Remember 8 1/2? Federico Fellini's movie about how hard it was to be himself? Whoever hasn't seen 8 1/2, raise your hand. Have you seen All That Jazz? Bob Fosse's movie about how hard it was to be Bob Fosse? Well, now we have Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. It might not specifically be about how hard it is grow up Terrence Malick, but it's rreeaallly close to being about that exact thing.
Before he got into making movies, Terrence Malick taught philosophy at MIT. It's a good thing to keep that in mind while watching this film, because it takes serious cojones to make a semi-autobiographical film about your experiences growing up, and also include the beginnings of life on Earth as part of your story. That sequence is fantastic, but c'mon - no one is that important. Look! There's a lifeless ball of rock in space! There's the sun! Now there's life! OOOOOH, DINOSAURS!!!!! There's that meteor....so long dinosaurs.....Look! It's Terrence Malick - I mean, a baby being born!
Maybe I'm being a little hard on this movie.
It is pretty fantastic, mostly. I actually loved every second of it for about the first hour. Then it got a little long. Then it got a lot longer. At this point I started watching all the fantastic cinematography and stopped paying attention to the story, such as it is. It was at this time I realized that you could show this movie, with the score intact, but no dialogue and it would be the greatest movie ever made. With the dialogue there, it becomes pretentious from time to time, probably moreso if you're not in the mood to watch an introspective, slow film about human life.
The funny thing is - as I'm writing about this movie, I want to see it again. Pretentiousness aside, it's something everyone should see.
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