They’re both loosely autobiographical, so . . .
“They’re both loosely autobiographical, so . . .”
So, that’s why both “mothers” are flying…?
I haven’t seen Tree of Life . . . are you suggesting it’s derivative of The Mirror?
OP.
Yes. I felt that Malick was paying homage to a few filmmakers, Tarkovsky being one of them. I also saw a very strong influence from Bresson. Other than that I would say that to compare the two films is somewhat pointless.
I didn’t think about the comparison at the time.
I think what’s most apt about is it the blending of (all of these in quotes) reality, memories, dreams, history, emotions, etc. Tarkovsky’s recipe may be less literal and therefore more dreamlike, but I think Malick’s strength is his ability to encapsulate so perfectly a person’s thoughts, feeling and inner life. Both directors’ images communicate very strongly on many different registers.
Bump for more opinions.
I think Tarkovsky’s influence can be felt in TREE OF LIFE, certainly in the shot of flying mommy, and the final afterlife sequence, or whatever that was, heaven on a beach with everybody walking around. Tarkovsky, though, manages to make his autobiographical fantasia into a fascinating and complex film that I couldn’t wait to see again, and read about, and think about, as opposed to Malick’s trite bloated whine of a film.
The one film Tree of Life actually did remind me of is Cup favorite, The Long Day Closes.
The film felt a little like The Mirror, but I wouldn’t call it derivative.
One film I’ve heard it compared to that it is decidedly not like is 2001. I think this is probably a comparison from those unfamiliar with contemplative cinema. Other than one shot there isn’t much similarity.
Going off what Johnny D said-
IMO, Malick captures memories, thoughts, ahem, human-ness, as well as any director I’ve ever seen. The first half of this film (up to when Jack loses his innocence) is the best evidence of this – It literally felt like a documentary of humanity/life directed by a perfectly-perceptive Alien/God. The film up to that point felt so True and real, it morphed into a something beyond such pointed description, a dream-like composition of visual and auditory mastery that, to me, felt like the pinnacle of human art…Then, however, something happened. With the swimming child, death to the film’s composition soon followed. The Rhythm of Malick’s tapestry broke down into repetitiveness, and even, boringness, with the proceeding of Jack’s loss of innocence, a boggling thirty minute stretch that loses all of the momentum of the film. Malick’s need for theme-atical clarity suppresses the miracle of the preceeding Dream-Vision, and the Connection is lost.
In regards of ToL in comparison to Mirror, well, outside of the aforementioned parellels (floating mom, etc), I didn’t find the them to be very much alike at all. Malick’s film is of MUCH larger scope, life, while Tarkovsky’s is concerned with the singular individual. Malick is a quantum physicist trying to fit existence into one equation, while Tarkovsky is a musician trying to meld the past, present and future of the individual experience into a superlative piece.
They’re different in the way that “The Tree of Life” is startlingly human, compassionate, and absorbing, whereas “The Mirror” is a cold and disengaging snooze.
Interesting, Jon. I’d say that MIRROR is startlingly human, compassionate and absorbing, while TREE OF LIFE is a cold and disengaging snooze. Funny how opinions will differ. This is sure one polarizing movie, I’m not finding anyone lukewarm on it.
I think that’s fair about the second half of the film, Poopbutt (haha, jeez). I was totally floored by the “overture”, the creation sequence, and the bulk of the Waco stuff. But, I think you’re right that it feels a little repetitive and tapers off a bit as Jack gets older (the Oedipus stuff, for example, could have been left as just a suggestion). I didn’t love the ending either. Still, Malick gave me something wondrous and thematically whole.
Just watched the Mirror and didn’t think it was a snooze though it was long. It was certainly less spectacular than Tree of Life, but the parallels are definitely there. Childhood can be romanticized more than one way depending on the experience.
Chris Marker said of The Mirror (paraphrased):
“In The Mirror there is a house, and in that house are many doors. It feels as if characters from any of Tarkovsky’s other movies could walk in through those doors.”
