This is an artistic film, with huge ambition. There are tons of very visually stunning scenes, that appear unrelated, then we alternate from scenes from a grown man, Jack(Sean Penn), who is alone, reminiscing on his childhood,and his relationship between him and his siblings, and his father (Brad Pitt) who is very strict, a realist, and wants to raise tough manly sons, so he is quite a bit cruel and abusive, while still seeking strength from his boys, and a mother (Jessica Chastain) who is a dreamer, and still with a childlike innocence. Jack is trying to seek meaning in life and is trying to find a way somewhere in between mother and father.

This is definitely a “zero star” or “ten star” film. It seems to be split between lovers and haters. The problem with the film is that it’s perhaps overly symbolic, and nothing much goes on. The first 40 minutes or so of the film is just imagery of the creation of the universe, dueling dinosaurs, deserts, fish, etc, that look really great, but there is no real purpose. (Ok, that’s not true, there is a “meaning of life” type purpose I’m sure, but everyone has to sit through this beautiful imagery with no story part before the film even begins, and many people, I’m sure, walked out before the story began.)

Then when the story begins, we are barraged with little snippets of of conversations and moments that seem random. What do we know? Well, we know that one of the brothers died when he was 19, and none of them really got over it. Yes, I get that we’re viewing grown up Jack’s memories, and memories are fragmented, but movies typically tell a story, which this one really doesn’t. When we finally figure out what’s going on, suddenly we’re thrown back in the visual imagery with people walking around on a beach. The ending FINALLY comes up (after 2 hours and 15 minutes) and there’s absolutely no ending that I can see.

I can truly understand the people who love this film. It’s poetic, visually stunning, and you can make anything you want out of it. In fact, one guy made the comment that you see what you take in with you. If you’re looking for a Christian movie, it’s a Christian movie. Like wise if you’re Hindu or a nature lover, or a relationship councilor, that’s what you get out of it. Since the film starts with a quote from the book of Job in the Bible, I think that’s a hint to what the movie maker meant. In the quote, Job is question how God could allow all this bad stuff to happen to him, and God is answering that Job does not understand the scope of the creation of the galaxy, and the immensity of the universe and that Job is just a small speck in the scheme of things. Perhaps, that’s what he was going for. To show us, that Jack’s life, as difficult as it may have been for him, was just a small part compared to the history of the Universe. Likewise, I could be completely off my rocker and it’s about circus clowns. Who knows.

I did not rate this very high on my rating scale because I was really fidgeting an bored through the first 45 minutes. This is one movie I really, really, really wanted to turn off. But in order to review it, I have to watch it, so I forged through. Then when the story of the 1950′s family began, finally, I started to get interested and thought there might be a story in there finally. But I was disappointed again, as I didn’t get any meat out of it. It was like watching the Cliff Notes version of a story. Then more strange images and it was done. It felt like 10 hours instead of 2 1/4 and I certainly wouldn’t want to go through it again to see what I missed. But I know tons of people are going to love this.

It’s been compared frequently to 2001 A Space Odyssey, which I can see the comparison. 2001 was a film that did not give you any answers either, and you can bring whatever you want out of it. But 2001 I would rate as a 5 star film because though it was artistic and mystical, it had a great story in it. The “thought inducing” parts of what was the bigger meaning of the movie was an add on to the great story and a benefit that kept us talking about it for months and years afterwards. This doesn’t have the same kind of story to pique your interest. After this one is over I just felt used and ripped off.

==Written by Ed Goettman ==

==From: Ed's Review Dot Com (www.edsreview.com)==

Part of Terrence Malick and the Nature of Cinema (Directrospective #09).

“[The form] is designed to discipline the emotions at the same time that it arouses them: to induce a certain tranquility in the spectator, a state of spiritual balance that is itself the subject of the film...such distancing is a source of great emotional power. Ultimately, the greatest source of emotional power in art lies not in any particular subject-matter...It lies in form. The detachment and retarding of emotions, through the consciousness of form, makes them far stronger and more intense in the end.”

—Susan Sontag, “Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson”

Louise: “How did you get here?” Johnny: “Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill ‘till Doomsday.”

—“Naked” (1993)

Until you’ve actually seen “The Tree of Life” for yourself, David Denby’s assertion in the pages of the New Yorker that it is an “insufferable masterpiece”—that it is, in his words, “interminable, madly repetitive, vague, humorless, grandiose”—might sound like flippant slighting. But to experience Terrence Malick’s latest and, by a considerable margin, best feature film to date, is to realize that it does in fact openly and even often stubbornly bear those qualities. Denby quickly adds that it is also “one of the great lyric achievements of the screen in recent years and a considerable enlargement of the rhetoric of cinema,” and it is certainly that; though I might suggest instead that its greatness is not achieved in spite of its conventional failings, but rather largely because of them—indeed, its conspicuous missteps are central to its success. Because “The Tree of Life” is above all else uncompromising, both as a personal statement and a formal experiment, and that refusal to compromise precludes any kind of ordinary perfection. Its commitment to seeing its ideas through, however daunting their scope, makes its particular genius special, something extraordinary to be not only commended but wholly relished, reveled in, savored.

