The Tree Of Life

La vita come film, un film sulla vita, una vita nel film

Paolo Francesco Steri

Un Miracolo!!!

Recensito in Italia il 27 settembre 2012

Con questo film sublime e controverso siamo di fronte ad un vero e proprio miracolo! E' la vita stessa ad essere inneggiata.Il dolore della perdita di un figlio è lo spunto per una riflessione fantastica e mirabolante sulle origini della vita stessa: lo spirito materno (la grazia) nella dicotomia presentata fin dall'inizio tra maternità (Grazia) e paternità (natura), si pone gli interrogativi fondamentali dell'essere umano di fronte al sommo mistero della vita e della morte ai cospetti dell'essere supremo.Inizia così la cosmogonia (nascita dell'universo) in un viaggio strabiliante alla ricerca della realtà embrionale ed amniotica: nebulose, costellazioni, galassie, vulcani in eruzione e dinosauri, e la luce di Dio è lì nel cosmo infinito, interviene allora una splendida colonna sonora che trae in prestito temi gregoriani, poi il finale del Offertorium della Messa dei Morti di Berlioz, la luce che risplende alle anime imploranti del purgatorio ed è risposta a chi si interroga angosciatamente sulla permissione del male come una madre che ha perso un figlio. In quest'aspetto "amniotico" si inserisce la vicenda umana dell'altro fratello che ormai grande si interroga sulla fatuità dell'esistenza, sull'indifferenza della gente e naturalmente sul perchè Dio permetta il male.Un lungo flascbaak porta così l'uomo nel passato e si confronta con un rapporto tutt'altro che idilliaco con suo padre, alla fine tutto si risolve nella percezione della sublime riconciliazione e ricomposizione dell'unità originaria tra natura e grazia: ancora una volta Berlioz ritorna nel sublime Agnus dei della grande messa dei morti: tutto è compreso e perdonato, tutto ritrova una sua ragione alla luce di Dio. Il film si chiude con il dono del fratellino morto a Dio e con le ultime note del Requiem "quia pius est" "perchè sei buono", in un aura paradisiaca. Che altro dire nella povertà della parole? Bisogna solo sedersi in poltrona e vedere, ascoltare, meditare, magari con un'impianto sorraund che renda giustizia all'impianto sonoro dell'opera.

4 persone l'hanno trovato utile

Sicuramente da vedere ma con le dovute cautele

Giuseppe M

Recensito in Italia il 23 novembre 2022

Se siete appassionati di film d'autore, se vi piacciono le scene spettacolari di eventi naturali, se siete predisposti a farvi portare dal regista alla ricerca del senso "del tutto": questo è il vostro film. Le scene scorrono lentamente e a volte in maniera apparentemente disordinata. A volte forse lo sono. Il senso potrebbe giungere molto dopo. Non si tratta di un film comune e forse un po' azzardato nel mondo del largo consumo.

Un grande film di Malick, superconsigliato!

Chris

Recensito in Italia il 18 agosto 2012

Ero titubante sull'acquisto non avendolo ancora visto, e invece Malick, un grande regista di qualità, tira fuori una riflessione sul senso della vita e lo fa attraverso gli occhi di un bambino che si porterà dietro anche da grande i segni di un rapporto non idilliaco con il padre. Il film mostra che nella vita di ognuno si incrociano due mondi, due stili: natura e grazia. Questi due mondi dall'inizio alla fine ritorneranno, la grazia di una madre e la natura più forte del padre sono solo due manifestazioni, ma torneranno e cresceranno in noi, prevalendo o meno l'una o l'altro, come le radici del nostro "tree of life". Il messaggio è forte e molto intenso, molto onirico e astratto, ma proprio per questo anche molto forte. L'unica cosa è che forse se cercate un film spensierato non è questo quello che fa per voi, in compenso però vedrete un grande film! Lo consiglio vivamente.
Inoltre attualmente il blu-ray è offerto da amazon ad un prezzo molto basso, considerando che questo film ha vinto la palma d'oro a Cannes solamente un anno fa! Inoltre è presente una intervista nei contenuti speciali che spiega alcuni dettagli del film...imperdibile!!!

