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The Tree of Life (Three-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy)
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Format | Multiple Formats, Digital_copy, Blu-ray, Color |
Contributor | Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, William Pohlad, Sean Penn, Dede Gardner, Sarah Green, Fiona Shaw, Grant Hill, Terrence Malick See more |
Language | English |
Runtime | 3 hours and 1 minute |
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Product Description
From Terrence Malick, the acclaimed director of such classic films as BADLANDS, DAYS OF HEAVEN and THE THIN RED LINE, THE TREE OF LIFE is the impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950's. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Malick's signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life.
Product details
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
- Product Dimensions : 0.6 x 5.4 x 6.7 inches; 4.8 ounces
- Item model number : 227493
- Director : Terrence Malick
- Media Format : Multiple Formats, Digital_copy, Blu-ray, Color
- Run time : 3 hours and 1 minute
- Release date : October 11, 2011
- Actors : Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Fiona Shaw
- Dubbed: : Spanish
- Subtitles: : English, Spanish
- Producers : Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Sarah Green, Grant Hill, William Pohlad
- Studio : Fox Searchlight
- ASIN : B005HV6Y5W
- Writers : Terrence Malick
- Number of discs : 3
- Best Sellers Rank: #25,266 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #9,790 in Blu-ray
- Customer Reviews:
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Terrence Malick's fifth film is a grand victory of human awareness and stands among the greatest, most fearlessly original and most universal of all films. It explores human experience from the inside, from within its characters' thoughts and sensations. Malick identifies its protagonist as its viewer and assembles a multitude of brief impressions of astounding vividness to act as an analogue of our own collection of memories. Roger Ebert wrote of Charlie Kaufman's great 'Synecdoche New York',
'For thousands of years, fiction made no room for characters who changed. Men felt the need for an explanation of their baffling existence, created gods, and projected onto them the solutions for their enigmas. These gods of course had to be immutable, for they stood above the foibles of men. Zeus was Zeus and Apollo was Apollo and that was that. We envisioned them on mountaintops, where they were little given to introspection. We took the situation as given, did our best, created arts that were always abstractions in the sense that they existed outside ourselves. Harold Bloom believes Shakespeare introduced the human personality into fiction. When Richard III looked in the mirror and asked himself what role he should play, and Hamlet asked the fundamental question To be, or not to be, the first shoe was dropped, and "Synecdoche" and many other works have dropped the second shoe.'
'The Tree of Life' is an other of the greatest of these works. As the years pass, our films seem to be moving deeper and deeper inward. This film attempts to be a mirror. It shows us a life such as our own and asks us to discern what is important in a life, what is good, what is lasting; and what is meaningless noise, what does not last. Kaufman's film also explored the human experience in an unconventional way, but while it had very little compassion and was devoid of wonder, Malick's film possesses those qualities and others in rich abundance.
One the main objects of this film is to evoke the early experiences and impressions of a human life, spanning about a decade. And one of its most masterful sections is the one dealing with the first three years or so. The many brief images and events we see delineate a landscape of early memories; we're delighted by the colorful bubbles we blow. A child with a grotesque Halloween mask. Our mother dances with us and we love her. That chair just moved by itself, didn't it? A scary dog barks at us and we stay behind our mother. A new baby, what does it do? We dream of the strange triangular room in the attic we went up in once or twice. Night after night our mother kisses us and turns out the lamp and this is the way our life passes. A glow seems to surround all things. I don't doubt nearly all of us could construct a similar sequence from our own memories (Dressing me in the morning, my father says, 'Up-a-sky!', throwing his arms upward. I raise mine in response, beaming back at him with delight - his and mine - as my night-shirt is swished off me).
As we grow older and more aware, as the script says, 'Gradually, the subtle radiance passes from things, as though a layer of cloud had come up over the sun. Slowly as the dawn, the boy is growing up.' We begin to see bad things, sad things. Why does that man walk funny? Will our mother have to look as old as grandma does some day? Later, these things seem to be present in many places, or most. What did that man do to go to jail? Could it happen to us? Then we even find it in ourselves; we disobey our mother even though we love her, and we don't know why! We can't resist playing mean tricks on our little brother, dangerous dares. What did we do? Why aren't things the way they used to be? 'How do I get back?'
