Saturday, December 10, 2022

The Tree of Life Movie

 

Acclaimed director Terrence Malick’s (The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven, Badlands) two hour and twenty minute long coming of age story about two brothers growing up in 1950’s Texas and their difficult family relationships has only a cursory connection with what mystics and qabalists of the Jewish mystery schools would consider The Tree of Life.(Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki)

It is instead a slow, meandering pseudo-art film realized with subtle, subjective cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity, The Revenant, Birdman) and spare, period production design from Jack Fisk (The Revenant, There Will be Blood and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive) lending it a sense of mood, personal drama and a kind of nostalgic self-importance.

Despite having very little to do with anybody’s rendition of The Tree Of Life (as a religious or philosophical construct, at least), Malick delivers a genuinely sublime experience that includes deep forays into the characters’ imaginations and formative experiences. These include flashbacks and some epic sequences of cosmic and prehistoric events that give texture to the existential treatment of the narrative in a way that superficially appears to deliver meaning. Make no mistake, and this is an illusion.

The plot is an insipid invitation to stay well within your safety zone. The film does nothing truly experimental that has not been done before, better and more meaningfully in a short film or an actual art film. Hollywood congratulates itself while reinforcing the white, middle-class, mainstream status quo.

Touted as a drama/fantasy, this fairly mundane popular art film is low-key. Using its restrained, slow and somewhat naturalistic style, it tries to illicit feelings of childhood and convey a kind of innocence and honesty that has ‘Oscar bait’ written all over it. Purportedly biographical, the film is not especially clever, not incredibly insightful and not especially interesting. It is, however, undeniably beautiful and well-shot.

Apparently, it worked as intended, and in 2011 it scooped the Palme d’or at Cannes and then went on to be nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography. The movie, The Tree of Life is beautiful for no reason other than charming and inoffensive.

 Thanks http://www.tasteofcinema.com/

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