Una persona l'ha trovato utile

GIOVANNI D'ESPOSITO

Straordinario

Recensito in Italia il 21 maggio 2023

Sembra il
Nulla ma ti rapisce

Recensito in Italia il 22 ottobre 2012

Un cinema innovativo. Un film non per tutti. Difficile capirlo o perlomeno non é immediato. Il regista ci offre una valida alternativa del linguaggio cinematografico, come se questa opera fosse una poesia anziché un vero e proprio film. Mi é piaciuto? Si. Lo rivedrei? Non saprei. Sicuramente un cult. Ma la sua eccessiva particolarità lo etichetta automaticamente come "non adatto a tutti". Perché questo film riesce a raccontare una storia di una vita familiare tra religione - scienza - viaggio onirico ed interpretazioni personali. Un merito alla fotografia. Sicuramente da Oscar. Questo film ha un alta definizione come non ho mai visto prima. Merita l'acquisto ma solo in blu-ray

4 persone l'hanno trovato utile

Fiorenza Cunego

THE TREE LIFES

Recensito in Italia il 7 novembre 2023

NON CI È PIACIUTO

Recensito in Italia il 10 dicembre 2023

Veramente un mattone.

Traduci tutte le recensioni in Italiano

Le recensioni migliori da altri paesi

Karlös

Una delicia visual para disfrutar en alta definición

Recensito in Spagna il 11 ottobre 2019

Visualmente una de las mejores películas que he disfrutado. Es cierto que esta edición no trae doblaje al castellano (sí subtítulos), pero a un film así, ni falta que le hace. Y menos aún por su ajustado precio.

Una persona l'ha trovato utile

Brian McInnis

If You See Only One Film in Your Life, See This One

Recensito negli Stati Uniti il 11 ottobre 2011

So rarely is film let out of its cage. So scarcely is the language of movies used as though it's never been spoken before.

Terrence Malick's fifth film is a grand victory of human awareness and stands among the greatest, most fearlessly original and most universal of all films. It explores human experience from the inside, from within its characters' thoughts and sensations. Malick identifies its protagonist as its viewer and assembles a multitude of brief impressions of astounding vividness to act as an analogue of our own collection of memories. Roger Ebert wrote of Charlie Kaufman's great 'Synecdoche New York',

'For thousands of years, fiction made no room for characters who changed. Men felt the need for an explanation of their baffling existence, created gods, and projected onto them the solutions for their enigmas. These gods of course had to be immutable, for they stood above the foibles of men. Zeus was Zeus and Apollo was Apollo and that was that. We envisioned them on mountaintops, where they were little given to introspection. We took the situation as given, did our best, created arts that were always abstractions in the sense that they existed outside ourselves. Harold Bloom believes Shakespeare introduced the human personality into fiction. When Richard III looked in the mirror and asked himself what role he should play, and Hamlet asked the fundamental question To be, or not to be, the first shoe was dropped, and "Synecdoche" and many other works have dropped the second shoe.'

'The Tree of Life' is an other of the greatest of these works. As the years pass, our films seem to be moving deeper and deeper inward. This film attempts to be a mirror. It shows us a life such as our own and asks us to discern what is important in a life, what is good, what is lasting; and what is meaningless noise, what does not last. Kaufman's film also explored the human experience in an unconventional way, but while it had very little compassion and was devoid of wonder, Malick's film possesses those qualities and others in rich abundance.

One the main objects of this film is to evoke the early experiences and impressions of a human life, spanning about a decade. And one of its most masterful sections is the one dealing with the first three years or so. The many brief images and events we see delineate a landscape of early memories; we're delighted by the colorful bubbles we blow. A child with a grotesque Halloween mask. Our mother dances with us and we love her. That chair just moved by itself, didn't it? A scary dog barks at us and we stay behind our mother. A new baby, what does it do? We dream of the strange triangular room in the attic we went up in once or twice. Night after night our mother kisses us and turns out the lamp and this is the way our life passes. A glow seems to surround all things. I don't doubt nearly all of us could construct a similar sequence from our own memories (Dressing me in the morning, my father says, 'Up-a-sky!', throwing his arms upward. I raise mine in response, beaming back at him with delight - his and mine - as my night-shirt is swished off me).

As we grow older and more aware, as the script says, 'Gradually, the subtle radiance passes from things, as though a layer of cloud had come up over the sun. Slowly as the dawn, the boy is growing up.' We begin to see bad things, sad things. Why does that man walk funny? Will our mother have to look as old as grandma does some day? Later, these things seem to be present in many places, or most. What did that man do to go to jail? Could it happen to us? Then we even find it in ourselves; we disobey our mother even though we love her, and we don't know why! We can't resist playing mean tricks on our little brother, dangerous dares. What did we do? Why aren't things the way they used to be? 'How do I get back?'

