BEST FILMS OF 2011 #2
2. THE TREE OF LIFE (Terrence Malick)
It takes a certain breed of person to be able to enjoy, even on a basic level, The Tree of Life, the fifth film from noted auteur Terrence Malick, for some inexplicable reason the first I’ve seen. One has to be a devout disciple of film and all its inner-workings, you must be the type of person, like I am, who is sexually simulated by thrilling editing patterns and gorgeous sound calibration. Tree of Life also demands you are someone who wants to intellectualize everything around you, analyzing for levels upon levels of meaning no matter how absurd. You can’t be someone who has ever said “this might be going too far” in an English class. And thirdly, Tree of Life requires you to be a highly emotional person, someone willing to throw out their own intellectualizing logic in favor of the grandiose and melodramatic. Someone who lives by film, who thinks with feeling, who feels with thinking.
As insinuated, The Tree of Life asks a lot of its viewers, and depending on what you’re looking for, you might be disappointed. The story this film is especially attached to, that of a troubled family in the 1950s, is not slight by any means but relatively pedestrian; the best thematic grace notes feel vaguely plagiarized from Steinbeck’s East of Eden. But the style….oh lord the style. I believe that in this life if you’re not fully supporting the ambitious, whatever flaws it may have, you’re not really being a good person. And Malick’s vision is nothing if not ambitious, with the creation of the earth, power struggles amongst dinosaurs, volcanoes, towering 21st century skyscrapers, and the beaches of heaven compounding the stylish 50s tale. All of it set to glorious music, some from Alexandre Desplat, some a gorgeous sampling of Mahler, John Tavener, and most importantly, Zbigniew Preisner, whose “Lacrimosa” from Requiem for My Friend accompanies the creation of the Earth. Malick’s story is about the creation of morality, the development of humankind to its current position, how to wrestle with history, how the world as we know it has created this exact moment, how this exact moment creates every bit of the future. Such abstract ideas and notions, cemented beautifully by a very powerful directorial hand, making this film feel like something of a divine visitation. Emmanuel Lubezki crushes any lingering doubt that he isn’t the most skilled cinematographer today, with a film filled to the brim with immortal images. The cast is far more on then they need to be in such a film of atmosphere and cinematic effect, with Hunter McCracken, Brad Pitt, and Jessica Chastain giving excellent performances.
Like I’ve said before, it’s a film that requires both heavy intellectual trust and a willingness to get swept up in a tide of wailing, over-saturated emotion. And, if it needed to be said, it outclasses its fellow Best Picture Oscar nominees by a pretty ridiculous length. I can’t help but rescind my earlier statement and recommend it to everyone, everywhere, for such a sheer jolt of artistry is uncommon, rapturous, and spell-binding.
Notes
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morgan-leigh said:
Be sure to check out The Thin Red Line & The New World if you haven’t - v. similar (incredible) style, more/better substance, I think (particularly the former). But I’m a bit biased since the religious material in ToL didn’t sit well with me.
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