Malick had his current style of film-making basically set since his third film, 'The Thin Red Line', but there its greatness was constrained by particularities of the project: its protagonist's wonderings did not feel genuine, its original score was unsatisfactory (my advice to film-makers: Most, to nearly all of the time, use preexisting music, or don't use any), multiple tiny roles filled by distractingly famous actors, and other problems. In his next film, the excellent 'The New World', most of those problems were absent, although, like 'Thin Red Line', it still took place within a historical event it was constrained to tell and to serve. But here Malick has broken free of all that, has no one's story to tell but his own, and applies his poetic technique with complete freedom to the life of this common suburban family (and many other things). One of the most important parts of making books or movies is knowing your subject and its details cold. Setting 'Tree of Life' in the same environment and time Malick himself grew up in, he holds all the cards here too for the first time. He soars where before he could only leap.
I love, love, love the way Malick makes movies. He spurns artificial light, films his actors constantly (even when they don't know it), foreswears story-boards, always seeks to captivate fleeting, chance moments; a butterfly alighting on Mrs. O'Brien's hand, thunder flashing in the skies before Pocahontas, an inquisitive baby giving John Smith a kiss. He films and edits what ever and how ever he wants; what ever feels right, what ever is beautiful. He loves open fields, tall grass. He loves twilight and dusk. He loves water. He loves Sol, loves its light shining among plants, among people. He loves flocks of birds, hands holding hands, heads turned upward. He loves things that glow. He nearly always shoots manually; his camera is free. It swings and flutters about Smith and Pocahontas as they embrace. It runs joyously through a forest, peering upward and making Sol beam and dance among the branches and leaves. I am so very grateful there exists such a film-maker as him.
Now, the degree to which there are 'good' actors and 'bad' actors is much exaggerated; actors are basically as good as the script is and the director allows or coaxes them to be. But there are actors who simply ARE the characters they play; who fit them like a glove. Brad Pitt has worked perfectly well in many roles; I should note he does not fit the over-bearing, mood-shifting Mr. O'Brien seamlessly. We're aware every moment that we're watching Brad Pitt playing this character. In a way, the softness his acting produces between himself and his often harsh character may be in keeping with the film's gentle feel. I don't know. I learn that Heath Ledger was originally intended to play the part. I think he would have been just about the perfect fit; not as bright-eyed a man as Pitt, excellent at conveying a certain muddle-mindedness. Look at his character in 'Brokeback Mountain', in which he had children too. Think of how he might have raised sons if he had been more of a family man and you pretty much have the character right there, accent and insufficient love for his wife and all. But so it goes.
Mr. O'Brien is a remnant of a past age in which men lived by their toughness, by their ability to control, to discipline, to command. He raises his sons the way his instincts dictate him to, the way his line has succeeded. But our genes can linger far longer than the conditions which bred them, and a boy need no longer be taught in such detail how best to fight back if he is hit. 'If he blinks, crack 'im!' This generates hype and a sense of moral importance on an event which will not likely ever come (and certainly their father's attempted training sessions only disturbs the boys). In the script, driving by a team of disheveled men digging a ditch in a poor part of the town, their father advises them: 'See those people. Somebody got the upper hand with them. Don't let it happen to you. You've got to get ahead of the other guy. He'll be doing all he can to do the same to you.' And later, 'If you're good, people take advantage of you. Think of yourself as someone caught behind enemy lines. Work! Fight! I see you wasting your time -- staring out the window -- playing! I make sacrifices for you. You honor those sacrifices by what you do. That's how a family works.' His mind is every where at once, among other, worse problems. Malick describes him early in the script: 'His boys regard him warily. His sharp, sarcastic words, and orders so irrational he hardly expects that they will be obeyed. He never asks what they did at school. He does not know the names of their friends. Were he to inquire, they would suspect it was a trap.' 'He has the unshakable belief that he must approve or modify everything the children do. He is full of petty and exasperating cautions.'
