Comments

1
Cheers to you for actually watching the movie, unlike some other film reviewers from free weekly Seattle rags.
2
@1

This was taken from the Portland Mercury
3
This is a rare positive review that makes me absolutely sure that I do not want to see the movie: it seems extremely pretentious and made without a planned purpose.
4
I watched "The Tree of Life" and it was the worst and most wicked movie I have ever seen. Even among arthouse mental masturbations this stands out as a most pretentious queen. I still think "The Thin Red Line" is an OK film. Not a masterpiece but agreeable. Yet TTOL throws away any concept of narrative. Some shreds of voice-overs blather on about love, life, and death. The nature scences were the more 'interesting' parts to watch. The human story was vacant of a story: a boy grows up in Texas under a harsh father he hates and a benign mother he loves. He stands awkwardly and looks disgruntled. Somewhere before we learn that his brother dies at 19. Good grief! The father enforces his shaky codes of behavior whilst prattling on about some pseudo wisdoms about life. During dinner he suddenly stands up to show the boys a copy of Toscanini's recording of Brahms 4th. WTF?! This is an ADD movie because it develops micro-threads that lead nowhere and throwing them together doesn't congeal into something meaningful apart from the usual wonders of "Why?". This is all rounded off with the mandatory resurrection exercise at the end where the cast and some others take a hike on a beach (LOST much are you?).
It's not even a proper experimental film. Where is the experiment? All we see is a slide show with some symphonic and choir music. Big deal! Yes, Terrence you can put together some beautiful pictures and your taste in classical music is nice. But stop the tracking shots that go upward to The Heavens and into tree tops. I got queasy because of them and almost had to vomit. The hall of mirrors whispering about "nature and grace" didn't help, either.

What a wreck of a movie.

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