The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life

2011

Director: Terrence Malick

Starring: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken

Oh, Terrence Malick.  Malick, Malick, Malick.  With The Tree of Life, you finally said “FUCK YOU” to the concept of “narrative” that had been plaguing you most of your career and just did whatever the hell you wanted, didn’t you.  No more mucking around with pesky plot when all you really want to do is shoot pretty pictures. 

Tree of Life is “about” (yes, the quotation marks are warranted) a boy named Jack (Penn as grown man in modern times, McCracken as an adolescent in the 1960s) who has a difficult relationship with his strict father (Pitt).  His mother (Chastain), on the other hand, is all softness and tenderness.  Through this loose set up, we examine the concept of tension throughout all time, the birth of the universe, the concept of how to live life, and questions of faith.  That is, I think that’s what’s supposed to be going on.

I will say this flat out from the start: there is good stuff here in Tree of Life.  There were parts of it that I found pretty damn awesome.  In fact, for the first half of the two hour plus run time, I was on board with this movie, prepared to write it a glowing review.  But then… then Malick lost me, and he never really got me back on board.

 

So.  Let’s take these two halves of the film separately, shall we?

The first half starts with some non-linear flashbacks of our main character Jack remembering some stories of his parents, of the death of his brother, and we meet him as the man he is today.  The only way I can describe the opening introduction of these people is dizzyingly exciting.  The camerawork is amazing, especially in the early Sean Penn modern sequences.  It’s all tall, bright lines, gleaming silver, and vertigo-inducing spins.  I don’t mean that as a knock; on the contrary, I was enthralled.  Sure, there’s little (re: nothing) in the way of traditional story here, but I actually didn’t care.  I’ll repeat that: this section was so imaginative, I didn’t care I wasn’t being told a regular story.  I felt, rather than followed.  This was about emotion, not plot, and I was connecting with the emotion.  Sure, I didn’t know the particulars of Penn’s apparent existential angst, but Malick was more than able to convince me of it nonetheless with absolutely amazing photography.

 

And then we move into what Chip from Tips From Chip calls “The 50 minute long music video,” a not unfitting description.  After this initial establishment of the fundamentals (angst-ridden grown son with father issues, brother who died while young, Jessica Chastain is a soulful mother, Brad Pitt is a strict father), we go into Malick’s treatise on the concept of tension throughout the ages, going back to the very origins of the universe.  The film I have heard most frequently referenced when discussing this section of the film is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  There are certainly parallels here, especially when considering the similarities in space shots (one at the end is basically Malick re-enacting Kubrick) and a focus on aggression, but that was not the movie I thought of.  Instead, I read this segment of the movie as Malick’s version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring segment from Fantasia.  In both of these, we move from the formation of the universe to the formation of the planets to the appearance of the oceans and single celled organisms, even dinosaur sequences and the destruction of the dinosaurs.  While the Fantasia segment is easily more brash and audacious while Malick’s version is more soft and contemplative, they share a great deal in common.  After this pretty darn fantastic series of scenes, Malick then does a fast-forward to the mother and father of the opening as we watch them establish their family.  This is still in what I call “the first half” of the film, and it is absolutely full of joy.  We get snapshots of Jack’s early life as a baby and a toddler, scenes of his life with his mother, of playing with blocks and no small amount of billowing window curtains (I think Malick must have wet dreams about billowing window curtains, he loves them so much in his films).  Just like the opening, this is not really about characters or stories but about emotions, the love and openness of family and childhood.  And although the jump from the destruction of the dinosaurs to Jack’s early childhood is certainly a pretty big leap, chronologically speaking, I accepted it.  The film was still working for me.

 

Until we get to what looks like thirteen year old Jack.

And then we move into the second half.

How long does Malick need to convince me that Jack hates his dad?  Because holy fuck on a stick, I GET IT.  JACK HATES HIS DAD.  You don’t need over an hour of tiresome, repetitive, and not at all magical or glorious segments to make me understand this.  The second half of the film loses nearly everything that made the first half special and interesting.  I do think, as I said before, that this is a film more about certain emotions than a definitive story, which is why, perhaps, the portion of the film that is most clearly story-driven worked so incredibly little for me.  I actually wish that Malick had cut off the film after the first half, making instead an odd little movie that’s just over an hour long that has modern building shots, sixties-era neighborhood shots, and dinosaurs.  Because that would have been way better.