Malick had his current style of film-making basically set since his third film, 'The Thin Red Line', but there its greatness was constrained by particularities of the project: its protagonist's wonderings did not feel genuine, its original score was unsatisfactory (my advice to film-makers: Most, to nearly all of the time, use preexisting music, or don't use any), multiple tiny roles filled by distractingly famous actors, and other problems. In his next film, the excellent 'The New World', most of those problems were absent, although, like 'Thin Red Line', it still took place within a historical event it was constrained to tell and to serve. But here Malick has broken free of all that, has no one's story to tell but his own, and applies his poetic technique with complete freedom to the life of this common suburban family (and many other things). One of the most important parts of making books or movies is knowing your subject and its details cold. Setting 'Tree of Life' in the same environment and time Malick himself grew up in, he holds all the cards here too for the first time. He soars where before he could only leap.

I love, love, love the way Malick makes movies. He spurns artificial light, films his actors constantly (even when they don't know it), foreswears story-boards, always seeks to captivate fleeting, chance moments; a butterfly alighting on Mrs. O'Brien's hand, thunder flashing in the skies before Pocahontas, an inquisitive baby giving John Smith a kiss. He films and edits what ever and how ever he wants; what ever feels right, what ever is beautiful. He loves open fields, tall grass. He loves twilight and dusk. He loves water. He loves Sol, loves its light shining among plants, among people. He loves flocks of birds, hands holding hands, heads turned upward. He loves things that glow. He nearly always shoots manually; his camera is free. It swings and flutters about Smith and Pocahontas as they embrace. It runs joyously through a forest, peering upward and making Sol beam and dance among the branches and leaves. I am so very grateful there exists such a film-maker as him.

Now, the degree to which there are 'good' actors and 'bad' actors is much exaggerated; actors are basically as good as the script is and the director allows or coaxes them to be. But there are actors who simply ARE the characters they play; who fit them like a glove. Brad Pitt has worked perfectly well in many roles; I should note he does not fit the over-bearing, mood-shifting Mr. O'Brien seamlessly. We're aware every moment that we're watching Brad Pitt playing this character. In a way, the softness his acting produces between himself and his often harsh character may be in keeping with the film's gentle feel. I don't know. I learn that Heath Ledger was originally intended to play the part. I think he would have been just about the perfect fit; not as bright-eyed a man as Pitt, excellent at conveying a certain muddle-mindedness. Look at his character in 'Brokeback Mountain', in which he had children too. Think of how he might have raised sons if he had been more of a family man and you pretty much have the character right there, accent and insufficient love for his wife and all. But so it goes.

Mr. O'Brien is a remnant of a past age in which men lived by their toughness, by their ability to control, to discipline, to command. He raises his sons the way his instincts dictate him to, the way his line has succeeded. But our genes can linger far longer than the conditions which bred them, and a boy need no longer be taught in such detail how best to fight back if he is hit. 'If he blinks, crack 'im!' This generates hype and a sense of moral importance on an event which will not likely ever come (and certainly their father's attempted training sessions only disturbs the boys). In the script, driving by a team of disheveled men digging a ditch in a poor part of the town, their father advises them: 'See those people. Somebody got the upper hand with them. Don't let it happen to you. You've got to get ahead of the other guy. He'll be doing all he can to do the same to you.' And later, 'If you're good, people take advantage of you. Think of yourself as someone caught behind enemy lines. Work! Fight! I see you wasting your time -- staring out the window -- playing! I make sacrifices for you. You honor those sacrifices by what you do. That's how a family works.' His mind is every where at once, among other, worse problems. Malick describes him early in the script: 'His boys regard him warily. His sharp, sarcastic words, and orders so irrational he hardly expects that they will be obeyed. He never asks what they did at school. He does not know the names of their friends. Were he to inquire, they would suspect it was a trap.' 'He has the unshakable belief that he must approve or modify everything the children do. He is full of petty and exasperating cautions.'