Oh dear. Sean Penn. Poor Sean Penn. He costarred in an other of the greatest films I've seen, Tim Robbins' 'Dead Man Walking', and was so perfect as Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's 'Milk', that I have, at times, passed pictures of the real Harvey and temporarily failed to mentally differentiate between the two men. Penn called Malick's script the most magnificent one he'd ever read (he can say that again), but was disappointed and a bit confused by the filmed result, and that his own small role ended up being essentially one of a figure rather than a character (and alas for Penn, since his first film, 'Badlands', of nearly four decades before, Malick has not made actor's films). It's true that the script was clearer about several things, especially Penn's character's existence in the city: 'The others do not meet his eyes. Each makes his way alone, shut up within himself. None can be sure of the other. No tie is fixed or lasting.' 'The supreme misery:... to find oneself abandoned to the busy dance of things which pass away.' My guess is it's one of the best things ever written, and much less a movie script than a poetic story, stunningly beautiful, unbelievably vivid in its descriptions of places and experiences. But many of its ideas would be impossible to communicate in film, and ultimately the best medium for the script, as it was in that form, was the written word. I would console him by saying the film has a power very few have ever achieved, and an effect no other has.
The stellar accretion sequence is simply the most powerful and awesome passage of film ever made. There doesn't seem to be any beginning or end of existence, nor a smallest scale of matter, or largest. Multitudes live among the immensity of a single leg of a mite, the keys I type these words on are uneven plateaus gigamiles across. A galaxy is a twisting amoebic mote, stars are searing subatomic particles and my neighbor's welcome mat is more vast than all the wastes of Mars. I set a glass of milk on a table, and there it will stay with all the worlds it contains for a million aeons before I pick it up again, and an ocean wave is no more or less a passing shape than the Eagle Nebula. In our search through the inward planes, we now find within the realm of orbiting spheres to exist a landscape of webbed and dancing strings. This will never end. And all the matter we have perceived is a little explosion whose trifling cause we can not see, whose flying sparks will in an instant fade and turn to lifeless smoke, perhaps to be dispersed by a wind or to sink into an earth, forgotten or unseen. It does not end, it only continues. We live in infinity and eternity. But the film shows us with humbling beauty what little we know of outward realms, and of the history of the continual rearrangement of matter, and gives context of the O'Brien family's existence; the cauldron that will become their world, the microbes they will descend from.
Some silly people inform us that Malick's acceptance of current models of the formation of the galactic realm, of Earth and its biology, conflicts with his at least semibiblical spirituality (he opens the film with scripture and refers to it a number of times, among other examples, and he is as interested in the birth of a soul as of a world), because it contradicts all that the creationists say. Malick, I'm sure, could scarcely care less about the current fancies of that endless debate. He knows that scientists do not spend their years making up malicious lies, and he also obviously feels a silent goodness in the universe. Says Jack the script: 'You whom we met in the woods and on the hills, whom first in her eyes we knew -- how shall I name you?' In 'The New World', Pocahontas speaks to it in the same fashion: 'Dear Mother, you fill the land with your beauty. You reach to the end of the world. How shall I seek you?' Around me I hear religious people confiding to each other that their god feels more present to them when they walk through woods, when they see and do beautiful things, than when reading their holy book. My mother tells me she felt this goodness touch her one night as she sat quietly holding one of her newly born children.
Those who search eventually find the word 'god' to be an ancient verb meaning 'to call out to'. This is exactly what Malick's characters do, although they never once use the word in direct address of the presence they speak to. Kneeling at the foot of his bed, young Jack goes through his prayers as he's been taught to, but we hear his true thoughts running underneath. 'I wanna see what you see.' Malick's main characters tend to have, deep down, the advantage of a rare freedom from established theology; a freedom to directly question their gods, not only request of or thank them (I must confess I lacked this freedom at his age and didn't look beyond my considered prayers). 'You let a boy die. You let any thing happen. Why should I be good if you're not?'
