The Tree of Life
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken, Fiona Shaw
Summary: A film explores the meaning of life on a micro and macro level. A man looks back at his past and thinks about his relationship with his father.
100-Word Review: I’m sure this film has a lot of deep, profound things to say about masculinity, fatherhood, and stereotypes, and the way our family and our society shape our lives. You’ll have to go elsewhere for a deeper analysis of those issues, because I couldn’t stay awake through this movie. The stylized, impressionistic nature of this film never managed to grab my attention no matter how much I tried. Brad Pitt’s performance was very good and perhaps the most subtle work I’ve seen him do, and Terence Malick should make nature documentaries instead of films that have any sort of narrative.
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Y’know after reading one of your FB commenters talking about how the family story spoke to the experiences of a *certain kind* of family I realized that is exactly why this movie does not work for me, in that I think Malick is trying to equate, or at least elide the universal meaning of creation/life with the experience of a *certain kind of family*, and while I can see that at least at some level he is also critiquing it, it still depends largely on ones ability to accept the psychic Eddie Vedder tea cup smashing pain of the upper middle class TEXAS christian white guy (or girl), as some kind of universal touch tone. Which I find to be, problematic to say the least. Bad Daddies – Goddess Earth Mommies is just so so so ….trite.
Of course at the same time I thought the Honky Troubles Ice Storm was one of the most amazing movies speaking to universal feelings of disconnection and alienation, but that’s because I think it was a savage satire of the *certain kind of family* stuff.
while I can see that at least at some level he is also critiquing it, it still depends largely on ones ability to accept the psychic Eddie Vedder tea cup smashing pain of the upper middle class TEXAS christian white guy (or girl), as some kind of universal touch tone.
I love your way of summing up a point so succinctly and wittily at the same time.
I don’t know if Malick meant for the bad dad/goddess earth mom trope to be a universal truth since all those scenes seemed to be filmed from the perspective of l’il Sean Penn’s character – maybe it was just supposed to be “universal creation of life” paralleled with “this particular family’s version of life.” But it still didn’t really work for me.