Oh dear. Sean Penn. Poor Sean Penn. He costarred in an other of the greatest films I've seen, Tim Robbins' 'Dead Man Walking', and was so perfect as Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's 'Milk', that I have, at times, passed pictures of the real Harvey and temporarily failed to mentally differentiate between the two men. Penn called Malick's script the most magnificent one he'd ever read (he can say that again), but was disappointed and a bit confused by the filmed result, and that his own small role ended up being essentially one of a figure rather than a character (and alas for Penn, since his first film, 'Badlands', of nearly four decades before, Malick has not made actor's films). It's true that the script was clearer about several things, especially Penn's character's existence in the city: 'The others do not meet his eyes. Each makes his way alone, shut up within himself. None can be sure of the other. No tie is fixed or lasting.' 'The supreme misery:... to find oneself abandoned to the busy dance of things which pass away.' My guess is it's one of the best things ever written, and much less a movie script than a poetic story, stunningly beautiful, unbelievably vivid in its descriptions of places and experiences. But many of its ideas would be impossible to communicate in film, and ultimately the best medium for the script, as it was in that form, was the written word. I would console him by saying the film has a power very few have ever achieved, and an effect no other has.

The stellar accretion sequence is simply the most powerful and awesome passage of film ever made. There doesn't seem to be any beginning or end of existence, nor a smallest scale of matter, or largest. Multitudes live among the immensity of a single leg of a mite, the keys I type these words on are uneven plateaus gigamiles across. A galaxy is a twisting amoebic mote, stars are searing subatomic particles and my neighbor's welcome mat is more vast than all the wastes of Mars. I set a glass of milk on a table, and there it will stay with all the worlds it contains for a million aeons before I pick it up again, and an ocean wave is no more or less a passing shape than the Eagle Nebula. In our search through the inward planes, we now find within the realm of orbiting spheres to exist a landscape of webbed and dancing strings. This will never end. And all the matter we have perceived is a little explosion whose trifling cause we can not see, whose flying sparks will in an instant fade and turn to lifeless smoke, perhaps to be dispersed by a wind or to sink into an earth, forgotten or unseen. It does not end, it only continues. We live in infinity and eternity. But the film shows us with humbling beauty what little we know of outward realms, and of the history of the continual rearrangement of matter, and gives context of the O'Brien family's existence; the cauldron that will become their world, the microbes they will descend from.

Some silly people inform us that Malick's acceptance of current models of the formation of the galactic realm, of Earth and its biology, conflicts with his at least semibiblical spirituality (he opens the film with scripture and refers to it a number of times, among other examples, and he is as interested in the birth of a soul as of a world), because it contradicts all that the creationists say. Malick, I'm sure, could scarcely care less about the current fancies of that endless debate. He knows that scientists do not spend their years making up malicious lies, and he also obviously feels a silent goodness in the universe. Says Jack the script: 'You whom we met in the woods and on the hills, whom first in her eyes we knew -- how shall I name you?' In 'The New World', Pocahontas speaks to it in the same fashion: 'Dear Mother, you fill the land with your beauty. You reach to the end of the world. How shall I seek you?' Around me I hear religious people confiding to each other that their god feels more present to them when they walk through woods, when they see and do beautiful things, than when reading their holy book. My mother tells me she felt this goodness touch her one night as she sat quietly holding one of her newly born children.

Those who search eventually find the word 'god' to be an ancient verb meaning 'to call out to'. This is exactly what Malick's characters do, although they never once use the word in direct address of the presence they speak to. Kneeling at the foot of his bed, young Jack goes through his prayers as he's been taught to, but we hear his true thoughts running underneath. 'I wanna see what you see.' Malick's main characters tend to have, deep down, the advantage of a rare freedom from established theology; a freedom to directly question their gods, not only request of or thank them (I must confess I lacked this freedom at his age and didn't look beyond my considered prayers). 'You let a boy die. You let any thing happen. Why should I be good if you're not?'

I suppose any established theistic religion tends to forget the idea of such questions, as they seem to go for ever unanswered, and focus on established assumptions. Malick, though, does a thing that few people have had the courage to do in perhaps a very, very long time by renewing those questions, insisting on them; by once more crying out to the powers that may or may not be. 'What are we to you? Answer me.' And perhaps, at times, answers are not wholely absent. Near the end of 'The New World', chasing her little son through a garden in England, feeling peace at last, Pocahontas seems to find one. 'Mother. Now I know where you live.'

Terrence Malick is the great poet of the cinema, and 'The Tree of Life' may remain his greatest poem. It is, among so many other things, the ultimate family movie. It radiates a holiness of family, draws us closer to those we love most. The over-arching tale of 'The Tree of Life' is simple: A man is lost amid a perplexing life lacking purpose and joy. The tale opens in brokenness as he and his mother and father mourn the loss of his younger brother, the kindest and gentlest of the three sons. Seeking a way from his meaningless toil, a way back to the Eden he once knew, he lays his hand on a tree and witnesses the past and future of himself and of all existence pass before him. Jack - and we, the viewers - begin a search for meaning, for that which is lasting, holy.