I suppose any established theistic religion tends to forget the idea of such questions, as they seem to go for ever unanswered, and focus on established assumptions. Malick, though, does a thing that few people have had the courage to do in perhaps a very, very long time by renewing those questions, insisting on them; by once more crying out to the powers that may or may not be. 'What are we to you? Answer me.' And perhaps, at times, answers are not wholely absent. Near the end of 'The New World', chasing her little son through a garden in England, feeling peace at last, Pocahontas seems to find one. 'Mother. Now I know where you live.'
Terrence Malick is the great poet of the cinema, and 'The Tree of Life' may remain his greatest poem. It is, among so many other things, the ultimate family movie. It radiates a holiness of family, draws us closer to those we love most. The over-arching tale of 'The Tree of Life' is simple: A man is lost amid a perplexing life lacking purpose and joy. The tale opens in brokenness as he and his mother and father mourn the loss of his younger brother, the kindest and gentlest of the three sons. Seeking a way from his meaningless toil, a way back to the Eden he once knew, he lays his hand on a tree and witnesses the past and future of himself and of all existence pass before him. Jack - and we, the viewers - begin a search for meaning, for that which is lasting, holy.
I am stunned to learn that Malick himself lost his own younger brother as a young man, for which he largely blames himself, and has borne that guilt and grief for the rest of his life. This explains so much about his films - this one above all - and the depth, meaning and power of it are made so much more profound by this knowledge. 'The Tree of Life' is the product of a tortured man, and what we see in it is not only his philosophical message, but is from his own wounded heart. His own pain is present. We are told artists must suffer for their art, and here Terrence Malick, in his anguish for his little brother he's carried since the late sixties, has made a film which stands among the greatest and most essential of all human art. Jack's vision of the after-life is also more clear in this light; what Malick shows us is not only his belief, but is deeply personally important to him. It is his consolation, his hope.
Above all, the film is wondrous. It instills us with its wonder, its awe of all things, and helps us to better appreciate beauty and goodness when it passes before us; to hold on to it, how ever small or brief. There's a moment in the film that moves me more than film has ever before moved me. One morning, when the boys wake to find their father has gone on a trip, and they're free to romp in the house and tease their mother with a lizard and for once life is as it ought be with them, they run outside laughing with her as 'Les Baricades Misterieuses' plays, and we hear the mother's prayer for her children - for all that live. 'Help each other. Love every one. Every leaf. Every ray of light. Forgive.'
The film has a lot in common with the book of Job from the Bible (which coincidentally is my favorite). Right off the bat it starts off with a quotation, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation...while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" A small first part of the film deals with the results of the death of a son in the O'Brian family which leads to Mrs. O'Brian posing the question to God as to why this happened to them. This of course is what serves to next show us the "Birth of the Universe" sequence referenced in the opening quotation. A stunningly breath taking 22 minutes where we see galaxies and planets form without the use of computer generated imagery. I have to applaud Terrence Malick for hiring Douglas Trumbull to do this the old fashioned way (minus the dinosaurs of course). I can recall about a month ago having a "conversation" with a friend of a friend about recreating something using CGI rather than any other of the old fashioned camera tricks. CGI can be good if you have the money but The Tree of Life again confirms for me that doing things the old fashioned way can yield results that have an authenticity to them that CGI simply can't compete with. I even read a random review where the person said the effects looked and felt more real and solid the way they were done. The music was incredible too and had an epic, cosmic feel to it that gave me goosebumps. The brief dinosaur scene was important to the film too despite some people I had heard laughing at it. In a forest, a young dinosaur cautiously walks around for predators. Later on a riverbank, the dinosaur lies sick. A predator emerges and examines the wounded dinosaur. Preparing for the kill the predator then reconsiders as he watches it struggle against him. The predator wanders off. The point of this is to show that even in nature there is grace, something similar to that which Mrs. O'Brian had stated earlier in the film.