That quote does, in fact, sort of work for Tree of Life in terms of the space of the house, though I don’t think characters from Thin Red Line are hiding in that empty attic! I mean more in terms of that house as space of the filmmakers’ brain, in reference to all of the thematic elements that are offered inside and outside of it. The house is the container and in Tree of Life the main character doesn’t “let go” until they, or we, move away from the house. At that point occurs the doorway to heaven scene and so on.
One could say in a sense that these two movies are a part of a genre, the philosophical memoir film. Not a whole lot feature length exists out there in this genre but you can often see it in experimental circles, and shorter. Naomi Kawasi is the greatest practitioner of it. Within the genre each director has their styles and idiosyncracies by necessity, as after all the movie reflects a personal aspect of themselves that is irreproducable.
The Mirror is a bit harder to chew, much more cerebral and layered. The Tree of Life does not aim for that level of involvement. I do like the idea of comparing the two against each other, to see how they operate differently. Different personalities but the same need underlies both works, I think.
—PolarisDiB
The two have similar structures, but other than that they don’t have a lot in common.
Tarkovskii is much better at floating his mom than Malick is. Jessica Chastain just moves around so unnaturally. Other than that, I don’ think the movies have anything in common.
Funny, I would describe Tree Of Life as having individual scope. For me the purpose of the whole creation of the universe thing was to reduce the size of the individual and establish patterns of human behavior as pre-dating humans. I see the film as being all about Sean Penn’s stream of consciousness following his brother’s death.
Maybe a lot of the backlash Tree Of Life gets and accusations of pretentiousness and self importance are based on a profound misunderstanding of it.
When you compare the use of dreams and fantasies in both films, Tarkovsky’s film, in my opinion, blurs memory and dreams in a way that’s more complex and open to interpretation. The fantasy sequences in The Tree of Life come in more like ruptures in the flow of childhood scenes, although one could say that the whole Waco section is filmed and edited like a fantasy.
Also, religion and spirituality are more openly discussed in The Tree of Life, which is undeniable given the many voiceovers that are spoken almost in the form of prayers and the references to the book of Job. Tarkovsky, by contrast, refers to spirituality in The Mirror more often through symbolism, most notably through the appearances of birds, especially towards the end.
Both films are nostalgic evocations of the paradise lost of childhood. (Another director referenced in Malick’s film is Stan Brakhage, specifically Wedlock House: An Intercourse during the scene in which a moving light casts the shadows of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain in a darkened room.)
Tarkovsky is one of my favorite filmmakers, while Malick is not. Why?: Although I appreciate and admire Malick’s stirring representation of the natural world and its parallel in the interior psyche of his characters, his earlier films still feel rather incomplete to me (Badlands mocks the Gun Crazy/Bonnie & Clyde tropes with Martin Sheen playfully giving up at the end as if the entire experience was merely a game, Days of Heaven randomly abandons the core love triangle of Gere, Adams, and Shepherd to continue the young girl’s distracting side-story, while The Thin Red Line and The New World, although containing passages of fierce intensity, still maintain a distance which does not allow me to feel more invested in the characters, perhaps because they are still bound by the war and historical genres.)
Tarkovsky, on the other hand, challenges genre and explores his characters in a subtler and much more complex way. Andrei Rublev and Solaris are stately, solemn, and spiritual voyages which give me more alone time with the characters (since his films have a stillness and composure, a sense of unhurried and unfolding compositions, which is missing from Malick’s restless films.) Plus, most importantly, in Andrei Rublev and Solaris, the conversation with genre is muted—this is due, in part, to the fact that there is no distinct authorial presence delineating the story with voice over narration and no obvious maneuvers against genre (in Badlands there is a constant awareness of previous road movie outlaw idealizations, in The Thin Red Line there is a constant awareness of the absurdity of the usual war idealizations, and in The New World there is a constant awareness of previous historical depictions of Native Americans.)
Now here’s where I might upset the apple cart.