 

The second half drags on interminably.  The message that Malick is trying to say is that Brad Pitt is kind of a shitty dad despite the fact that he thinks he’s being a good dad.  Over and over again.  Beating you over the head.  I just… OMG MALICK I GET IT.  I FUCKING GET IT.  And it’s not nearly as profound as you think it is.  Boy hates dad.  Dad is mean to family due to a variety of reasons. 

Who the hell cares. 

Not me.

See, I’m not even capable of intelligently tearing down this second half of the movie because it pissed me off so much. 

And then there’s the ending of the film.  The whole “Bad Dad” story wraps up, and I thought to myself, “hey this feels like the end of the movie, this would make a nice end.”  But then it wasn’t.  There was more.  And I thought again, “hey, THIS feels like a good end of the movie.”  But then it wasn’t.  There was still more.  And now I was thinking, “OK, this feels weird, but I guess it COULD BE the end of the movie.”

And then it wasn’t.

By the time Malick actually got around to REALLY finishing the film, I was foaming at the mouth.  END THIS GODDMAN THING ALREADY.  The second half of the movie was so stale that Malick’s attempt to recapture the magic of the imagery of the first half fell completely flat.  It felt pretentious and self-indulgent and utterly stupid.  Which is interesting, because I suppose it wasn’t nearly so different from the stuff at the opening of the film, yet I was much more accepting of Malick’s “high art” style at the beginning of the movie than I was at the end.  He had overdrawn his account, and I was no longer tolerant.  I saw this at the Dryden, so I was in a movie theater, and I was so fucking ready to leave, I couldn’t wait for the final fade-to-black.  I practically ran out of the theater to my car.  And that’s not good.

 

There were, however, two aspects of the film that were superb from start to finish.  The cinematography throughout is just stunning.  Frankly, I’ve come to expect that of Malick, so it wasn’t really a surprise, more a confirmation.  Malick makes damn pretty movies, and Tree of Life is no exception.  He can make anything look good, be it volcano sequences, CGI dinos, DDT smoke, or the twilight hours of neighborhood playing.  The other aspect of the film that was excellent was the soundtrack.  I honestly cannot think of a better classical music soundtrack than that which he uses in Tree of Life.  Every piece feels perfect, absolutely perfect.  Every piece smartly underscores a very particular emotion, and as this is a film about emotion, not plot, that’s necessary.  I LOVED the soundtrack.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I was so impressed with a classical music soundtrack.  I want to own it, and I rarely want to purchase a film’s soundtrack.  It was perfect.  It was sublime.  It was heavenly.  Malick furthers his comparison with 2001 in this respect; Kubrick was Da Bomb in terms of being able to uncannily pick the perfect piece to accompany his films, and Malick, with Tree of Life, is the only other director I’ve seen who comes close to Kubrick’s skill in this respect.  Given the little Kubrick fangirl that I am, that is high praise.

 

It’s hard for me to decide where to come down on The Tree of Life, really hard.  The first half is very good.  Not for everyone, not at all, but it worked for me.  The second half was tedious and, by the end, infuriating.  Where do I land, then, on a movie that I myself am so split on?  Right in the middle, I guess.

Arbitrary Rating: 6/10.  OK, it’s not right in the middle – the strong first half, soundtrack, and cinematography bolster up the utterly inane second half to a passing score.  Recommended only for the self-avowed cinephile, and even then, with some reservations.

The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line

1998

Director: Terrence Malick

Starring: Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Ben Chaplin, Nick Nolte

When watching this film at the Dryden last night, I came to the realization that despite the fact that I’ve written over 200 reviews for movies from 1001 Movies, I have yet to review a modern war movie.  What fits the criteria of “modern war movie?”  Simple: made in the 1970s or later, after the Hays Code was lifted and films could be a lot more graphic about everything.  And the reason I haven’t yet reviewed a modern war movie is because they are, quite possibly, my least favorite genre of films ever, maybe even less liked by me than experimental films.

