Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life"
Re the earlier, mostly OT convo about bridge shots: amused to see Soderbergh lift that exact shot from Zodiac in his Contagion.
Beautiful film…I’m amazed he actually got it made in today’s world of corporate greed and demographics.
“Re the earlier, mostly OT convo about bridge shots: amused to see Soderbergh lift that exact shot from Zodiac in his Contagion.”
Yeah, it was very similar.
Mephistopheles
Grey, my friend, is every theory
And green is Life’s golden tree.
Student
I swear it’s like a dream to me: may I
Trouble you, at some further time,
To expound your wisdom, so sublime?
Mephistopheles
As much as I can, I’ll gladly explain.
Student
I can’t tear myself away,
I must just pass you my album, sir,
Grant me the favor of your signature!
Mephistopheles
Very well.
(he writes and gives the book back)
Student (reading Mephistopheles’ Latin inscription)
Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum. (“You shall be like like gods, knowing good and evil”.)
(the student makes his bows and retires)
Mephistopheles
Just follow the old proverb, and my cousin the snake, too:
And then your likeness to God will surely frighten you!
(Faust, Goethe)
The best thing you can read to understand The Tree of Life is Goethe’s Faust and Hölderlin’s “Heidelberg”: “Long have I loved you and for my own delight / Would call you mother, give you an artless song,..”. And probably Alberto Moravia’s “L’Attenzione” (The Lie, English title). In one of the skyscrapers’ rooms, the one with the aquarium atmosphere, we distinctively hear “attenzione” (Italian for attention). Eccentric, no? Like a warning, like that “exit” sign that Malick films very intentionally in the office. The reference to Moravia’s hypothesis is an interesting one. “L’Attenzione” is a book about a writer watching himself writing it, a mirror in front of a mirror. The book he is writing is as a very particular kind of diary, “a diary [that] is always sincere, always true, you just have to search its sincerity and truth beyond the events. The identification between the narrator and the author is total, this is, factually a lie, psychologically true.” And it is a book about “shame”, a very particular kind of shame.
In the end of 2006, a very gifted writer published under the name of Ashley a “dinosaurs” + “rides in planes” + “father to son conversations” + “love for the sea” + “forbidden fruits” etc. literary milkshake. I would suggest it is too particular and too good not be Malick’s. “When I was Young” goes like this:
Once when I was young
I went for a ride on a plane
And I stopped believing.
For where else can Heaven be
If not on the tops of clouds?
A kingdom that vast,
Cannot be invisible.
Angels are not cruel enough to hide.
Where did the castle made of clouds
And miracles go?
Was it ever even there?
http://ashleywrites.org/
“Tell us a story from before we can remember”, R.L. asked mother.
“I went for a ride in a plane once. It was a graduation present.”
This is nothing but self-referentiality: that “graduation present” was Badlands, Malick’s first movie.
Holly and Kit go on the plane as prisoners. And what is Badlands’ last shot? The tops of the clouds.
In The Tree of Life, there were two porcelain angels in the dead son’s room, by the window. In the architect’s dream, we see something against the sky that I would call the “disappeared house”. It could also be properly named the “castle made of clouds”. It even has something in the front that resembles a drawbridge.
“If you’re good, people take advantage of you”, father warns Jack. You didn’t listen. “The world lives by trickery”, warns father once again. “Is there a fraud in the scheme of the universe?”, asked the priest
I am affraid “this is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie” (Welles). And the spectator was the victim.
http://reviewingtreeoflife.blogspot.com/
He is finished with his Ben Affleck film and Malick is now shooting his next film with Bale and Haley Bennet. Three films back to back!
@John
I am affraid “this is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie” (Welles). And the spectator was the victim.
So you think that the film is lying about God (His grace, existence, etc.) and the existence of heaven; that the film intentionally deceives the audience for some diabolical reason?
Malick was caught filming in public there is supposed to be 10 threads made by now.
