June 4, 2011
The Tree of Life
At the end of two and a quarter hours of people fucking their mouths with popcorn, during one of the most visually poetic movies I have seen, a third of the audience laughed. If you would like to know what I said to them, we can talk about it in comments. I’m pretty sure it will be a long time before I see a movie I care about in public again.
comments
Leave a Reply
My pulse rate just rocketed, Deron. Your anger is a thing that I have felt and which I know.
I lost a lot of faith in people tonight.
That is a dreadful feeling.
It was awful. It went on two and a quarter hours, the entire theater packed. People squirming in their inability to feel, eating as much as they could, sucking their straws, and then the laughter.
For some reason I just thought of an enormous blood-gorged tick fixing to pop.
A blood engorged tick would have been more thoughtful.
I am utterly bewildered as to what these people thought they were paying to see. And why.
It was unbelievable the inconsiderateness of people.
Shaking my head. I know that people can be stupid sheep, but what would draw a bunch of yahoos to a Terrence Malick film? I really don’t get it.
And I’m really sorry you two had to endure the pain.
Brad Pitt, I guess. I said some interesting things once the laughter started.
Ugh. Did you get into an actual argument or anything? The rudeness of others is something that really gets my blood boiling. I find it really really difficult to pretend I don’t care. I once nearly got my ass kicked (or worse) by a crazy guy at a gas station when I pointed out that he has just cut ahead of about a dozen people in line. He completely ignored me at the cash register (didn’t even look at me) and I actually assumed he was deaf or mentally challenged or someone. After we paid our respective cashiers, he followed me out in the parking lot and said “so where does the back of the line start again, asshole?” and nearly prevented me from getting in my car and safely leaving. I can still feel the outrage, the fear, etc.
So yeah, the last time I was at a movie I felt like yelling at all the kids talking on their cell phones and making noise, and then figured avoiding conflict would be better. Or maybe Netflix would be better.
The first thing I said was, What the fuck is wrong with you people? Then I said, You should go home and think about who you are. Then I said, You should be ashamed of yourselves. Then some guy yelled, Go Mavs!
Jesus H Fucking Christ on a Raft. On the Godforsaken Raft of the Medusa.
I do want to say it’s not a perfect movie, but the moments it accumulates to do something I’m not sure I have ever seen or felt in a film before. It transcends itself in ways that are stunning and fragile. It is breathtaking in its best moments.
Yep.
Yeah, I’ve not expected I’ll actually think it is an unimpeachable masterpiece, but I anticipate something like what you’ve just described.
Oh. And what I meant by “your anger is a thing that I have felt and which I know” is “I have felt something like the anger that you felt tonight.”
You know what feels good? To be able to come back here and talk about it. The reaction of the audience aside, the movie is heartbreaking. It pushes through its imperfections to places where it accumulates into something, like I said, that I have never quite seen before.
I appreciate it, Sheila. I got you.
That’s what we’re here for.
I really loved it when a woman said, “Thank God it’s over” really loudly. I’m glad she was at the back and that I didn’t see who she was.
I am so sorry. I am relentlessly picky about the theaters I’ll go to, exactly for this reason. San Francisco offers quite a lot for cinemaphiles. Combining what you’ve told me about Dallas and Dallas folk with the design and social construction of movie theaters, I can understand your hesitancy to ever see a movie in public again.
It was even at a fucking ‘art’ house.
Ugh. Really? Damn.
Go Mavs!
Something similar happened to me at The American, though not so severe, of course. Lots of “oh my god that was so boring” comments at the end. I was kind of moved.
Casey, that movie looked visually interesting. Was it good?
Visually interesting, yes and had a terrific mood, for lack of a better term. I think people expected a Clooney action thriller, which it was not. I thought it was quite good.
Many people seem to want the world to be a constant confirmation of what they already know–even as they go through a lifetime of activities. I know the stink of that falsely confident camaraderie of fools. It’s the same people who will watch horrors committed and look the other way.
I’m looking forward to seeing this film. It interests me for the same reasons you describe here. I think I’ll see it at home though!
I wish Cindy had been there. I’m good for bail.
I don’t think I’ve gone to a movie on a Friday or Saturday night in 20 or 30 years. The only time I’ll go to the movies is the first show on a Sunday – often 10 or 11am. Even on first run weekends, almost empty theaters, maybe a couple dozen people max. A few times, I was alone.
And for something like Malick’s film, you know your fellow audience members are there for the movie…not for the popcorn and a night out.
Frank, that is exactly what I’m thinking that I need to start doing. Maybe I’ll take a day off during the week and go to a matinee.