Anyway moving on the core of the film centers on the eldest of the three O'Brian brothers, Jack, as he grows up into adolescence and learns the life lessons and experiences that will mold him later in life. I think this is where Malick is at his best. His style while filming these scenes was to capture a moment, an accident. The results have such a realistic feel to them its hard to believe anybody was actually acting at all. Brad Pitt gives I think his best new performance as the borderline abusive father with overwhelming love for his wife and kids. He occasionally takes out his anger and frustration on them over his current life situation and I guess you could say that's his main character flaw. He represents the nature way of life while his wife, Mrs. O'Brian, played appropriately with angelic grace by Jessica Chastain, represents well, what else, grace. She as a mother is more carefree and forgiving than Mr. O'Brian. Hunter McCracken as young Jack does a fantastic job showing a further and further conflicted young man as he grows older and feels the natural twitches of rebellion that come with adolescence. Sean Penn lastly does well as the older Jack who has lost his faith and is adrift in the modern world. His internal state is wonderfully reflected in the architecture of the city where he works (Dallas, TX). When Jack is young his surroundings are a very simple neighborhood whereas when he is older he is in a large, complex city that one could easily get lost in without a sense of direction. Its amazing how personal some of these scenes were. Little instances like learning how to walk, feeling jealousy at a baby brother being the new center of attention, playing in the street on a summer afternoon, dinner at the table, church on Sundays etc. Simple things we don't notice too much that contain elements that change us into who we are when we are older. All of these are wonderfully recreated and have a human feeling to them that was lacking in Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film most compare this one to for obvious reasons.
I'm sure the none narrative structure of this film threw off most who saw it but you can't read this film like you would a book. To do that will simply frustrate you. I found myself sometimes trying to read it as a narrative only to tell myself to shut up and knock it off. The film is more like visual poetry. Its something you have to surrender to and experience. Doing so actually made me recall something I had read from a letter my Cinema teacher at VCU where I go to college had said many years ago about this sort of thing.
"The metaphor most frequently used to interpret a film is that of a text. (We can thank both the semiotic/linguistic theorists, the genre folks and the pop critics for that.) All start off with a notion that to understand/"read" a film, it must first somehow be "text"... It must be a linguistic code...rational...logical etc. Their job is a task of interpretation, a hermeneutic function based on personal taste which then becomes an act of criticism. But what if the film under discussion was constructed as "event"? What if the filmmakers reject a single authorized reading/interpretation of a film as the "truth" What if the film is not about the intentions of a single author? What if the filmmaker's understanding of how film operates in a social context is informed by a different metaphor than that of text and hence the interpretation of the intentions of an auteur are not relevant? I use "event" as a model for the organization of meaning within the filmic experience. That does not render the film itself as meaningless... but rather, the film itself is designed to allow different paths of interpretation within the event. This allows an audience member to experience and understand/choose from a set of possible interpretations their own meanings. The viewer not the critic or the director becomes central in the creation of meaning within the event. No longer are my narrative "intentions" as director the locus for the "true" interpretation of the event. As such the film-event can then work under another rule... another metaphor other than "text" one that better contours the thing in itself which is cinema."
I certainly think films like The Tree of Life pertain to the above and I can understand why people hate Hollywood for not backing more of these types of films. After The Tree of Life won the Palme d'Or this past May I was very sure and hopeful it would be expanded into many theaters nationwide but sadly it wasn't and I had to seize the opportunity to travel a ways to catch a showing and even then like I said before in a small dump of a theater I never heard of or been to before. Quite the travesty if you loved the film as much as I did.
Some closing thoughts.
I find myself quite annoyed at people who find the film pretentious, As I've said before in the past pretentious is such a knee jerk term these days. It's almost a reflex for somebody to say when something strides for greatness or is just plain different. Ambitious is not pretentious.
I believe the strange light (taken from Thomas Wilfred's "Opus 161" that appears at the beginning and the end and in some intervals in the film is supposed to represent God, the Alpha and Omega. Several shots also show the sun in the sky. At one point Mrs. O'Brian even points there and tells Jack "Thats where God lives."There is even a brief shot of some reflected light on Jacks bedroom wall when he is a baby.
The "Afterlife" sequence at the end is I don't think really the afterlife or a form of Heaven at all. My own personal interpretation is that its Old Jack bringing together all the memories of all the people in or were in his life together reconciling with them. Putting his demons to rest so to speak. That this is juxtaposed with the death of the universe signals the end of something. In this case most likely Jacks inner turmoil. I feel this way about this because after the sequence is over we cut back to Jack riding down the elevator and walking outside where he stops and gives a little bit of a smile, as if he feels reasonably better.