In The Thin Red Line, Malick follows the men from C Company as they fight the battle for Guadalcanal in World War II.  We get inner monologues of many of the men, including hungry-for-a-promotion Tall (Nolte), desperately missing his wife Bell (Chaplin), and stoic and cynical Welsh (Penn), but we focus mostly on Whit (Caviezel).  Whit is first seen AWOL, living an idyllic existence with a tribe on an island in the South Pacific.  He sees the beauty in everything, and ruminates on man’s purpose amidst all the chaos of war.  There are the requisite battle scenes, burning scenes, death scenes, fight scenes, bomb scenes, but also Malick’s characteristic lilting shots of nature.  There isn’t so much a plot as there is an examination of the mentality of a soldier in war time.

I think the only fair place for me to start is to explain just why I cannot bear modern war movies.  I can’t take them.  I just can’t.  And it all goes back to Saving Private Ryan, which is a little ironic, considering that was in direct competition with The Thin Red Line during awards season 1998.  Me being a college freshman, who thought I could handle anything thrown my way, went to go see Ryan in theaters, and I left the theater traumatized.  I don’t want to go into too much detail (that’ll be for my review of THAT movie), but suffice it to say there are still scenes from that film that stick in my head and only come up in nightmares.  My threshold for movie violence, which had gotten higher as I got older, was utterly crumbled by that film, and I haven’t been able to stomach much violence ever since.

Which makes me wonder: what’s the difference between a powerful film and one that simply hurts the viewer?  Because I’ve seen powerful films that rejoice me, that lead to a grand catharsis and that ultimately elevate in spite of their crushing power.  Those are the powerful films I love.  I’ve also seen films like Saving Private Ryan that beat me over the head and punch me in the stomach for hours with no intent other than beating me over the head and punching me in the stomach.  Those are the powerful films I can’t abide.  I don’t want to use the word “hate,” it’s not what I intend, but I cannot stomach them.  I cannot deal with them.  They hurt me too much without giving me anything other than pain in return.  I understand that war is hell, I understand the point those directors of modern war movies are trying to make, but I just can’t take it.  Guns terrify me, and war, especially, terrifies me.  Utterly terrifies me.  A war movie is like torture for me. 

So, onto The Thin Red Line in particular, yeah?

  

Given everything I said above, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I rather enjoyed the first 45 minutes of The Thin Red Line, because it’s the bit of the film that has the least to do with war.  This is where we open with Whit’s new home on a tropical island, see him swimming with the natives, singing, smiling, enjoying nature.  Even when he has to rejoin his ship and we start meeting a cast the size of my high school, Malick maintained the careful rhythm he had established when Whit was on the island.  It was a nice rhythm, a hypnotic rhythm, and I was fairly well engrossed.  But then, of course, this is a war movie, and when the bombs started going off, Siobhan’s eyes shut tight, she grit her teeth, she grabbed her arm, and tried desperately not to give herself new fodder for future nightmares.  There was honestly a full five minutes where I was resolutely not watching the film.  And shots of animals in pain and/or dying were just as bad – I peaked open my eyes for a second to see a baby bird flopping around on the ground and then squeezed my eyes shut again in horror, peaking again to make sure it was over, but it wasn’t.  Most of the remainder of the film followed this path, which is bad for Siobhan.  All the magic of the opening was lost, and although I sensed that Malick *thought* he reclaimed it, that he *thought* he was once again giving me that lyrical loveliness of the opening, it never really came back.  Now it just felt tedious and pretentious, quite frankly, as if he was trying too hard.  But then again, maybe his point was you can never go back.  Hard to tell with Malick, really.

Of the myriad of characters in the film, I responded best to Bell and Whit.  To be honest, however, one of the reasons I responded so well to Bell was because I spent the first hour of the film trying to figure out what I knew Ben Chaplin from, and then, about halfway through the movie, I remembered – The Truth About Cats and Dogs – which made the game less fun, having solved the puzzle.  Chaplin’s character, Bell, is deeply in love with his wife (played by Miranda Otto) and thinks of her often.  I liked these flashbacks, but Malick, interestingly enough, begins to question the veracity of these flashbacks.  Were these real events, or is Bell simply dreaming?  Has it been so long since he’s seen his wife that his memory is starting to play tricks on him?  I like the suggestion about the fallibility of memory, especially for a soldier in wartime.  When do memories become dreams, or dreams become memories?  It’s an interesting point, and I can see Malick going to town on this concept.

Seriously, once I placed him, all I could think of was Truth About Cats and Dogs.