That’s what I was going to say as well. I assumed venue would trump clientele, but Saturday night mindlessness won out.
Daryl, I wish Cindy had been there as well.
I’m so glad the Iowan wasn’t there. With Deron’s commentary and an incensed, “Hey! Cut it out! We’re trying to LISTEN over here” things might not have ended well at all.
I’m so sorry Deron. I felt so strongly that you would really love the movie and at very least find it interesting given the cinematography and subject matter and Texas connections. I’m sorry everyone robbed you of that.
I saw it at the Arclight which is a fancy place we should go sometime whenever anyone is in LA. Someone whispered once, something giggly near the end. That was the only noise. And a man got up and left the theatre and came back. There was only probably 15 people there on a Thursday afternoon.
I saw Blue Velvet once with a bunch of people and everyone roared with laughter through the rape scene. No one can be trusted. I don’t mean this to sound braggy, but I’ve gotten used to seeing movies at screening rooms surrounded with complete silence sitting in immensely comfortable chairs with no one eating anything. It makes it hard to re-enter the world.
It is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen, really lovely. Malick’s ability to capture spontaneity had me calling my cinematographer and telling him he had to see the film so we could change our whole shot list.
I think it is a testament to the film that I was till able to feel it. I will see it again. It is remarkable.
And you were right, Amanda. Thank you.
I liked the American quite a bit, but it suffered from being incorrectly marketed. They cut together a trailer that had the only moments of movement in a silently methodical film and made it seem one way when it wasn’t. False advertising. Still lovely. I love Anton Corbijn from ‘Control’ and his directing style is still very interesting to me, he strikes me as a photographer more than a stylized director, kind of in the way Kubrick was.
Oh, Deron and Amy, I’m so sorry you had to experience that. I wish I’d been there, too. It would have been a night many people would remember for the rest of their lives.
Frank is exactly right. I learned long ago never to see any film worth seeing on a date night. We see almost everything as a matinee, preferably on a weekday. The worst we generally have to put up with is people using the theatre as a cool place to take a nap. I’ll take that over aggressive stupidity any day.
The sad thing is you want to see a film like this with an appreciative audience. You want to experience it with a room full of silent strangers. I wanted that. I still do.
Yes. That feeling of belonging to a community is what we want as members of an audience. Ideally.
Oh, and Amae? Your observation re: Kubrick (and Corbijn)? Especially sweet in light of my having watched (for the umpteenth time) a portion of “Dr. Strangelove” the other night and made an observation about Kubrick’s apprenticeship as a photojournalist.
I could watch a film with you.
What a compliment!
We would watch a Tarkovsky.
Deron, which showing did you see? We were at the 5:15pm show at the Angelika (Dallas) yesterday and had a similar experience, although not so bad that it ruined it for me. A young guy threw his hands in the air and said “Yes!” when he thought the movie was over, and then groaned when there was another minute left. There was bit of squirming and then laughing during one particular sequence, you probably know which one.
I cried for almost the whole movie. I was exhausted after.
And here I thought I was just becoming a crotchety old man for feeling the same way; hating seeing movies in multiplexes with crowds of people talking and texting and chewing. Glad to know I’m not alone.
In a bit of overpriced spontaneity, I decided to fly down to LA to see the film Friday at the Arclight Hollywood with a friend who is down there. It was a pretty great experience. Most people were—like me—sitting silently with their mouths open out of awe (not popcorn). Also Jeff Goldblum was there.
It’s a truly beautiful film. The thing about it that I still can’t shake is how all of the small scenes of life and boyhood and growing up—scenes of ephemera, not important milestones—so completely captured and brought back the memories of my childhood that I’ve forgotten. Little things, like the feeling of sparkler sparks landing on my bare feet on the 4th of July, or that time I came home early from school for some reason I can’t remember and sat in my mom’s lap for the afternoon looking out at the back yard.
Contemplating a train ride to San Francisco to see it again this week. It’s not at the local art house here until later this month.
Susan, we were at the 8:15. If you were there you would have heard me yelling at the audience at the end. Yelling maybe isn’t the right word. But I wasn’t quiet about it. It sounds like our experience was yours times a hundred. The squirming was constant. The unsettledness. The confusion.
Tim, I wish I had your experience.
Cindy and I went to the 2:15 showing today. We haven’t been that moved by a film in years. It’s just beautiful. Like Tim said, it’s the showing of bits and edges of days and places that does more than any conventional approach could. The smallest moments are full, and the most simple objects hold great presence. I wept at many points in the film. Also, like Deron said, there are some flaws in it (the religious symbolism gets a little too heavy at the end, and I’m not sure that the dinosaur part fully succeeds)–but we are ready to see it again. Its gravity is still in me, turning.