I certainly feel this is easily the best film of the year and that Terrance Malick is a genius but I don't think it will be given the the recognition it deserves come awards season time. Its too artsy for the Hollywood people although of course I could be wrong and pleasantly surprised in a few months or so.
Top reviews from other countries
The quotation from the Book of Job which opens the film is the first clue to what it's all about. As in the Book of Job, some of the most compelling "dialogue" consists of unanswered questions addressed to the mysterious creative spirit behind the universe. Or perhaps we should say that the Creator's answer is the universe itself. We don't see God in the film, but we do see the Creation, rendered with spectacular visual effects to tell a story informed by the cosmological insights of contemporary physics, followed up with the evolution of life on earth, compressed into a few minutes. It's left to the viewer to discern the connections between this cosmic narrative and the story of an ordinary family living in Texas in the 1950s, which is the other subject of the film. It's the members of this family whose disembodied voices whisper the agonizing questions to the unseen Creator in the first part of the film. Then in the latter part, we see where these questions are coming from, especially for the family's eldest son - and in the end, we see the resolution to which all the conflicts and questions lead.
As in Malick's other films, this is all done with a minimum of dialogue between the characters, relying on the visuals (including the actors' expressions), and gloriously evocative music, to tell the story. And as before, Malick takes an idea that has been developing in his imagination for years or decades, and captures it with amazing spontaneity (and almost exclusively with natural light and steadicam). His process, like his product, is quite unique, and it's good to have the illuminating half-hour extra on the blu-ray, in which that process is described by the producers, cast and crew members. Other filmmakers, Christopher Nolan and David Fincher, also testify to the unique quality of Malick's films and the influence he's had on them. (The DVD in this combo pack does not include this "making-of" featurette. I should also mention one oddity of the blu-ray: it offers a soundtrack dubbed in French, but only English subtitles with the English soundtrack.)
In short, i can see why this film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. But i expect i'll be watching it again soon and further exploring the vast world Terrence Malick has rendered in film.
Sans connaître son rapport à la religion ou ses croyances qu'elles soient judéo-chrétienne ou autre, sans parler de l'homme lui-même, Malick a su bel et bien poser une autre emprunte que celle qui consiste à vitrifier ce qui nous entoure tout en reproduisant toujours les mêmes motifs sur nos croyances, nos doutes et nos peurs. Qu'il aborde la guerre, la jeunesse, l'amour, les peuples, la domination, la mort, Malick est un cinéaste immense parce que oui, il nous parle des sujets qui ont construit l'humanité avec ce qu'il sait faire et rien d'autre. Il nous embarque (ou non) avec sa propre grammaire. Tout y est pourtant si familier. Ces oeuvres ne sont jamais écrasantes, supérieures. Nous n'éprouvons jamais ce sentiments d'assister à une démonstration géniale mais froide, prétentieuse ou définitive.
Terrence Malick à l'instar de Bergman, Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos et tant d'autres de ces cinéastes obstinés par les grandes questions comme par exemple d'essayer de comprendre comment fonctionne ce paradoxe entre une haine absolue de l'être humain et de ce qu'il représente et en même temps l'amour sans borne pour cette drôle de créature terrestre. Avec cependant pour Malick le soin de se débarrasser de tout l'arsenal hiératique de ces autres auteurs qui intellectualisaient plus qu'ils ne faisaient ressentir dans leurs films.
Malick ne questionne pratiquement pas. Il laisse les questions aux livres ou aux autres cinéastes qui ont tenté l'approche philosophique. Lui préfère les forces telluriques et il se sert de cet outil qu'est le cinéma pour tenter de nous faire entendre avec surtout les autres sens que le cerveau. Nous rappeler sans cesse d'où nous venons et de quoi nous sommes fait.