I am stunned to learn that Malick himself lost his own younger brother as a young man, for which he largely blames himself, and has borne that guilt and grief for the rest of his life. This explains so much about his films - this one above all - and the depth, meaning and power of it are made so much more profound by this knowledge. 'The Tree of Life' is the product of a tortured man, and what we see in it is not only his philosophical message, but is from his own wounded heart. His own pain is present. We are told artists must suffer for their art, and here Terrence Malick, in his anguish for his little brother he's carried since the late sixties, has made a film which stands among the greatest and most essential of all human art. Jack's vision of the after-life is also more clear in this light; what Malick shows us is not only his belief, but is deeply personally important to him. It is his consolation, his hope.

Above all, the film is wondrous. It instills us with its wonder, its awe of all things, and helps us to better appreciate beauty and goodness when it passes before us; to hold on to it, how ever small or brief. There's a moment in the film that moves me more than film has ever before moved me. One morning, when the boys wake to find their father has gone on a trip, and they're free to romp in the house and tease their mother with a lizard and for once life is as it ought be with them, they run outside laughing with her as 'Les Baricades Misterieuses' plays, and we hear the mother's prayer for her children - for all that live. 'Help each other. Love every one. Every leaf. Every ray of light. Forgive.'

19 persone l'hanno trovato utile

HuberTouzot

En paix.

Recensito in Francia il 18 maggio 2012

5 films en tout dont celui-ci qui sera probablement le dernier de Terrence Malick. 5 films étalés sur un peu plus de 40 ans aux sujets à chaque fois différents mais qui racontent pourtant aussi la même idée. Une filmographie qui évoquerait des psalmodies où chacun de ces 5 films sont des liturgies, des chants sacralisant la vie, le monde et la nature sans pour autant imposer, juger, dogmatiser.
Sans connaître son rapport à la religion ou ses croyances qu'elles soient judéo-chrétienne ou autre, sans parler de l'homme lui-même, Malick a su bel et bien poser une autre emprunte que celle qui consiste à vitrifier ce qui nous entoure tout en reproduisant toujours les mêmes motifs sur nos croyances, nos doutes et nos peurs. Qu'il aborde la guerre, la jeunesse, l'amour, les peuples, la domination, la mort, Malick est un cinéaste immense parce que oui, il nous parle des sujets qui ont construit l'humanité avec ce qu'il sait faire et rien d'autre. Il nous embarque (ou non) avec sa propre grammaire. Tout y est pourtant si familier. Ces oeuvres ne sont jamais écrasantes, supérieures. Nous n'éprouvons jamais ce sentiments d'assister à une démonstration géniale mais froide, prétentieuse ou définitive.
Terrence Malick à l'instar de Bergman, Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos et tant d'autres de ces cinéastes obstinés par les grandes questions comme par exemple d'essayer de comprendre comment fonctionne ce paradoxe entre une haine absolue de l'être humain et de ce qu'il représente et en même temps l'amour sans borne pour cette drôle de créature terrestre. Avec cependant pour Malick le soin de se débarrasser de tout l'arsenal hiératique de ces autres auteurs qui intellectualisaient plus qu'ils ne faisaient ressentir dans leurs films.
Malick ne questionne pratiquement pas. Il laisse les questions aux livres ou aux autres cinéastes qui ont tenté l'approche philosophique. Lui préfère les forces telluriques et il se sert de cet outil qu'est le cinéma pour tenter de nous faire entendre avec surtout les autres sens que le cerveau. Nous rappeler sans cesse d'où nous venons et de quoi nous sommes fait.

Plus précisément, si l'on doit essayer de cataloguer ce cinéaste et son oeuvre, on peut tenter l'analogie avec Hayao Miyazaki, cet autre grand artiste Japonais qui lui oeuvre dans le domaine de l'animation. En effet, ces deux hommes ont toujours mis en avant la Terre dans le sens le plus entier du terme. La nature, tient pour Miyasaki une place impérieuse, écrasante et redoutée, alors que chez Malick, cette nature est en osmose avec l'homme ou du moins sur un pied d'égalité. Par sa signature formelle, tous les films de Malick montrent les arbres, le ciel et tout ce qui nous entoure et dont nous ne sommes pas les créateurs, à un même niveau que l'être humain. En ce sens, Malick évoque un optimisme, de l'espoir.
Les deux hommes ont pourtant le même langage malgré ces deux points de vues culturels.
C'est en fait l'aspect méditatif qui prévaut tout en se risquant à espérer tenir le spectateur plus habitué à cette langueur. Miyasaki et Malick se rejoignent sans doute par la vision chamanique de leurs oeuvres.