We sat in our favorite seats at the top back row. I heard one shithead down at the front laugh and make a disparaging comment, but I couldn’t get down there fast enough to kick him in the jimmie.
I will say that the packed house at today’s showing was perfectly quiet for the entire film. No fidgeting that I could see. One older couple left quietly about 45 minutes into the film, and that was fine. People were not rude. Only at the very end did I realize that at least half of the audience couldn’t wait for the film to end–they whispered to each other and bolted. But the other half just sat there, as we did, and watched the credits, unable to talk or move.
Daryl, I will go ahead and say the dinosaur part was a mistake, and the sequence it was in went on too long and turned part of the audience. I thought it was beautiful though; I love the piece by Zbigniew Preisner that accompanied it.
The thing is, if you want to see this movie, you should see it in the theater. The music is fantastic (I am a big classical music fan) and the visual pieces so real (how do you get a toddler to act?). I’m not sure I would have reacted as I did to a DVD. Just maybe wait a couple of weeks until all the kids tell all their friends it sucked.
I’m glad y’all saw it. I’m glad y’all had a better experience.
Susan, thanks for chiming in here. I’ve seen you comment a few times before, and it’s always added to the conversation.
Susan– yep, I liked the idea of the dinosaur part, but I got the feeling that argument is what kept it in, and that’s often not good since good argument can mask the lack of actual effect. For me the major problem was with the scene in which the baby Parasaurolophus is being held down by the Velociraptor (I’m not 100% sure of the species). What is being suggested–that the predator rubbed his chin for a moment of existential reflection and decided to let a free meal go? If so–no. But I love the bringing in of the whole span of the universe. The light is splendid throughout the film.
I ended up thinking it’s weaknesses contributed somehow.
Regardless, when it connected it went right through and expanded. It hurt and helped in exactly the same way.
I had a long talk with Amanda today via IM and got to talk about what I loved so much. Some small things that were important to me were the boys’ accents. How they were Texas accents the way a real one comes and goes. Is there and isn’t. I knew those boys. I grew up with them. Also the menace and gentleness. The fullness and fragility. The way they loved their mother and treated her poorly. The single moment of race in the film and how transparent and permeating it was. I want to say a dozen other things at least.
“Mother. Father. Always you wrestle inside me. Always you will.”
Oh, Deron. I doubt the wrestling will stop.
At least for me.
It’s one of the key moments in the movie.
I was fine with absolutely everything in the film up to the last 10 minutes. The heavy-handedness and easy symbolism of the ending disappointed me in ways I’m still thinking about. I do think I understand why Malick decided to approach it that way–it’s very much in keeping with the way most people tie off their deepest questions. But I would have very much preferred an ending more in keeping with the way uncommon people come to such things–without any resolution at all.
I’m not sure the ending has to be read that way, which may be my way of offsetting the disappointment I felt if it is. I think the son coming down in the elevator at the end leaves the possibility of that as fantasy, as parable, as hope. I need to think of it that way.
The ending was an answer to all the whispered questions and pleas throughout the film. I might have preferred it to be my answer, but I think this ending was very natural given the people who were asking the questions.
I see the whispered questions as the questions anyone would ask, not simply the characters at hand. If I view this film as following a direct narrative arc that’s concerned only with the specific behaviors of its characters, I’ll have a shitload harder time reconciling the dinosaur scenes and pretty much everything else that’s remarkable about the film.
Another aspect of a problem one might find with the ending is the contrast between original perspective that generates living symbols, and conventional symbols at the end that seem to reach for recognition. I’m speaking of shores (being ferried across), doorways (stepping through to the other side), a field of sunflowers, the family reunion in the hereafter…. After so much that was remarkably original this portion seemed to be a kind of fall-back position with respect to imagery.
P.S. I still love the film and am eternally grateful for the making of it–the courage it took to push for it.
I still keep thinking about the son coming down on the elevator and the look on his face at the end.
I’m definitely going to go see it again. Who’s in?
Can we rent out the theater?
Yes, I recognize that device that brings the subjective world of a character into the realm of constructed imagery that went before. And an argument can be made that supports the efficacy of narrowing the focus to the inner world of a specific character. But then a point of view problem arises, in that an omniscient perspective has ruled throughout the film (geologic and cosmological time). I don’t mind having Sean Penn pull the drawstring. I don’t even mind skillful shifts in point of view. What I think of though, whether it’s in films or in writing, is that the creator is responsible for the full range of connotations and effects–not just the intended ones. Everything done in this film can still be done; it’s a matter of aesthetic problem solving–of finding that slightly different image that does what you want while avoiding the potential drawbacks.