Plus précisément, si l'on doit essayer de cataloguer ce cinéaste et son oeuvre, on peut tenter l'analogie avec Hayao Miyazaki, cet autre grand artiste Japonais qui lui oeuvre dans le domaine de l'animation. En effet, ces deux hommes ont toujours mis en avant la Terre dans le sens le plus entier du terme. La nature, tient pour Miyasaki une place impérieuse, écrasante et redoutée, alors que chez Malick, cette nature est en osmose avec l'homme ou du moins sur un pied d'égalité. Par sa signature formelle, tous les films de Malick montrent les arbres, le ciel et tout ce qui nous entoure et dont nous ne sommes pas les créateurs, à un même niveau que l'être humain. En ce sens, Malick évoque un optimisme, de l'espoir.
Les deux hommes ont pourtant le même langage malgré ces deux points de vues culturels.
C'est en fait l'aspect méditatif qui prévaut tout en se risquant à espérer tenir le spectateur plus habitué à cette langueur. Miyasaki et Malick se rejoignent sans doute par la vision chamanique de leurs oeuvres.
The Tree of Life, tel qui l'a été accueilli à sa sortie, dénote, reflète bien le monde dans lequel nous vivons.
Ce sont des ricanements qui ont été les arguments du contre. Aujourd'hui, ce qu'il aborde, prête plus à sourire pour tous ceux qui en ce début du 3 ème millénaire n'ont plus foi en rien. Je ne parle pas forcément de celle religieuse. Où le cynisme est devenu une doctrine et l'individualisme un moyen de diviser et cloisonner les individus, les isoler toujours plus, il est évident que l'on ne peut que rester étranger aux propos d'un tel film, ne pas le comprendre ou l'aborder de manière cauteleuse. Un film qui parle donc surtout de communion.
Ce film qui d'abord se découvre surtout sur grand écran est l'oeuvre la plus ambitieuse de son géniteur. Il est évident qu' à ce stade, on peut détester ou s'ennuyer ferme devant ce que l'on regarde. Il ne s'agit pas de parti pris ou d'une querelle stérile entre ceux qui aurait tout compris à l'oeuvre et les autres qui manque de recul.
Le film interpelle ou non chacun de nous, personnellement, nominativement. Soit on y voit que des images sublimes, sorte de tableaux animés mais vides de sens avec un message post new-age plus du tout en phase avec les préoccupation d'un monde actuel schizophrène qui aurait besoin d'un autre miroir' ou bien alors on est littéralement happé, enveloppé.
The Tree Of Life parle de nous et de ce court passage sur la terre. Malick une fois de plus n'a pas essayer de nous imposer Le Film Définitif, l'oeuvre absolue du maître comme essaye aussi de nous le vendre depuis toujours certains comme pour mieux encore agacé ces détracteurs.
Il a réalisé son film.
Ce n'est pas un film où l'on doit juste contempler, baisser les yeux et dire "amen". C'est un lien, une communication, un dialogue, une voix, un souffle.
... Et c'est beau.
Die Off Stimme des Meisterwerks "Der schmale Grat" stellt dann so gewichtige Fragen wie "Wie kommt das Böse in die Welt ?" oder "Warum tun wir das ?" während ein Massaker an den Japanern stattfindet.
Im Grunde ist Terrence Malicks "Tree of Life" eine konsequente Fortsetzung seines Kriegsepos aus dem Jahr 1998.
Ein Film, der nicht linear erzählt wird, von gängigen Kinomustern extrem abweicht und der es dem konsumierenden Kinozuschauer, der eine Story erwartet nicht leicht macht.
Ein geheimnisvolles schwankendes Licht, gleich einer flackernden Flamme, erscheint in der Dunkelheit. Es ist der Beginn einer Entscheidung zwischen Natur und Gnade.
Mitte der 60er Jahre erhält Mrs. OŽBrien (Jessica Chastain) die Nachricht vom Tod ihres 19jährigen Sohnes. Mr. OŽBrien (Brad Pitt) erhält von seiner Frau die Nachricht per Telefon.