I feel Malick’s Tree of Life is his most evolved and rewarding film, his masterpiece, and I actually much prefer it to Tarkovsky’s Mirror. (I won’t use the words—I think Tree of Life is a greater film than Mirror—because that presupposes that I can somehow objectively make such a sweeping criticism. I will say subjectively that Malick’s evocation of the missing state of consciousness of childhood moves me and connects with me more deeply than Tarkovsky’s.)
Tarkovsky’s Mirror opens with the almost documentary footage of a boy being cured of stuttering and has other verite moments scattered throughout (as well as observations of his mother’s job) that, for me, are very distracting and detract from what could have otherwise been an intense idyll to the age of innocence. Certainly the wind in the grass, the burning house, the levitating mother, the disappearing and fading face in the mirror are some of Tarkovsky’s most dreamlike and meditative compositions. There’s a murky obscurity in Mirror and even more so in Stalker and Tarkovsky’s later films which, there’s those words again, truncate the experience for me—barricades a distance between myself and the characters in which I wish I could experience them with more clarity and open space. (Whereas in Andrei Rublev and Solaris, this clarity and open space, where the image is allowed more room to breathe, seemed to exist and allowed me to experience the characters more vicariously and with less detachment.)
Malick’s Tree of Life, despite its epic evolution-of-the-universe tangent, has such a gliding and vibrant flow of forward movement that it never feels overtly austere or murky. The images breathe more freely, the spaces are more open, the narrative is more complexly alive than any of Tarkovsky’s films. The emotion is so direct and declarative that there is never a sense of distance or detachment. It is even more spiritual and cathartic than Tarkovsky because it is never weighed down by dry, philosophical dialogue. Every word strikes deep and no words are used where no words are needed. This is especially what elevates Tree of Life for me above similarly audacious and ambitious films (such as 2001: A Space Odyssey)—it truly is a poem in the best sense, neither heavy with narrative conventions nor lacking in soul. Malick still uses voiceover narration but the crucial difference here is that is never overarching (whispered wisps rather than the more literary and awkward commentaries of Sissy Spacek in Badlands or the young girl in Days of Heaven.)
So, that’s my long-winded and rambling opinion.
Another director referenced in Malick’s film is Stan Brakhage, specifically Wedlock House: An Intercourse
Bless you, son.
Side Note: I should clarify my vaunting of Tree of Life over Tarkovsky. I did not mean to say one was unequivocally superior to the other. What I meant to say was that Malick’s visceral, visionary sense of forward movement in Tree of Life (a spirit found in Paradjanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and Brakhage’s Dog Star Man) is missing from Tarkovsky’s films.
Yes, they’re both about lost time and finding it again. The case is, Tarkovsky manages to mythologize reality and childhood memories in a way Malick doesn’t, partly because Malick tend to focus on religious systems, on conclusions instead of movement, and on ideas instead of things, meaning instead of time and movement. To me Mirror is all about pure, unmediated perception as well as the beauty imperfection, whereas Tree of Life is much more intellectual, systematically trying to achieve perfection. Malick sort of has a mission, he wants to come across with a certain point and to promote some ideology – a such thing is never the case in Mirror which relies fully upon its own imagery. As in any piece of modernist art there is only the variable of more or less intensity in Mirror.
To some extent both films are masterpieces, but Mirror captured the formless matter of childhood and memory most profoundly, I guess. I thought Tree of Life was a little too forced, too judging, too moralistic, too finished and all too nice, not enough filth and paganism. And Mirror is indeed more atmospheric and the longer takes works better the steadicam of Tree of Life (which is also splendid but sort of too fast and the takes are too short for the subject matter). Tarkovsky just captures something mystically ineffable and is imagery is truly original, while Malick’s approach is somewhat predictable and dogmatic. The very name of his film is a fine example of that.
I don’t know if this was meant to be a contest between the two films, but I felt like making it one :)
bezruc
Does anybody else have the feeling, how much both movies are connected in almost every way possible? Levitation, childhood, nature, spirituality, flashbacks etc., but yet each one using very own distinctive style. Also, these are the most personal works of each director.