Don’t encourage them, Den. I love Malick, but some of the threads are a bit excessive.
This is redundant but I hope Criterion releases this. 1.) Simply because it’s Criterion 2.) I don’t own Blu-Ray and find it absurd that I’m forced to buy both copies of the film.
Re this odd, aforementioned spectacle in Austin:
Three notes for reflecting about Malick’s Tree:
The shot with mother looking back to her home through the car’s back window has a perfect cinemascope format, like it was the last shot of some ’50s movie. Why? Just by chance?
As S. Penn finally crosses that “door”, the camera moves impetuously toward the woman’s belly, like blow by a violent wind. You can even hear it. He “enters” her; we see fleshy magma, a “river of lava” and the destruction of the Earth, burned by the sun. Don’t you think this is a very strange “door”? Not at all some “door of grace”.
Why the dark church door where Penn enters is ostensibly made to rhyme with Bomarzo’s “Mouth of Hell” (childbirth sequence)?
Good to see they did it right.
“It has our highest recommendation… of all time.”
Wow – I’m especially excited about the sound quality – I saw it twice at two different theaters, but I think they had the same print, because the sound during the Lacrimosa song during the creation sequence was really fuzzy – which was hugely disappointing for such a beautiful piece of music!
Speaking of the music, I’ve been futilely attempting to determine the identity of a specific piece. I can’t recall when it appears in the film, but I can point it out in the trailer.
I’m referring to the transitional choral notes that occur at the beginning of the trailer, and then later, in between Smetana’s “Mltava” and Cassidy’s “Funeral March”.
Interestingly, those bell/gong cues come right out of Francesco Lupica’s piece “Beam” from the Thin Red Line soundtrack, but beyond that this piece is different.
DADA WEATHERMAN. …Smetana’s “Mltava” …it is VLTAVA
@Bezruc
Oh yes, thanks. Not sure what grave depth to which my brain had sunken when I wrote that.
“The shot with mother looking back to her home through the car’s back window has a perfect cinemascope format, like it was the last shot of some ’50s movie. Why? Just by chance?
As S. Penn finally crosses that “door”, the camera moves impetuously toward the woman’s belly, like blow by a violent wind. You can even hear it. He “enters” her; we see fleshy magma, a “river of lava” and the destruction of the Earth, burned by the sun. Don’t you think this is a very strange “door”? Not at all some “door of grace”.
Why the dark church door where Penn enters is ostensibly made to rhyme with Bomarzo’s “Mouth of Hell” (childbirth sequence)?"
Whereas it is a cliche to say, “The answer is in the question”, strikingly that is the case with all three of these questions.
—PolarisDiB
Article from the new issue of Senses of Cinema: Either and Or
“Two perspectives seem to divide the public of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011). The first perspective is that of the idealist… The second perspective is that of the analyst.”
I post this for all the Idealists (myself) and Analysts (RWP3, Jazz) on the site. An interesting look at two different perspectives on the film.
Well that seems like an analyst’s approach to the idealist/analyst dichotomy. But that’s okay because it seems aware of it! Oh wait now I’m being ironic. Ah but that means I’m being truthful! Or… wait…?
One thing that is sad about art and life in this day and age is the lack of the sublime. We don’t look at Biblical paintings made to inspire a sense of awe with the correct sense of awe. We admire the brushstrokes and formal qualities, the color, and even how the color has faded, from the masters who were trying to create an awe for something sublime, God, a King, a moment in history. Nowadays we’re more likely to read Generation A then The Decameron : A story about people telling stories about how telling stories are important, instead of a collection of stories tied together by the people telling them.