We’re in.
I wasn’t intending to argue for a shift from the omniscient to the subjective — although there were moments throughout that made it possible to see the micro through the macro: the mother’s grief through the volcanic tumult, the internal fusion of the sun. I do think it’s possible to imagine the living and dead mingled in memory with versions of themselves, or a place beyond memory, being undercut by the few scenes that came after. At least, I hoped that was what I was seeing.
But I guess that is arguing for a shift from the omniscient to the subjective.
I saw it at the Arclight in Hollywood as well. How funny to share time and space with you, Tim.
I loved the dinosaurs. So bold.
Just saw it with Kelsey. I really liked the creation of the universe/dinosaur portion of the film (it was spoiled only by the woman behind me whispering what she was seeing to her partner. Yeah, no shit it’s a jellyfish, I wanted to say). I also want to echo what other people said about the ending. Kinda laid it on thick, especially with how angelic the mother was.
By the way, we also saw it at an “art house” cinema, and I think that was part of the problem. The big cineplexes turn the volume up much louder and that drowns out most of the squirming and commentary. I have never been more aware of someone trying to get the most out of their bag of popcorn than in that theater.
I’m not sure I should admit to this, but I spent way too much of the film’s proceedings trying to figure out which of the brothers died at 19. I believe this says more about me than Malick’s thoughtful, distinctive filmmaking, however. I am really glad I saw it, and I’m grateful to Amanda for spurring Deron and Amy to go, and this post for making it impossible for me not to go.
I have been thinking about the structure of shifting perspectives in this film, feeling about in my mind for resonances with other films, and here’s a strange connection: Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey. I’m just thinking abstractly of the movement across time, to a particular social world–and on to a focus on one person who seems to contain that world. Cindy and I have talked about this film more than we have any other for a long time. This film will last; it’s the ones that offer nothing to argue about that fall away.
Okay, I’ve been thinking and thinking about this, and I’m coming around to an examined view of what Deron intuited immediately–that the easy symbolism at the end of the film is a way of seeing the situation in a way that, say, his mother might have been able to see it. And that could make him smile, but it doesn’t mean he accepts it. So I can get what I want–no real resolution–while viewing the ending as a risk rather than a mistake.
Go Mavs.
Daryl, yes. I thought of 2001 as well.
Go Mavs!
The people who booed and rioted at the Rite of Spring weren’t idiots, they were marking the degree to which Stravinsky and Nijinski had broken through to them, and forced them to confront what else an artwork could be.
The controversy and difference of opinion around this film makes it something I will definitely go and see in a cinema; but however I feel about it I’m not going to bitch because someone disagrees and makes that known. Great art is never calming, and never polite.
No one bitched because someone disagreed and made that known. I hope you enjoy it.
Go Mavs.
Kelsey if you still need to know, text me.
Daryl and Deron: It isn’t 2001 that the film intentionally recalls but Tarkovsky’s Solaris. 2001 is a sterile ode to the power and grandeur of machinery, cold and fixed. Solaris is instead deeply rooted in the earthly aspect of humanity, even in space. Although all the films are related, yes. I think aspects of Philip Lopate’s essay, found here can inform the discussion but have the option of ruining Solaris if you haven’t seen it. I suppose it has some in kinship with 2001, but I strongly recommend Solaris to everyone who liked Tree of Life, as one informs the other in remarkably helpful and delightful ways.
Amanda, that makes sense. I think my association with 2001, and I assume Daryl’s, because of what we were talking about when we referenced it, was the narrative sense of moving from macro to micro and back and the shifts from omniscient to subjective. I agree 2001 is a much more sterile movie and that The Tree of Life is organic. I think that’s a good way to think about it. At the risk of repeating myself, I thought of 2001 partially because of scope.
I’m okay. For some reason I spent (almost) the entire movie thinking the switch in time frame and reference was the start of some kind of tribute experienced by the middle brother toward his older brother. Of course, the ending straightened me out. I just wish I hadn’t been so stubborn throughout the watching of it. Stoicism is, unfortunately, too often my middle name.
Amanda, I would love to watch Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia with you.
It may be a week or two before I can see The Tree of Life, so I’ve not jumped in, although I am an admirer of Malick.
I do have some thoughts that I may share before then, not very original but having to do with the changing nature of film “education” (and I’m not speaking of classroom education) and the changing role of film criticism.
But I must excuse myself because, yes, I must now drive to Dubuque.
