The Tree of Life - Fail

Title: The Tree Of Life
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Year: 2011
Director: Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain

The story goes back and forth between Jack growing up in the 50s as the eldest son in his family and him in the present (played by Sean Penn) struggling with life. There is the complicated relationship with the strict and old-fashioned father (Brad Pitt), his loving beautiful and overly sweet angelic mother (Jessica Chastain) and finally the death of his brother as a teenager. Between all this and the alienation from himself and the world, he ponders upon the question of life, what it all means, what God is trying to tell us by making the world such a cruel place and how to put together the good and the bad, the faith and life. Though most of this is not spelt out in words, as much as it's displayed by symbolism and certain camera angels that put things into perspective.

Bedchel Test:

At least 2 Women? Yes. There is the mother, some family/neighbours and some woman (?) consoling her for a brief second.

Talking? Yes. For a very short moment.

...About something other than men? No. They're talking about her sons.


Opinion:

I cannot understand for my life understand why this has won anything at Cannes, neither why anyone would love this movie.

I went to the cinema with three other people, all differently minded than me, all with distinct tastes in film, but when we went out of the cinema we were all assured in one thing: what a boring excuse for a movie!

Not all of the 139 painstakingly long minutes was wasted, though, so I'll start of with the good parts: There are wonderful camera shots and a beautiful scenery. In general, but some scenes are really extraordinarily stunning and would have made an already great movie perfect.

The lack of good entertainment also can't be blamed on the great actors. I love Sean Penn but I also admire Brad Pitt as an actor, and he did a very convincing job at how I imagine a lot of father sin the 50s in the US would have been. I did not like the female role but that's not because of the actress, the character was just not very believable written, much too goody two shoes. The child actors were all convincing and created a believable atmosphere.

There's also the special effects: Douglas Trumpell (known for his work on Odyssee in Space) did a great job at produces a long sequence that showed the process of life and the creation of the universe.

He has spoken about his work in this film, explaining how such a creative artwork found its way into the movie : “We worked with chemicals, paint, fluorescent dyes, smoke, liquids, CO2, flares, spin dishes, fluid dynamics, lighting and high speed photography to see how effective they might be. It was a free-wheeling opportunity to explore, something that I have found extraordinarily hard to get in the movie business. We did things like pour milk through a funnel into a narrow trough and shoot it with a high-speed camera and folded lens, lighting it carefully and using a frame rate that would give the right kind of flow characteristics to look cosmic, galactic, huge and epic.”

Enough with the praise then. Why do I not like this movie then? First: it's not the mere fact that it's experimental. I don't mind long or confusing parts in films, I don't need a straight narrative, I don't mind putting up with a lot of hard work while watching a film - if it is rewarding.

"The Tree of Life" tries to be something so much more than American popcorn entertainment, and fails. If it's not the story, not the actors and not the camera and scenery - what is it then? Well for one, it promises great things with its slow movements and long pauses, it asks big questions and then leaves them unanswered. If those questions felt realistic, that would be fine, but instead they feel like reading the "contents" page of a primary school Ethics book on the meaning of life. Such a waste of talent. Maybe this movie dares to ask questions new to Hollywood, but surely not to cinema itself.
When I read through the reviews I feel like I've went to see a different movie than these people. So much praise for this drivel?
"The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal live" - Roger Ebert

It attempts it alright, but manages to? Certainly not. Coming close to it would be an achievement big enough, but neither that.

"The Tree of Life is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind’s place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amidst its narrative imprecisions." - Todd McCarthy
Look at all those big words! I find it laughable that somehow people seem lurred into believing that some big words and walking through the sand, watching a tree grow and death as such make a movie deep and meaningful.

On the other hand, there are people who got it right. Sukhdev Sandhu of the Daily Telegraph said the movie was "self-absorbed and achingly slow, almost buckling under the weight of its swoony poetry", while Screen Daily grants the movie "moments of breathtaking visual and aural beauty" but declares it "a cinematic credo about spiritual transcendence which, while often shot through with poetic yearning, preaches too directly to its audience. If ever a whole film were on the nose, this is it."

Self-absorded? Pretentious? I could not agree more. Yet I don't even feel the producers were aware of it at all. It feels like watching the creation of a small child who just pondered some questions about her existence for the first time and thinks that makes her the greatest philosopher of all time.
Pondering about life and spirituality are no bad things, obviously. I don't study philosophy for nothing, I love it! But just putting some questions about life and God and human emotions out there, with some pseudo-poetic words to it and set to wonderful pictures, that doesn't make a good movie alone.

