This movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and received an equal amount of raucous applause and lustful boos. A friend of mine who works at a theater told me she gave out over 50 refunds to the film in its opening weekend because people kept walking out, not comprehending it and liking it even less. I'd read critical praise, and just as much vitriol.
But it's up for Best Picture. I did want to see it and give it a chance.
I walked out after 30 minutes.
With not so much dialogue, but a whole lot of imagery and loud music, plus what story being presented completely going nowhere, I couldn't hack it. My wife was interested in seeing the film and was willing to stay for the whole thing, and she's a better person than I am for doing it. So for the first time in the history of the Hollywood Coyote blog, I am proud to present a guest blogger. My dear wife, Erica, will now proudly present her feelings on "The Tree of Life".
So...lady and gentleman...or whosoever might be browsing this blog, it
is I, your intrepid guest blogger! Or, in other words, I'm the damn
fool silly enough to have sat through the wonder that is "The Tree of Life".
Let me help you, please let me help you...
DON'T!
Wait...I'm not actually supposed to do that, am I? I'm not supposed to
impose MY aesthetic tastes on you. I'm just supposed to stick with the
facts, right? OK, facts it shall be!
The movie starts out with the BEST screensaver shots that Hollywood,
20th Century Searchlight, and Terrence Malick can find! Want to know
where Windows Vista went and died? In this movie, folks.
So, color swirlies on a black field with a very soft voice talking who
in the hell knows what. This then gives way to people. We don't know
who, and quite frankly we never find out who...just people. Some are
wandering. Some are probably wondering too. (In fact, I bet Sean Penn
is wondering how the hell he got involved in this trifling piece of
shit...but then again, I'm wondering just how much the man got paid to
be in what had to be less than 10 minutes of actual face time!) We see
Brad Pitt. We see Sean Penn. We don't see them together. I figured
out that Sean is Brad's son, but I knew that walking into the film. I
swear if I'd not known that, I not sure I'd have ever figured it out!
THEN...Brad and Sean fade out and we get...
COSMOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The film now detours into stupidity. Mind-achingly, monstrous piles of
stupidity. TWENTY-plus minutes of the Creation of All Life As We Know
It! More screen saver shots of violent planetary formation, Hubble
telescope shots of exquisite beauty, including the Horsehead Nebula
(which was the only one I could identify, thank you Astronomy Picture of
the Day!) and then a quick jaunt into Jurassic Park with dinosaurs not
killing each other. From here, we segue from dinosaurs to fetal blood
streams and beating hearts and birthing babies!
Still with me? Good, that'd be a step above Hollywood Coyote! I'd
already lost him as he walked out during the Hubble montage! He didn't
even get to see the dinosaurs. And, man oh man, was that a show
stopper, let me tell you!
Now, it goes back to Pitt and we spend the next hour or so watching him
channel Robert Duvall in "The Great Santini". (That was a much better
Daddy-is-a-mean-bastard-but-is-doing-it-for-my-own-good kind of movie.
Go watch that, now if you'd like!) Pitt apparently was in the military
and is just plain old mean to his 3 sons. He yells, he belittles, he
teaches them to fight, he begs them to learn to punch by punching HIM in
the face. (None of the boys actually take him up on this. Probably
good he's only dealing with the little ones. I'm sure Sean WOULD have
punched him, and probably Malick, in the face for his part in the film.
I was serious about his face time. It's got to be less than ten minutes
and I don't know if he said more than 3 sentences in dialogue in the
whole damn thing.) Then, he goes on a LONG business trip and is gone
from the film for about 30 minutes or so. He was probably vacationing
with Mrs. Smith-Pitt-Blood-Necklace-Wearing-Jolie during this part of
filming!
During THIS part of the film, Mom is happy. You can tell by her sudden floating in the air under what is presumably THE TREE OF LIFE that happens to be growing in her backyard. The boys are rapturously happy. And this was the funniest part of the whole damn thing. Watching the oldest son slam the screen door and doing an imitation of his father being a jerk in front of his mom was great! THEN...Daddy comes back, finds out the factory is closing, and moves the entire family into the car. I'm sure they were moving somewhere. They must have been. They couldn't have just been driving off to live in the car. Wait...I'm now damn near an hour and a half into the film, I have no idea the first names of either Pitt or his wife or any of their children or the dog. They barely speak to one another at all. One of the kids has died and I don't know who because they never actually say. AND...Penn is one of the sons grown to adulthood but I still don't know which one because HE'S not named either. Malick probably DID move them into the fucking car.
As a side note, I do wish to mention at this juncture the OTHER best thing about this movie: The two women behind me. The two African -American women behind me. The two African-American women behind me who talked to the movie, during most of it. When the one on the left wasn't audibly snoring, that is! They were FANTASTIC! By this point in the film, they've BOTH wondered who they can sue to get their ticket price refunded. Who in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences actually nominated this stunning piece of work, who in the AMPAS actually gave it enough votes to BECOME one of the Best Picture Nominees, and who in the hell they can sue if this piece of shit actually WINS! They also have a minor, and honestly rather quiet argument about whether they actually were required to stay. We'd all bought full day tickets to see 4 of the 9 nominated films (the other 5 are next Saturday at participating AMC theaters if anyone is interested). One was of the belief that they should stay because they'd spent the money. The other was of the opinion that AMC didn't really give a shit if any of us stayed, they'd already gotten the money! Whoever those ladies are, I want to watch ALL of my movies in front of them forEVER!!!!!!!!!
So, back to the movie.
We now turn to Penn's last bit in the film. He just wanders, on a
beach, with dead and living people, in silence, for 15 minutes.
I have no idea in all of the flaming worlds of hell WHY he is wandering
in the water, getting his shoes wet. But he does.
Then the screen goes black.
Then one of the ladies behind me says "Please God, let it be over".
Then I burst out laughing in a VERY silent theater.
Then SHE says, very softly behind me, while laughing, "I'm sorry."
THEN we get MORE screen savers and the ENTIRE theater starts laughing.
And then, FINALLY, we see "A Film by Terrence Malick", and there are as
many people clapping as booing.
I'm convinced the clapping was done in celebration of the fact that it
had finally ended and we'd all managed to survive.
Please, DON'T bother with this film. You can't get that time back
again, ever.
So there you have it. "The Tree of Life". Erica told me it was legitimately one of the worst films she's ever seen, and she had a serious interest in wanting to see it. I'd compare this to "2001: A Space Odyssey". That film has 40 minutes of actual story in the middle of it, surrounded by about 90 minutes of random bullshit. The problem with "Tree" is that the middle part that actually has somewhat of a story, still doesn't make any sense.
My summation on the film? I think it's a pretentious pile of crap. But what do I know, because it has 3 Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography). Roger Ebert gave the film four stars. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone loved the film. The same cannot be said for reviews by The Daily Telegraph, Movieline, and many others.
Perhaps this film just isn't for me. Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it. This film isn't for me. I prefer a story I can comprehend, a narrative that doesn't randomly jump around...you know, simple stuff like that I should expect from a movie. If I wanted to watch volcanoes and planets, I could just stay at home and watch "Nova" on PBS.
"The Tree of Life" is now available on DVD/Blu-Ray Combo (no release yet for just the DVD...don't even get me started on THAT bullshit being pulled now by the movie industry to get us all to have to spend more damn money on a freaking Blu-Ray player now to get movies and extras...OK, tangent over.), or can be viewed via live stream from iTunes, Amazon and other outlets.
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