There are precedents for “The Tree of Life's” formal innovations to be found in each of Malick’s earlier films, and there’s a distinctive persistence of vision uniting his oeuvre that extends to his latest. With every new film he produces, the qualities most clearly identifiable as Malick’s directorial signatures—his tendency to digress or meander, a deliberate disconnect between the aural and the visual, the spectacle of nature as punctuation—are increasingly amplified and exaggerated, while the traditional forms and conventions of Hollywood continue to be abandoned more and more audaciously. The distancing effect Sontag speaks of in Bresson’s work—the Brechtian tropes cherished by cinema’s traditional iconoclasts—have only slowly, and quite unselfconsciously, bloomed in Malick’s later films, a perhaps unintended consequence of what in at least his last two films can be considered outright abstraction.

This isn’t to say Malick’s films conspicuously acknowledge their own artifice, and that their distancing effects are neither staunchly intellectual nor coldly intellectual. But the form of “The Tree of Life” does, as Sontag says of Bresson’s, “discipline the emotions at the same time that it arouses them.” That is indeed where its emotional power and cinematic greatness lie: it’s in the ease with which Malick glides from the micro to the macro, from the miracles and tragedies of the personal to the miracles and tragedies of the universal—and, crucially, the dedication he shows to drawing these connections seriously and honestly—that one finds a work of art which is unafraid to be about both you specifically and everything universally, that is relatable because we’re alive and because others are not, and that is great like nothing before it.

What I and many others perceive in this film as greatness, though, can so easily be ridiculed by its detractors, and Malick’s straight-faced earnestness in the face of Big Questions turns out to be the film’s most salient quality for both camps. It’s no secret by now that “The Tree of Life” diverts, rather jarringly, from its humble beginnings in Texan suburbia—where we’re rapidly acquainted, through a prism of memory incited by tragedy, to Brad Pitt’s smoldering Mr. O’Brien, failed piano prodigy and domineering family patriarch, and the doomed nuclear family over which he presides—to a considerably more exalted sequence sketching the beginnings of the universe. What I admire the most about these scenes, beyond their superficial beauty, is simply the audacity required for such an ostensibly outlandish idea to be seen all the way through. I believe a less confident filmmaker would have protracted these scenes, or perhaps excised them entirely, for fear of ridicule—it’s much easier to shield your drama with ironic posturing than it is to make a serious, honest statement. But Malick’s profoundly serious approach invites a kind of quiet reverence for what’s unfolding before us—and I think, if out of respect for this commitment as much as the pure power of the images, that the sequence demands exactly the awe he’s hoping for.

To the incredulous or overly cynical, though, laughter seems the appropriate action—as evidenced by the exaggerated guffaws heard throughout the packed screening I attended. However this laughter says more about an audience’s refusal to take honest, meaningful work seriously than it does the quality of the material before them. And, to recycle an argument I made repeatedly upon the release of Godard's “Film Socialisme”—another of the year’s serious, audacious masterpieces—the oft-repeated claim by detractors that “The Tree of Life's” universal aspirations are “pretentious” is, as I see it, a kind of defense mechanism triggered by its combination of excessive ambition and personal earnestness, as though simply trying were synonymous with failing. But compared to the “Transformers 3s” of the world, films so insufficiently ambitious that they could never be mistaken for efforts of pretentiousness, I’ll gladly take a film which expects meteors and dinosaurs to resonate.

==Written by Calum Marsh ==

==From: In Review Online (www.inreviewonline.com)==

Combining ritual, dance, music, poetry, and art, "THE TREE OF LIFE" (29 min) is a meditation on the mystery at the heart of human life. It calls us to keep the world in balance with our lives.

"Los Voladores" (the Flyers) is a 1500 year-old rite sacred to Quetzalcoatl, the Morning Star. From its origins on the Gulf coast of Mexico, the ritual spread throughout Mesoamerica: a special square was reserved for it in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, and a variant is still known among the Quiche' Maya in Guatemala.

Today "Los Voladores" is best known in its original home in the Huasteca region, especially among the Totonac, who have lived in the area for millenia. The version shown in "THE TREE OF LIFE" is from Huehuetla, in the Sierra Norte de Puebla.

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE (25 min) contrasts two systems of education. The public school system uses patriotic symbols to "integrate" Indian pupils into the national culture while teaching them to reject their own identity. In contrast, the "Danza de los Huehues" urges young Totonacs to learn from the school, yet warns them not to abandon their own culture.

INDIAN DEMOCRACY (37 min) examines the rights revolution of Indian Mexico and the liberating role of "Indian Theology". "We have been to school, we have learned Spanish. Now you must stop treating us like animals. Our gods were here first, and we are proud to be Indians."