The Tree of Life

If nothing else, the trailer suggest that it'll look gloriously good again. Though that's hardly a surprise with Malick at the helm.
Even though I don't like Pitt - at least not in any serious roles - there's enough in there for me to want to see this opening weekend. :)

I'm not a fan of this trailer, at all. But unlike Von Trier's MELANCHOLIA, I doubt this will be another exercise in épater le bourgeois.

Sharky wrote:

I'm not a fan of this trailer, at all. But unlike Von Trier's MELANCHOLIA, I doubt this will be another exercise in épater le bourgeois.

Oh, it's not going to be a provocation; Malick does not share Von Trier's taste for stunt-art. But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm more and more convinced that this film will be nevertheless pretty daft and pretentious, albeit perhaps elevated by formal/stylistic virtuosity (that said, the visual style for this film, glimpsed in the trailer and stills, seems to be that of "inspirational" posters and holiday cards).

Dear lord, the amount of cynics on this forum is off the chart. If even the prospect of a Malick movie can't garner a little bit of excitement... Even his relative failures (The New World) are aesthetically pleasing.

My main concern is the casting choices, which is something that also ruined The Thin Red Line. Of course, it's a bit of a catch 22. I'm sure he requires at least one bankable star to get his financing, but Penn and Pitt is likely to be more a detriment than an asset. We will see I suppose...

Well, Malick's previous works have my respect. It's just this one that I'm pretty dubious about.

Salomé wrote:

Dear lord, the amount of cynics on this forum is off the chart. If even the prospect of a Malick movie can't garner a little bit of excitement...

Malik was a respected name in the 1970s but soon he will be nothing more than a footnote in film history.

Quote :

But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm more and more convinced that this film will be nevertheless pretty daft and pretentious, albeit perhaps elevated by formal/stylistic virtuosity (that said, the visual style for this film, glimpsed in the trailer and stills, seems to be that of "inspirational" posters and holiday cards).

Is this your spidey sense, Harms? I'm not aware of any clips or early reviews yet, so you must have just watched the trailer again, and again... and again.

ambler wrote:

Salomé wrote:

Dear lord, the amount of cynics on this forum is off the chart. If even the prospect of a Malick movie can't garner a little bit of excitement...

Malik was a respected name in the 1970s but soon he will be nothing more than a footnote in film history.

The THIN RED LINE and THE NEW WORLD say otherwise.

I'm looking forward to it, and I'm very annoyed that Icon appear to have ballsed up the UK release. I have The New World sitting about on Blu-ray currently, so should probably get to that soonish. I thought The Thin Red Line was excellent, and easily on par with Badlands at least - Days of Heaven is admittedly his masterpiece, as things stand.

I fail to see this giant schism between Mallick's older and newer works, that ambler clearly does.

ambler wrote:

Salomé wrote:

Dear lord, the amount of cynics on this forum is off the chart. If even the prospect of a Malick movie can't garner a little bit of excitement...

Malik was a respected name in the 1970s but soon he will be nothing more than a footnote in film history.

Perhaps, only time will tell. I'd like to think Badlands and Days of Heaven will stand the test of time. He's not the only great director who had his apex in the 1970s, though most of his peers still managed some decent output in the 1980s and 1990s.

Sharky wrote:

I fail to see this giant schism between Mallick's older and newer works, that ambler clearly does.

To me it's clearly there.

But I didn't leave the theater after seeing Thin Red Line and the New World regretting I had seen either movie. It's not as if he's suddenly turned into a hack. Like Scorcese, he's no longer at the top of his game, but he still makes movies worth seeing. For grown-ups even...

Salomé wrote:

Sharky wrote:

I fail to see this giant schism between Mallick's older and newer works, that ambler clearly does.

To me it's clearly there.

But I didn't leave the theater after seeing Thin Red Line and the New World regretting I had seen either movie. It's not as if he's suddenly turned into a hack. Like Scorcese, he's no longer at the top of his game, but he still makes movies worth seeing.