Whit, even amongst a huge cast of mostly anonymous soldiers, is definitely the most stand-alone character in the film.  There’s a voiceover about three quarters of the way through the film that talks about the two ways to interpret death, one being either the inevitability of the event and the sadness, the other being as a means of seeing a glory, a higher power.  Malick is careful never to reference God specifically, instead implying the sheer power of Nature on its own, perhaps.  Whit, as a character, is the embodiment of this second philosophy.  He insists on being with men when they die in order to comfort them and pass them on to this higher power.  He’s almost Christ-like; actually, perhaps a bit too Christ-like (especially considering Caviezel would go on to play Christ in Gibson’s little flick).  Given Whit’s obvious difference in philosophy from his other soldiers, there are too many questions about him that the film never gets around to answering, at least not in a satisfactory manner for me.  You really want to delve into this question, Malick?  I’d love to hear more about it, rather than indulging in too many other tangents to keep straight.  

  

The cast is preposterously large and filled with famous actors, to the point of actually hurting the movie.  There’s nothing that jars me out of the sort of contemplative mood Malick is so desperately trying to cast than seeing John Travolta pop up with an ugly moustache and horrid acting abilities.  Later on, just as I feel I’m getting into the groove of the movie, it’s “Holy shit, that’s John Cusack!  Hey, right on, John Cusack!  Oh.  Right.  Movie.  Supposed to be paying attention.  Crap, what’s happening now?”  And then, in the denouement, where I am supposed to be contemplating everything I’ve just seen, I’m not, actually, reflecting on the film, but instead thinking, “Hey, George Clooney!  Alright, I like George Clooney!  Oh wait, no, I’m supposed to be all sad now.  Ah, who cares, go Clooney!”  People talk about how characters breaking spontaneously into song and dance distracts them in a movie musical, removes them from the film, as it were.  I know how they feel now, because every time there was a cameo – and there are LOADS of cameos – I fell completely out of the film. 

Ultimately, I can’t come down with a positive assessment of The Thin Red Line for various reasons.  Yes, I liked some questions that Malick touched on, and as always, his photography of nature was stunning (I can understand why Malick, doing WWII, would choose the South Pacific battles over the European battles, that’s more than obvious given his propensity for grass and forests), but it has too many marks against it.  Malick is incomplete in developing his philosophical questions because there are simply too many characters, the film feels pretentious on more than one occasion, and, the biggest mark against it for me, it is a Modern War Movie (honestly not sure how I'll ever make it through Platoon).  And, though no fault of Malick’s, I just cannot stomach such films.  Do I think The Thin Red Line a bad film?  No, I don’t think so, I think there’s some good stuff there.  But it is so phenomenally NOT FOR ME that my rating cannot help but reflect my personal tastes and peculiar issues.

Arbitrary Rating: 5/10, mostly because, as I’ve said, I have almost no ability to sit through graphic scenes of war violence.  I want to reiterate that this is not the same as me hating, or even disliking, a film.  I just can’t watch it.  There’s a difference.

Days of Heaven

Days of Heaven

1978

Director: Terrence Malick

Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Linda Manz, Sam Shepard

Does anyone out there know what caused Malick to come out of hibernation, as it were?  For ages, it was looking like Badlands and Days of Heaven were his only two feature films, then people started peeing with excitement over his Thin Red Line, made two decades after Days of Heaven.  And now, with three films in post-production, he’s practically on a one-film-a-year schedule.  Bizarre.

Days of Heaven, the film he made before dropping off the face of the cinematic world for twenty years, is a lyric study of a fairly simple love story.  Bill (Gere), whose name is only mentioned once in the movie, is laboring in Chicago’s steel factories in the 1910s.  After an accident with his boss, he takes his girlfriend (Adams) and his younger sister (Manz) on the run out to northern Texas where they join other migrant workers.  Hired by a wealthy young farmer (Shepard) to help with the year’s wheat harvest, Bill tells everyone that his girlfriend is actually his sister; when he sees the rich farmer making eyes at his lover, Bill concocts a plan.  Finding out that the farmer is terminally ill, he pushes his girlfriend to reciprocate the farmer’s advances so they may stake a claim to his fortune.  How could such a well thought out plan go wrong?  You’re smart, dear reader, I’m sure you can imagine how this ends.