The Tree of Life, tel qui l'a été accueilli à sa sortie, dénote, reflète bien le monde dans lequel nous vivons.
Ce sont des ricanements qui ont été les arguments du contre. Aujourd'hui, ce qu'il aborde, prête plus à sourire pour tous ceux qui en ce début du 3 ème millénaire n'ont plus foi en rien. Je ne parle pas forcément de celle religieuse. Où le cynisme est devenu une doctrine et l'individualisme un moyen de diviser et cloisonner les individus, les isoler toujours plus, il est évident que l'on ne peut que rester étranger aux propos d'un tel film, ne pas le comprendre ou l'aborder de manière cauteleuse. Un film qui parle donc surtout de communion.

Ce film qui d'abord se découvre surtout sur grand écran est l'oeuvre la plus ambitieuse de son géniteur. Il est évident qu' à ce stade, on peut détester ou s'ennuyer ferme devant ce que l'on regarde. Il ne s'agit pas de parti pris ou d'une querelle stérile entre ceux qui aurait tout compris à l'oeuvre et les autres qui manque de recul.
Le film interpelle ou non chacun de nous, personnellement, nominativement. Soit on y voit que des images sublimes, sorte de tableaux animés mais vides de sens avec un message post new-age plus du tout en phase avec les préoccupation d'un monde actuel schizophrène qui aurait besoin d'un autre miroir' ou bien alors on est littéralement happé, enveloppé.
The Tree Of Life parle de nous et de ce court passage sur la terre. Malick une fois de plus n'a pas essayer de nous imposer Le Film Définitif, l'oeuvre absolue du maître comme essaye aussi de nous le vendre depuis toujours certains comme pour mieux encore agacé ces détracteurs.
Il a réalisé son film.
Ce n'est pas un film où l'on doit juste contempler, baisser les yeux et dire "amen". C'est un lien, une communication, un dialogue, une voix, un souffle.

... Et c'est beau.

10 persone l'hanno trovato utile

Ray

Existenz...