Strongly disagree there. In humble onion, all of Scorcese's pictures from the last decade are instantly skippable, complacent fare. Little to no redeeming features, beyond interesting musical choices. Even then, you'd be better off buying the soundtracks.

I found the Aviator and Shutter Island well worth seeing.

Sharky wrote:

Is this your spidey sense, Harms? I'm not aware of any clips or early reviews yet, so you must have just watched the trailer again, and again... and again.

Nope. Grounded in something more concrete. I've only seen the trailer once or twice.

I saw the trailer recently and my first and strongest reaction was "This is possibly the most pretentious thing I have ever seen."

Well, I may have been wrong. The first reviews are certainly interesting. Here's one from the FT.

Quote :

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e13ad924-7fe3-11e0-b018-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1MY3kIH00

And on the sixth day, God came to the Croisette
By Nigel Andrews

Published: May 16 2011 18:58

It was like Wimbledon or the January sales. At the 64th Cannes Film Festival the hot-ticket competition film, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, was besieged from early morning. There were fights with festival bags; near-lynchings of queue jumpers; and, inside, desperate scrambles for empty seats. The Germans were accused of having got there early and planted towels, jackets or anything to hand. The Russians and Chinese got into a border fight in and around row F. . .

What a reputation this man now has. Like God, Malick commands the world. Like God he wasn’t here: that would be too mundane. (Faithful to his Kubrickian reclusiveness, he stayed in America.) Like God he has a primal, absolute vision, insist his fans, pointing to Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World.

Well, The Tree of Life, after growing and leafing for 140 minutes, and alternating eye-ravishing images with mind-bemusing mysticism, received a mixed volley of boos and cheers. Visually the film, to re-invoke Kubrick, is a 2001 for 2011. Images of planets, cosmic clouds, spacescapes, bubbling volcanoes, meteors bombarding Earth into first life, even dinosaurs. If God created the world in six days and rested on Sunday, Malick gave us the action replay on Monday: the first and only Monday of Cannes. How appropriate is that? If the Mayan calendar is right – and Malick the mythomane probably believes that too – it will be the last Cannes Monday of all.

Between the creation sequences there’s a human story, of sorts, themed around nature-versus-grace. Stern patriarch Brad Pitt’s children grow up in 1950s Texas, learning pioneer toughness (dad), love (mum) and life’s battle between the two. In a near-modern city – in the bookending scenes – the oldest child has grown up to become Sean Penn. He surveys the tottering towers of Meltdown America. Does he now understand? Do we understand as Penn consorts time-defyingly – there’s a lot of that – on a surreal, semi-heavenly beach where his loved ones gather?

I hated the God overtones. Heavenly choirs are un-shut-uppable on the soundtrack; Pitt is a spare-time organist; Old Testament symbolism arrives in truckloads (Cain and Abel brothers, Edenic castings-out). But – with Malick there’s always a but – in style terms this filmmaker occupies the right kind of alternative universe. The ellipses, epiphanies and grace-notes of sound and image are stunning. A character dances in air; a boy swims from an underground bedroom (he is being born); towering moss-hung trees are explored by a soaring weightless camera; dialogue floats disembodied like pollen . . . 

This is how screen stories should be told in an age ready to lift off into aesthetic space. There are moments of cinematic near-ecstasy. Like Kubrick, Malick knows the right classical music to raid for the right moment. Smetana’s Má Vlast surges gloriously over a child’s opening-up vision of the world. The film’s picture of childhood is finally its greatest strength. Childhood’s fears and dreams; its antic fantasies of self and otherness (shadows here dance with their own life); its delight in nature and nascent awareness that savage will and tender grace are, and always will be, the ultimate, all-shaping sibling rivals.

I saw this trailer about a week ago and I do want to see it. I'm different to you though Oppers - I really prefered Brad Pitt in Ben Button, Legends of the Fall and Inglourious Basterds as opposed to Mr and Mrs Smith kind of roles