  

Don’t tune in to Days of Heaven for the sad love story.  Dialogue is sparse at best, and it becomes abundantly clear early on that the narrative is not the focus.  No, Days of Heaven is a Landscape Movie.  This is all about Malick photographing the American Midwest and the flora and fauna of northern Texas.  Where I think Days of Heaven works better than an average Landscape Movie is how Malick uses the natural scenery he’s shooting as symbolic of the emotions of the central love story.  In the opening sequence, where we see Bill’s accident with his boss at the steel factory, we hear virtually no dialogue.  You see Bill and the man shouting at one another, but they are drowned out by the ridiculously loud machinery clanging in background.  There is fire and roaring and metal, and it’s angry and aggressive and dangerous.  It matches Bill’s emotions, then.  When we move the action out to north Texas, there is lightness and happiness in the images we see, as Bill feels he has escaped a bad situation.  When things get complicated between his girlfriend and the farmer, we enter winter scenes in the film.  There is cold and snow and ice.  When the farmer begins to suspect that Bill is not the girl’s brother at all, there is the climactic locust and fire sequence, fraught with danger and the same aggression we saw at the beginning of the film.  I like the artistry in Days of Heaven because it underlines the love story very well.  I don’t feel as though Malick is showing me pictures of pheasants “just cuz,” but to make a point, to show me something about the story.  I read an interpretation of Days of Heaven that aligned each of the four main characters with Earth (the Linda Manz character, always playing in the dirt), Air (the farmer, puttering around with his weathervane), Water (Brooke Adams’ girlfriend, first seen wading by a river), and Fire (Bill, working in the fiery steel factory).  It’s a very interesting interpretation, and one that works for me.  

Days of Heaven was scored by Ennio Morricone.  I’m very hit or miss when it comes to Morricone.  I know he’s apparently some movie scoring deity to most everyone, but not to me.  His score here is less a score and more endless adaptations of Saint-Saëns’ “Aquarium” from Saint-Saëns’ iconic “Carnival of the Animals.”  While “The Swan” is the most famous piece from “Carnival of the Animals” (and possibly the most famous work by Saint-Saëns full stop), I’ve always enjoyed “The Aquarium” more as it’s even more evocative to me than its more famous counterpart.  There’s a distinct other-worldliness to “The Aquarium,” a slight sense of dissonance, of unease, and it works perfectly in Days of Heaven in establishing tone.  Frankly, I think Morricone did the right thing by essentially taking a cue from “The Aquarium” and scoring the film as variations on this one piece of classical music.  It does undercut Morricone’s job as a composer (because he’s really just adapting Saint-Saëns here, not exactly writing anything new, per se) but it works.  It’s a smart choice. 

I also like Linda Manz in this film, both her character and her narration.  Actually 16 when she filmed this, she’s meant to play a younger character, more like 12 or 13.  Manz gives a hard edge to her character without making her too grown up.  She is still innocent in some respects, but also very clear-sighted when it comes to the people and the world around her.  Her character wouldn’t hesitate punching out most obnoxious movie children characters, but I think she’d manage to pull off that sort of violence in an endearing way.  I enjoy the character’s straightforward optimism.  She doesn’t yearn for a brighter tomorrow, but she accepts her lot for what it is with clear eyes and a vision of how to make it the best possible reality, and yet she isn’t a Pollyanna.  Honestly, she felt the most fleshed out of all the characters in the film.

Despite the very pretty pictures, I found Days of Heaven significantly less potent in this, my second time seeing it on the big screen.  When I originally saw Days of Heaven at the Dryden about four years ago, I thought it very powerful indeed.  I was enraptured by the dangerous love story and the gorgeous images.  I was looking forward to seeing it at the Dryden again.  Much to my dismay, however, it did not stand up nearly as well on this, a repeat viewing.  I wasn’t nearly as emotionally invested in my second go around.  It felt weaker, less magical, with very pretty pictures but caricatures acting instead of fully formed characters.  I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.  So it’s difficult for me to come down with a final judgment on Days of Heaven.  While never a perfect 10 for me to begin with, it’s an odd example of a repeat viewing actually hurting a film for me when it usually serves to improve my opinion.  

  

And really, that’s where I ultimately make a decision about Days of Heaven.  It’s very nice to look at, but it feels a bit empty, which is really surprising given Malick’s reputation for profundity.  It did not bear up well on a second go-around, and I’m the sort who loves to watch movies multiple times.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10