Ein Zeitsprung in die Jetztzeit: Architekt Jack (Sean Penn) aus Houston ist der älteste Sohn der 0ŽBriens und befindet sich in einem kalten Gebäude. Vor diesem Hochhaus wird ein Baum gepflanzt, dies weckt in ihm Erinnerungen an seine Kindheit im texanischen Waco.
Bilder des Urknalls und die Entstehung des Lebens auf der Erde werden gezeigt, die von einer flüsternden Stimme und einer tranceartigen, meditativen oder klassischen Klavier Musik begleitet wird.
Das Universum entsteht, dann Planeten und Galaxien. Die Erde bildet sich, Vulkane brechen aus und es beginnen sich Mikroben zu bilden. Ein Elasmosaurus mit einer großen, blutenden Wunde, blickt vom Strand aufs Meer hinaus. Am Ufer eines Flußes liegt ein verwundeter Parasaurolophus, ein Raubsaurier hat ihn entdeckt und zur Beute deklariert. Doch er lässt Gnade walten und verschont das verletzte Tier im letzten Augenblick.
Die Geschichte geht weiter in der Erinnerung von Jack, der sich in seiner Kindheit in den 50er Jahren befindet und mit seinen beiden jüngeren Brüdern dort aufwächst.
Die gütige, sanfte, liebende Mutter repräsentiert die Gnade, der strenge, autoritäre und nicht immer beherrschte Vater die Natur.
Eine surreale Trance liegt über diesen Erinnerungen an die Familie. Die Schilderungen wirken leicht entrückt und nach und nach zieht sich das oberflächlich Unbeschwerte zurück und weicht etwas immer mehr Bedrohlichem.
Jack (Hunter McCracken) streift bald mit seinen Brüdern (Tye Sheridan, Laramie Eppler) in seinen Erinnerungen durch die Nachbarschaft, wirft Scheiben ein, schiesst Frösche mit einer selbst gebastelten Rakete in die Luft. Sein kindlicher Blick wird zunehmend verschlagener und düsterer, er quält seinen jüngeren Bruder.
Er fühlt sich mit seinen neuen Erfahrungen über Gewalt irgendwie schuldig, diese Energien sind weit entfernt von dem liebenden Prinzip, dass seine Mutter für ihn bedeutet.
Malick lässt einen unablässigen Bilderstrom auf den Zuschauer los, der Film folgt den Gesetzen eines Traumes, im Grunde Bilder vom Verlust der Unschuld und von der Suche diese wiederzufinden.
Und eine Erkenntniss, dass individuelle Entscheidungen Veränderungen herbeiführen.
Es ist ein Versuch, das ganze Dasein, den ganzen Kosmos genauso zu fassen wie das intimste Detail eines Lebens, Mikrokosmos und Makrokosmos.
In Cannes gabs dafür die Goldene Palma, aber auch Buh-Rufe. So gesehen sind diese weit auseinandergehenden Beurteilungen eine Fortsetzung der Wirkung.
Denn der Film ist tatsächlich sperrig und anstrengend.
Aber gelungen, wie ich finde. Vor allem habe ich bemerkt, dass die Schilderungen dieser Kindheit auch bei mir bewirkten, dass eigene Gedanken an früher wieder abgerufen werden konnten.
Allein dafür ein paar Sterne, denn eine "Meditation über das Leben" empfinde ich wertvoll. Malick hat eine Collagenform gewählt mit gewaltigen Bildern und fantastischer Musik. Am Ende war ich erschöpft, was nicht bei vielen Filmen der Fall ist, aber die Stimmung, die der Film auf mich hatte, ist jetzt einige Tage später immer noch präsent.
Es ist halt eine Frage, ob man sich darauf einlassen kann oder nicht.
Filmische Verwandte hat ich nicht nur in "2001" ausgemacht, sondern vor allem in Gaspar Noes "Enter the void" oder in Aronofskys "The Fountain".
Malicks Arbeit scheint mir aber die monumentalste zu sein.
Religiös fand ich den Film nicht, aber er war auf jeden Fall spirtiuell und ich habe das Gefühl, dass "Tree of Life" etwas ganz besonderes war und somit jetzt schon ein Klassiker dieses neuen Kinojahrzehnts