I thought the framing and gentleness and perspective made it clear immediately that it was the blondhaired boy. I wonder if it is a younger sister/older sister feeling? Subconsciously I knew it was the younger sibling and you somehow assumed it was the older.
It’s a good question. That could be a part of it.
Also! I almost forgot. The young boy playing the role of Jack is most certainly a doppelganger of an ex from Texas I knew in my college years. That was also distracting and disassociating. I kept gawking in wonderment that these two boys, years apart in age, could smile and frown and hunch and stare in all the same ways. With the same eye, skin, and hair tones, too. Obviously, between these two obstacles I was not as present for Malick’s creation as I could have been.
What are your thoughts on the remake of Solaris with George Clooney, Amanda? I read the book, but I’ve never seen either film adaptation.
I know Lem was very much looking forward to Soderbergh’s interpretation as he felt Tarkovsky strayed too far from the book, but Lem died before Soderbergh’s version was released. Lem almost didn’t allow Tarkovsky to use the name Solaris, and they had to work together for a very long time and Lem was still unahppy with it. I haven’t heard good things about Soderbergh’s version, but I’m a big Soderbergh fan so maybe. I just think Tarkovsky is one of the top five filmmakers of all time so its hard to imagine watching the Soderbergh version without disliking it simply because the other one was so good.
Deron, you’d hate seeing movies in Italy, where the thing being displayed on the screen is merely something to discuss while it is happening. I gave up going to the theatre years ago, it was pretty bad in nyc too.
The American movie did conjure an interesting mood & clean aesthetic, but for the most part it was boring (think Solaris in a small town in Italy). And i couldn’t get past the unbelievability of it, that he’s some expert in putting together these special guns, but all he does is have them sent to his hotel room, and he just screws them together.
I loved the movie, but come on, even to us that “got it” he over reached on the God’s Eye sequence as I will call it. It was five minutes too long and he lost the audience, and he could have pulled everyone (including morons) along.
Ed Doody
Ed! Yep.
The four of us should start going to movies together. And drinking.
Just back from seeing The Tree of Life, finally. Waited for the crowds to die down. Just joyful and beautiful. But I did spend too much time wondering if those dinosaurs were really having an existential moment, and whether Sean Penn helped the mother reconcile her loss.
Hi all, I just saw it (in Austin where I live) and thought I’d share a couple of things. I saw it at the Alamo draft house where George Romero will enable Ann Richards to arise from the grave if you talk or walk out early, so nothing like that marred the experience for me. I had a similar experience wanting to yell at people at the end of Aronofsky’s “The Fountain” – I suppose some people have not yet experienced loss or or so shielded from existential horror that they can’t really empathise with the depth of feeling in a character or story exploring that.
For the sake of background, I produce short abstract films or visual music, consider Tarkovsky a great influence in that regard, and thus have little problem with non-narrative film and am in some sense most excited by things that straddle the boundaries of music and film; I admired it a lot. The last thing I saw was a two hour silent film from Brazil Limite which in some sense inhabits a simlar universe of small familial drama caught in the macrocosm.
I would make a few points that I hope aren’t heavy handed – I’ve read only a bit of critique and thought and I haven’t seen these points made in entirety.
1) The film is constructed as a kind of symphony – to me it works more as very modern music theater on film. The short whispers of dialogue, if pulled out and laid on paper, could work as a poem, or perhaps serve as the top level of a multilevel non-narrative poem like Mallarme’s “A throw of the dice”, an early attempt to bust out of non-linearity in print.
2) I completely interpreted the ending as fantasy or meditation, not some saccharine promise – I think that showing the character.
3) There’s a lot going on symbolically with the architecture representing, I don’t know, angularity and judgement, pride in invention vs. organic folk creativity – the loss of nature in going to the city, where the sons of Texas usually had to go to make it.
4) The final spoken lines tied together the intimate and familial and nearly made me cry – that every mother gives her son (not god), and that the universe gives it all up through this creation, the rising and falling, the spawning of creatures and world, even though (she) (knows) it’s all going to go cold and die.
5) This interpretation is also reinforced, I think, by the spatial symbolism of the son’s ascent to the top of the tower, and his return – and the fact that christlike, he is able to create a heaven in his mind (as are we all, by our gift of memory). Heaven, the myth of heaven,is also another kind of
creation. You can read Malick’s message as a kind of forgiving atheism.
(brain glitch, hope the moderator can edit point 2) – showing the character grounded again after the fantasy should establish that pretty well.
For my part I will say that Walter Chaw’s review is a must read.
I wept for five minutes after the film.