Recensito in Germania il 26 novembre 2011

1942 landet die Charliecompanie der 25. US-Infanteriedivision auf der Salomonen-Insel Guadalcanal im Pazifischen Ozean und kämpft sich dort durch den imposanten Regenwald, um die Insel von den Japanern zurückzuerobern. Private Witt versucht auf seine Weise die Hölle zu überstehen, indem er sich unerlaubt von der Mannschaft entfernte und für kurze Zeit in die paradiesisch andere Welt der Südsee-Eingeborenen eintauchte, bevor er sich in der vergitterten Strafzelle eines Truppentransporters in Richtung Kampf begibt.
Die Off Stimme des Meisterwerks "Der schmale Grat" stellt dann so gewichtige Fragen wie "Wie kommt das Böse in die Welt ?" oder "Warum tun wir das ?" während ein Massaker an den Japanern stattfindet.
Im Grunde ist Terrence Malicks "Tree of Life" eine konsequente Fortsetzung seines Kriegsepos aus dem Jahr 1998.
Ein Film, der nicht linear erzählt wird, von gängigen Kinomustern extrem abweicht und der es dem konsumierenden Kinozuschauer, der eine Story erwartet nicht leicht macht.
Ein geheimnisvolles schwankendes Licht, gleich einer flackernden Flamme, erscheint in der Dunkelheit. Es ist der Beginn einer Entscheidung zwischen Natur und Gnade.
Mitte der 60er Jahre erhält Mrs. OŽBrien (Jessica Chastain) die Nachricht vom Tod ihres 19jährigen Sohnes. Mr. OŽBrien (Brad Pitt) erhält von seiner Frau die Nachricht per Telefon.
Ein Zeitsprung in die Jetztzeit: Architekt Jack (Sean Penn) aus Houston ist der älteste Sohn der 0ŽBriens und befindet sich in einem kalten Gebäude. Vor diesem Hochhaus wird ein Baum gepflanzt, dies weckt in ihm Erinnerungen an seine Kindheit im texanischen Waco.
Bilder des Urknalls und die Entstehung des Lebens auf der Erde werden gezeigt, die von einer flüsternden Stimme und einer tranceartigen, meditativen oder klassischen Klavier Musik begleitet wird.
Das Universum entsteht, dann Planeten und Galaxien. Die Erde bildet sich, Vulkane brechen aus und es beginnen sich Mikroben zu bilden. Ein Elasmosaurus mit einer großen, blutenden Wunde, blickt vom Strand aufs Meer hinaus. Am Ufer eines Flußes liegt ein verwundeter Parasaurolophus, ein Raubsaurier hat ihn entdeckt und zur Beute deklariert. Doch er lässt Gnade walten und verschont das verletzte Tier im letzten Augenblick.
Die Geschichte geht weiter in der Erinnerung von Jack, der sich in seiner Kindheit in den 50er Jahren befindet und mit seinen beiden jüngeren Brüdern dort aufwächst.
Die gütige, sanfte, liebende Mutter repräsentiert die Gnade, der strenge, autoritäre und nicht immer beherrschte Vater die Natur.
Eine surreale Trance liegt über diesen Erinnerungen an die Familie. Die Schilderungen wirken leicht entrückt und nach und nach zieht sich das oberflächlich Unbeschwerte zurück und weicht etwas immer mehr Bedrohlichem.
Jack (Hunter McCracken) streift bald mit seinen Brüdern (Tye Sheridan, Laramie Eppler) in seinen Erinnerungen durch die Nachbarschaft, wirft Scheiben ein, schiesst Frösche mit einer selbst gebastelten Rakete in die Luft. Sein kindlicher Blick wird zunehmend verschlagener und düsterer, er quält seinen jüngeren Bruder.
Er fühlt sich mit seinen neuen Erfahrungen über Gewalt irgendwie schuldig, diese Energien sind weit entfernt von dem liebenden Prinzip, dass seine Mutter für ihn bedeutet.
Malick lässt einen unablässigen Bilderstrom auf den Zuschauer los, der Film folgt den Gesetzen eines Traumes, im Grunde Bilder vom Verlust der Unschuld und von der Suche diese wiederzufinden.
Und eine Erkenntniss, dass individuelle Entscheidungen Veränderungen herbeiführen.
Es ist ein Versuch, das ganze Dasein, den ganzen Kosmos genauso zu fassen wie das intimste Detail eines Lebens, Mikrokosmos und Makrokosmos.
In Cannes gabs dafür die Goldene Palma, aber auch Buh-Rufe. So gesehen sind diese weit auseinandergehenden Beurteilungen eine Fortsetzung der Wirkung.
Denn der Film ist tatsächlich sperrig und anstrengend.
Aber gelungen, wie ich finde. Vor allem habe ich bemerkt, dass die Schilderungen dieser Kindheit auch bei mir bewirkten, dass eigene Gedanken an früher wieder abgerufen werden konnten.
Allein dafür ein paar Sterne, denn eine "Meditation über das Leben" empfinde ich wertvoll. Malick hat eine Collagenform gewählt mit gewaltigen Bildern und fantastischer Musik. Am Ende war ich erschöpft, was nicht bei vielen Filmen der Fall ist, aber die Stimmung, die der Film auf mich hatte, ist jetzt einige Tage später immer noch präsent.
Es ist halt eine Frage, ob man sich darauf einlassen kann oder nicht.
Filmische Verwandte hat ich nicht nur in "2001" ausgemacht, sondern vor allem in Gaspar Noes "Enter the void" oder in Aronofskys "The Fountain".
Malicks Arbeit scheint mir aber die monumentalste zu sein.
Religiös fand ich den Film nicht, aber er war auf jeden Fall spirtiuell und ich habe das Gefühl, dass "Tree of Life" etwas ganz besonderes war und somit jetzt schon ein Klassiker dieses neuen Kinojahrzehnts

12 persone l'hanno trovato utile

D. Smith

2001: A Space Odyssey and Distant Voices, Still Lives Meet (on the Ledge)

Recensito nel Regno Unito il 8 agosto 2011

POSSIBLE SPOILERS ALERT

Most viewers will give The Tree of Life either one star, and complain vehemently that they can't understand (there's a clue there!) why others praise the film so highly when it was clearly self-indulgent tosh, or they will give it five stars and declare it a masterpiece. In other words it will divide the audience very clearly in two, just like 2001: A Space Odyssey did in the sixties, and for some of the same reasons. The Tree of Life also reminded me very strongly of Terence Davies' Distant Voices, Still Lives. All three are beautifully crafted, and could be called emotional experiences rather than "films".