So unfortunately the idealist in the sense of the term introduced here is pretty outnumbered. However, House of Leaves, I would like to point out to you that your namesake is a text structured around analysts, but most of the people who quote it in the book communities I attend quote Johnny Truant, i.e., the idealist aspect of the novel. It seems to me like the most successful contemporary works are how the author describes David Foster Wallace’s work, also parodied (but honestly) by I Heart Huckabees : “I’m joking, but love me. I’m joking, but love me.” Or how about Ellen Degeneres’ new book, Seriously, I’m joking ? This is, in fact, an issue I’ve struggled with, and then came to just accept the struggle with, from about the time I was a sophomore in high school: “Yes I’m joking. Doesn’t mean I don’t mean what I say.” and also, “Yes I mean what I say. Doesn’t mean I’m not joking, either.”
As for where The Tree of Life fits in my response to this article, I would say that that’s the real fuck of it in the end. We call, seriously, for more “personal works” in the world, and then when one comes out “it’s a mess, navel-gazing, naive.” But I disagree that the analyst necessarily likes later Godard—as an analyst, I have a hard time with Godard, mostly because what he’s doing is to me too clear that it becomes boring, it’s understood within the beginning moments and not worth sitting through the whole work to be expounded upon. And since it becomes detached (especially later Godard), you begin missing watching emotional people. Movies and books about the power of imagination, but still with a personal emotional core, a la Bridge to Terabithia, become nectar until they too become too familiarized and every The Book of Lost Things is “a Neil Gaimain rip-off”—as if Gaiman’s own novels aren’t, in their own way, illiciting the same reaction.
—PolarisDiB
Yes . . . thanks for posting that, Den.
Where beauty is concerned, i’m a Keatsian romantic and so Tree of Life appealed greatly. I can see why some might consider it pretentious, even kitsch in aiming for profundity and an awe factor, but i also found its tale of a strict alienating father involving; seemingly championing feminine softness v macho values that lead to boys firing guns and wars, putting money and career ahead of appreciation of the incredible beauty of nature and the extraordinary experience that life is, which we can take for granted. But boys too have been victims of social conditioning.There is suspicion of beauty and vaulting ambition in films, in a cynical so-called post-modern world. I was a bit less enamoured by some scenes with Sean Penn, the ending with all the people on some paradisal beach was moving and yet felt a touch too sentimental- sentiment, happy endings and emotional manipulation something we’ve become wary of. But credit to Malick for the Kubrickian-Tarkovskian heights he reaches (comparisons quickly seem inevitable), more focused on inner feelings than Kubrick.
I’m a (cynical) idealist and i think cinema can do with bold idealists. Not that Malick isn’t an intellectual. He is a feeling, seeing, sensing, thinking being. The article linked by Dennis has a bit that’s sniffy about film as nature documentary. Why should cinema not be free to explore the wonders of nature in inspiring fashion? More credit may be due the great nature documentaries, not less for Malick, for whom pristine nature v human destruction and violence has been a common theme, almost a Fall of Man one. In a world obsessed with economic growth, and in lust with guns, rather than connected to the one-ness of nature and long-term preservation of the planet, we need more visionaries (an overused term) like Malick. You don’t have to believe in god to feel a spiritual force in the world around us (even if that may be due to certain pre-set factors in some brains compared with others) and love our fellow creatures. In the film Brad Pitt goes to church but has lost his way- respectable organised religion isn’t touted as the ideal solution, for sure. In danger of becoming a monster- and we get to feel convincingly his oppressiveness- he gets some redemption. Is it too easy to dismiss that as sentimental kitsch?
nm
Oh and i was delighted by the rapturous burst of an old favourite of mine Vltava, by Smetana. With the universe and the music, comparisons with Kubrick were bound to arise (Malick of course knowing this and the nods to Tarkovsky) but those sequences stand up well to 2001. But it’s harder to be original these days- even tho’ things can open up with technical advances..
Where it’s more Tarkovskian is in the magic hour summery shots reminiscent say of Mirror, the black dog a la Stalker, the swaying fronds in the river a la Solaris, and the sense that for all the wonders of space home is where the heart is- Solaris longing for earth, 2001 heading onwards into the unknown..
Alex
Today comes to Spain, and many other countries. Really looking forward to go.