This is from the movie "Fearless", where Jeff Bridges plays a plane-crash hero who goes on to suffer a pretty heady case of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He sees that (a) a lot in life really doesn't matter and (b) he posseses a compassion and wisdom that can only be possible in death. The movie comes full circle in the final scene: after saving people's lives, Jeff Bridges' character belatedly experiences the terror of a near-death experience, and now the savior needs to be saved. The scene is bursting at the seams with hair-raising drama, armed with a haunting orchestral score, overwhelming imagery of suffering and hopelessness, and lots of heart-wrenching slow-motion.
I also just described to you the entire 150 minutes of Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life", a film that, unlike "Fearless", I do not wish to sit through ever again.
As far as conceptual ambition goes, very few movies can surpass "The Tree of Life". And Terrence Malick wastes no time in reminding us of this as he opens his film with a passage from the Book of Job:
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?
This quote is part of God's response to a hapless Job, who is left wondering how a righteous man like him could deserve such a miserable fate. God's full reply is as catty as it is indisputable: you are a speck in an infinite universe which you have no capacity to fathom, and therefore many things will remain a mystery to you.
"The Tree of Life" is Terrence Malick's cinematic expression of God's response to Job: the long, pensive sequence where he gives us an abridged visual history of the birth of the universe and the subsequent birth of life, its evolution (complete with dinosaurs!); the whispers of the powerless characters, echoing in some indeterminate void in the cosmos; the moving imagery of nature bearing witness to the miracles and tragedies of human life.
Visually, the film is outstanding. In fact, I was loving the movie...until I realized, 45 minutes into it, that that was it. And I was right; by the time it was finished, my worst fears have been confirmed - "The Tree of Life" is a two-and-a-half-hour climax. Imagine the last scene of "Fearless", only fifteen times longer. Literally every scene and every frame was intense, and by the 2-hour mark all the "visual poetry" had already numbed my brain. It's like eating a really delicious, decadent chocolate cake: it would be heavenly to have one slice, unfortunately Terrence Malick is shoving the entire cake down our throats.
But God, in his speech to Job about accepting the mystery, could've also been talking about "The Tree of Life." And boy, did the critics listen to Him. Jessica Zafra unabashedly declared: "I don't know what it is, but I loved it". The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle described it as "trying and perplexing, but it also contains some of the most psychologically insightful and ecstatic filmmaking imaginable." The best one was from The New York Times' A.O. Scott, who cryptically mused: "To watch 'The Tree of Life' is, in analogous fashion, to participate in its making. And any criticism will therefore have to be provisional." I seriously hope they use that one on the DVD cover.
As the new Transformers movie opens this week, you will undoubtedly be hearing about its "lack of subtlety" from the guardians of cinematic taste; how it's "classic Michael Bay" with his cloying wall-to-wall action sequences. But Terrence Malick won't be deemed guilty of the same sin because he reaches not for cool explosions or sleek butt shots - he reaches for the sublime. And so they believe that there was something there in his exhausting, pretty-looking film, even if no one really fully understood it (Why did Jessica Chastain suddenly float in the air for no reason? Seriously, why?) because that is the nature of the eternal: unfathomable and infallible.
As God said in the Book of Isaiah, 55:9
Just as the Heavens are higher than the Earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts
Touché, Mr. Malick.
I also just described to you the entire 150 minutes of Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life", a film that, unlike "Fearless", I do not wish to sit through ever again.
As far as conceptual ambition goes, very few movies can surpass "The Tree of Life". And Terrence Malick wastes no time in reminding us of this as he opens his film with a passage from the Book of Job:
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?
This quote is part of God's response to a hapless Job, who is left wondering how a righteous man like him could deserve such a miserable fate. God's full reply is as catty as it is indisputable: you are a speck in an infinite universe which you have no capacity to fathom, and therefore many things will remain a mystery to you.
"The Tree of Life" is Terrence Malick's cinematic expression of God's response to Job: the long, pensive sequence where he gives us an abridged visual history of the birth of the universe and the subsequent birth of life, its evolution (complete with dinosaurs!); the whispers of the powerless characters, echoing in some indeterminate void in the cosmos; the moving imagery of nature bearing witness to the miracles and tragedies of human life.
Visually, the film is outstanding. In fact, I was loving the movie...until I realized, 45 minutes into it, that that was it. And I was right; by the time it was finished, my worst fears have been confirmed - "The Tree of Life" is a two-and-a-half-hour climax. Imagine the last scene of "Fearless", only fifteen times longer. Literally every scene and every frame was intense, and by the 2-hour mark all the "visual poetry" had already numbed my brain. It's like eating a really delicious, decadent chocolate cake: it would be heavenly to have one slice, unfortunately Terrence Malick is shoving the entire cake down our throats.
But God, in his speech to Job about accepting the mystery, could've also been talking about "The Tree of Life." And boy, did the critics listen to Him. Jessica Zafra unabashedly declared: "I don't know what it is, but I loved it". The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle described it as "trying and perplexing, but it also contains some of the most psychologically insightful and ecstatic filmmaking imaginable." The best one was from The New York Times' A.O. Scott, who cryptically mused: "To watch 'The Tree of Life' is, in analogous fashion, to participate in its making. And any criticism will therefore have to be provisional." I seriously hope they use that one on the DVD cover.
As the new Transformers movie opens this week, you will undoubtedly be hearing about its "lack of subtlety" from the guardians of cinematic taste; how it's "classic Michael Bay" with his cloying wall-to-wall action sequences. But Terrence Malick won't be deemed guilty of the same sin because he reaches not for cool explosions or sleek butt shots - he reaches for the sublime. And so they believe that there was something there in his exhausting, pretty-looking film, even if no one really fully understood it (Why did Jessica Chastain suddenly float in the air for no reason? Seriously, why?) because that is the nature of the eternal: unfathomable and infallible.
As God said in the Book of Isaiah, 55:9
Just as the Heavens are higher than the Earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts
Touché, Mr. Malick.
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