All three are intensely visual and don't tell you in any straightforward linear narrative what is going on. They also use music very deliberately and powerfully. You have to have a certain faith in the film-maker that he knows what he's doing and although he is making some bold moves you have to give him enough slack because he will give you an experience that will play in your mind for months or even years. But although viewing any film requires us to suspend our disbelief (gosh, if you look to the side you can see "Exit" signs) I think that with 2001 and Tree you have to go that bit further, give the film-maker a bit more latitude to take you on that journey while you have to try to suppress your critical faculties of the particular bits you don't like, or at least don't like yet. You have to let yourself sink into the film as you would into a warm bath, and let it happen to you.

I found I was being intensely critical for the first half-hour, saying to myself "I don't think I'm going to like this very much," and I even thought at one point, "It is just possible that I may walk out in the middle." I thought the dinosaur bit was taking things a bit too far, and instead of thinking about compassion or grace I was thinking that CGI still looks a bit clunky. But I am glad that I relaxed, switched off the critical point-scoring and just opened up to the experience. The end result was that I enjoyed the film more than almost any other I have ever seen, and found it profoundly moving - quite literally it moved me to tears.

Some say that it is deep and others that it's a con, and not deep at all. I think it is emotionally resonant, so conjures deep emotions in you, the viewer, but only if you're prepared to let it. Others say it's complex, and others found it facile or just dumb, and resent that the other parties impugn their sensibilities because they didn't "get it". In my opinion, it's not complex in that it's not a puzzle with clues you have to work out, but it does require you to interpret your own meaning from it. So you have to suspend being over-critical, but that doesn't mean you are just a passive viewer; the film demands that you interpret what you see and hear and to be aware of your own emotional response to it. You have to make your own emotional contribution to the film while you're watching it and afterwards; like all great art, perhaps, in the end it's what it makes you feel that is the measure of how good it is, and that's a very personal thing. And in the end, the love you take...

Oddly, even people who like the film a great deal have different opinions about what works and what doesn't. I still don't much care for the dinosaurs bit, but I loved the "everybody meets on the beach" part which reminded me of Richard Thompson's epic song Meet on the Ledge (written when he was a callow youth of 17, and still sung 42 years later every year at midnight by a tear-stained crowd of 20,000 people who've come together on an old English Civil War battlefield in Oxfordshire.) On the other hand, some people loved the dinosaurs and hated the meet on the beach part, thinking it was corny (or some kind of heaven.)

An explanation (thank you, Martin Carthy) for readers who are unfamiliar with Richard Thompson: "Bob Dylan is the American Richard Thompson."

Similarly, those of a religious bent find it a confirmation of their religious belief, I found it an affirmation of my atheism, or more accurately my humanism, crystallised in the softly spoken voice over from the mother near the end that goes something like, "All that matters is that you love...for without love life will pass you by in a flash."

Part way through the film my interpretation became this: the creation of the universe, the formation of the Earth, the evolution of life, all leads up to this point in time, to this boy's life - the brother that died, or the brother that is grieving, or the boy that is you remembering your own childhood and is now watching this film. It might be stretching a point (and sound a bit too Pythonesque) to say that The Tree of Life is about the meaning of life. But it clearly is, you know.

Finally, there's some biographical stuff about Terrence Malick that I picked up from some recently published critiques. They shouldn't be plot spoilers, but do add a sledgehammer blow to the emotional impact and "meaning" (if you insist) of the film. I have no idea if this is completely true but what I read was ... Malick was brought up as the oldest of three brothers in Waco, Texas (there's at least one clue in the film that we are in Waco.) When Terrence was in his early twenties his middle brother, Larry, still in his teens, went to Spain to study classical guitar under guitar maestro Andrés Segovia. (We recall the short scene in Tree where the middle brother picks out a melody on guitar while sitting on the step that his frustrated musician father is playing on piano, and they share a moment of mutual discovery.)

Something clearly went very wrong, and Malick's father asked him to go over to Spain to find out what was happening, but Terrence refused, having better things to do. Malick senior made the trip to Spain to discover that some stress or depression or pressure of study had caused Larry to break both his hands and ultimately take his own life. His father brought Larry's body back home to the devastated family. It seems very likely that this tragedy has been a burden of grief for Malick all his life, and is the mainspring for finally making this film.

I can only suggest that those reviewers who found the film trivial and meaningless read the two paragraphs above, then go and watch it again - I think you may have missed something.

7 persone l'hanno trovato utile