____twoism

Has anyone else here seen Terrence Mallick's Palm d'Or-winning "The Tree Of Life" starrin Sean Penn and Brad Pitt?

If you have, what did you think of it and what are your interpretations of the undeniably complex film?


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/

That's out already?! I've been meaning to watch that!

Looking forward!

going to the cinema soon! by myself so no annoying distractions! =]

Saw this last week, eh it was alright. Too pretentious but the imagery was cool

YELLOW wrote:Saw this last week, eh it was alright. Too pretentious but the imagery was cool

Pretentious is subjective, but I getcha. Been looking forward to this for a while. I started some online Kaballah classes a while ago, and out of the blue comes a movie called The Tree Of Life. One of those wonderful synchronicities life tosses you!

The Tree of life is a big videoclip who just look like a 13 years old director making pretentious philosophy stuff ( to say simple things finally...), that's was sometimes ridiculous, even if some pictures were beautiful, It's was more like a desktop pictures slideshow. And all those off voices whispering to say "grace...father...mother", that wasn't a comedy ?? I was looking for Ben Stiller all the time after...

I was disapointing too by the red line, everyone say he's a master but I don't understand his art, his messages and philosophy are like elephants without sharpness. And their pictures are full of cliché, like from a young director, or a blog adolescent making his own videoclip with sun and sky shot on some classic music... (the classic music in the movie is great)

The only great other thing is Brad Pitt and the child, they are great actors.

The tree of life is good if you are stone, but I wasn't.

If it's Mallick's it can't be bad. People often get disappointed by his pretentiousness, yet I do love pretentiousness. Fucking poetry.

Will see when it comes to my country.

Can anyone recommend movies which also have an emphasis on these kind of visuals? I don't mean movies like Lord Of The Rings but rather this particular "poetic", "pretentious", whatever aesthetic.

The Fountain

Guido wrote:Can anyone recommend movies which also have an emphasis on these kind of visuals? I don't mean movies like Lord Of The Rings but rather this particular "poetic", "pretentious", whatever aesthetic.

These are all older, I guess maybe classics...


Baraka
Chronos
Koyaanisqatsi
Powaqqatsi

Lots of time lapse photography

Also often things like BBC series Blue Planet etc have these amazing poetic visuals

Guido wrote:Can anyone recommend movies which also have an emphasis on these kind of visuals? I don't mean movies like Lord Of The Rings but rather this particular "poetic", "pretentious", whatever aesthetic.

Well, I haven't seen The Tree of Life (we have to wait until September 1st here in Croatia ), but I heard that the same person who did special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner has worked on the Tree of Life. It's Douglas Trumbull.
I always found Kubrick's visual aesthetic extraordinary in each of his films from Dr. Strangelove onward. There are also other films from Terrence Malick: Days of Heaven and Thin Red Line, in particular.
The most poetic and beautiful visuals can be found in the old movies of Michelangelo Antonioni IMO. Here is the final scene of his movie L'Eclisse (The Eclipse). It's totally realistic and at the same time beautifully enigmatic:



(From 01:52 the scene revisits places where main characters - Monica Vitti and Alain Delon - used to meet. We expect them to meet again but neither of them shows up.)

Guido wrote:Can anyone recommend movies which also have an emphasis on these kind of visuals? I don't mean movies like Lord Of The Rings but rather this particular "poetic", "pretentious", whatever aesthetic.

I'd recommend you to check some of Tarkovski's works, it's my favourite director without a doubt and fits perfectly with your request.

Also there is Antonioni, Bergman, Visconti, Godard... european classics.

I've seen Tree of Life. Flawed masterpiece. But it IS masterpiece. Too bad Malick hasn't heard of BOC. There are some scenes with the boys (brothers!) in Waco, Texas that would fit perfectly with some of the BOC tunes...

I almost cried at the world creation part.

Well, that was disappointing. It started out AMAZING with the great score and the narration about the nature/grace dichotomy and all, then the Sean Penn scenes, the creation of the world. But the more it progressed the more boring it became. I turned it off at 1h30m in at which point it was just tedious to watch. I'm curious to hear what you guys think is exactly so thought-provoking about this movie. Great visuals though.

Watched this earlier, looked great, but lacking the something that makes this sort of experimental/non-linear etc. etc. film good (I love 2001, for example, so it's not like I just don't like this sort of filmmaking). I felt like I could see what the film was trying to do (although I don't see the 'complexity') but ultimately something just didn't work and ended up being a bit tedious.