically, doesn't seem to care much for people at all. Desert rock formations, rushing streams, sunflowers waving gently in the sun, and all sorts of cradle-of-life folderol are the things that really rock his world — he cuts to them whenever he needs to try to explain the inexplicable, which is often. This is a movie about spiritual searching, about reckoning with the nature of God and his frustrating insistence on allowing suffering in the world. We know that because the movie's characters tell us what they're thinking, repeatedly, in voice-over." — Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline

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