[critical] The Tree Of Life

Jack grows between father authoritarian, obsessed with the success of her children, and a loving mother who gives her faith in life.

Author’s Note

[rating:9/10]

• Release Date : may 17, 2011

• Directed by Terrence Malick

• Film american

• With Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn

• Duration : 2h18min

• Trailer :

Terrence Malick is the new Kubrick : rare in the halls (this is his 5th movie only 35 years), as outside, it maintains the myth of the misunderstood genius living as a hermit (he never gives interviews, never allows himself to be photographed and even been selected for Cannes, it shines by its absence). Each of his works is therefore expected with an impatience hardly be contained by any film buff who respects himself (or simply evil of legend since the death of his illustrious predecessor, ick).

The problem with the film expected (and it is rather the case here, the film is mounted on a 3 years old and already announced on the Croisette last year), it is that disappointment is often proportional to the expectation. Unless you are dealing with a genius, which compiles all of its know-how and book his masterpiece. At least that is what they will think the half of the spectators, the other half shouting to the theft, to the assumption or even the ridiculous, as is the case with all the films a little bit ambitious. Lovers of storytelling and narration is structured, go your way, you’ll be bored to death (a few chairs are slammed before the end of the session). Also, turn off that computer, grab a good book, make up your own images… and do we get more le.

Terrence Malick does not illustrate flatly a story written by a writer cunning which tries to make us forget that he uses strings worn… up to the rope. No, it puts in scene a poem, digging a little more the furrow lyrical sketched with his previous film, The new world. Like in a poem, you don’t understand three quarters of what tells the author, but it is enough of a verse to touch us more deeply and leave us a memory for life. One can then dissect what it has just swallowed and to make the theories more outlandish than the others, on the meaning of the words of the author, such as David Lynch wants us to do to each one of his films.

The poet, here, we book the plans sublime (if it is to achieve this outcome, we forgive him for putting so much time to fiddle with his films), particularly in the first half-hour, which gives in the great. One quickly feels that one is in front of a movie which will be referred to throughout the Twenty-first century, an instant classic. A pure aesthetic pleasure : take the best plans of Home (without the voice-over teaching to a mustache), the stylization extreme of The fall (where each plan is a table), travel, mystics of The fountain or Enter the void, and you’ll get an idea of the spectacle offered (before going to see them in the theatres, of course). We even offer the plans that the technology of the era was denied in 2001 : a space odyssey (where we could not help but see the mountains land recolorisées rather than real “other worlds” in the final psychedelic) immersing ourselves in the depths of space, until the big bang ! When he returns to Earth, it is to show us the dinosaurs : It is the delirium of staging ! Efficient dialogues, it is here that the most pure of cinema : a universal language, able to evoke emotion with images more than with words.

Subsequently, the ambition decreases somewhat, the dreams of grandeur of the filmmaker, leaving room for a story intimate tightened around a family in an american suburb of the 50’s. The kind of story that can be found in 3 French films per week, except that here, instead of a camera sad, and a flat image, or even play a father with his children, and a garden hose gives us almost the most beautiful of the year. The father in question is played by Brad Pitt (who confirms his attraction to projects of this scale after The Strange story of Benjamin Button, and have long been associated with The fountain), which will become more and more violent vis-à-vis his family, among others, by excess of ambition, artistic (I leave it to you to ask you if it represents Malick or even God) for his children. The mother, the perfect trophy wife sweet and fragile bringing a little more of poetry with its whiteness diaphanous, is played by Jessica Chastain, but redhead. The eldest son, whose anger is rising against his father, and his bullying, will be in him cracks up to adulthood where he will be played by Sean Penn. Don’t go see the movie for him, although his name appears in 2nd in the credits, it cannot be seen as two minutes, enriching a tradition malickienne (it was not longer George Clooney or John Travolta in The red line) and maintaining a certain level of frustration (that of the spectator and that of the main party, it seems).

From the beginning, the voice-over is opposed by the nature and the grace. This last, she said, leads to loneliness, insults, and injuries (which will happen as it already happened before, Kubrick, Aronofsky, or Noah). Malick, a great lover of nature, was nevertheless touched by the thanks for this new ufo metaphysical. Still a Palm ignored ?