Let's not even talk about the male/female worldview in this one. It was the 50s afterall. On the other hand, more than the realistic portrayal of the gender situation in that time, is the personal presentation of the parents. The father a complicated troubled soul, the father the perfect person there to pick up the pieces and make everyone feel loved. Personality? Nada, just christian-value-filled devotion to her family and God's love. Angelic features, angelic
soul, white and clean perfection. I shall stop this review before I barf.

Verdict: Fail & Not Recommended

Heartbeats - Fail

Sorry for the much too long break! I didn't stop watching movies but I spent most of the time watching documentaries, not fictional movies. I struggle with getting documentaries into the bedchel test because the whole approach and set-up of them is so different. If anyone got any ideas of how to make documentaries fit the criteria or how to include them, please tell me!

I changed the way of the "formula" of the test, too. Hopefully it is a bit easier on the eyes now!

Title: Heartbeats

Original Title: Les Amours imaginaires

Genre: Drama /Romance/ (Comedy)

Country: Canada

Year: 2010

Director: Xavier Dolan

Starring: Xavier Dolan, Monia Chokri, Niels Schneider

Plot: The two friends Marie (Chokri) and Francis (Dolan) get to know Nicolas (Schneider) at a friends' dinner party and get along well. The next weeks they spend more and more time together, until they eventually both fall in love with him. While Nicolas is flirting heavily with both of them (or at least, this is how they perceive his actions - and any sane person would) they get more competitive and their friendship disintegrates. When they confess their love to Nicolas they are both rejected and are left in a horrible lonely state. Eventually Marie and Francis rekindle their friendship.

Bedchel Test:

At least 2 Women? Besides Marie there is Nicolas' mother, Marie's friends at the dinner party and several other girls at Nicolas' birthday party.

Talking? The only point where we get any women talking is at the dinner where Marie and Francis meet Nicolas for the first time.

...About something other than men? No. They're talking about Nicolas.

Opinion:

While the movie features almost no women at all, I don't hold it against this movie, because here it mostly makes sense. Heartbeats is less about love than it is about obsession. Marie and Francis are obsessed of the idea of being with Nicolas and therefor hardly talk about anything else and don't focus on anything else.

There are quite a few slow motion scenes of Nicolas, that might look ridiculous if you take them at face value, but if you recognize them as the idealised portrayal of two people obsessed with the idea of that "perfect being".

It's also interesting to note that the object that is "perfected" in their heads, that is superficialised and even partly reduced to his body (regarding the focus on his youthful beauty) is a man and not a woman. It was in interesting twist on the old-fashioned "femme fatale"theme.

I enjoyed the way that the sexuality of both was not put in question, that their lust and love for Nicolas was not portrayed in any different light "according" to their gender. There was one small thing that irked me, but it was put forward in an amusing way so I'm not critiquing it, just questioning it: In between the movie there are short sequences of men and women talking about their failed love affairs with (presumably) Nicolas. One man says the old and clichéd and still often heard assumption that being bisexual clearly means you're not able to decide between men and women, and that you must know! When you're in a supermarket you either look at penises or at breasts!

Obviously this assumption is not endorsed by the director or the film as such, but it's just put out there with no critique to it, either. It irks me because you get to hear this stuff so many times as a bisexual. The latter part irritated me the most, but maybe that's just me being strange: When I'm looking at people their sexual organs tend not the be the first or only thing I look at. Not to be going all "spiritual" on you, but I'm never ever attracted to someone, man or woman, if the person as whole doesn't fit together. Of course appearance is a big part of who someone is, but merely one part of that appearance? But hey, maybe that's just me not getting all horny by breasts or penises without bodies to go with them.

Back to the film: it had a very European vibe to it, and was clearly heavily influenced by French cinema. I'm not just talking about the characters' habit of constantly smoking but a lot of slow motions, long visual scenes with little direct "story content" to tell. I enjoyed that, especially because it seemed very consciously chosen and ironic. In the same way that these Francis-obsessed two people focusses so much on their appearance and small things (Francis hugging them! Francis being cute to them!, etc) the movie did, too. It was a great approach to make the viewpoints of the two characters more understandable.

All in all it's an enjoyable, amusing and definitely entertaining drama, that is less about love as it's about the tragic of peoples' obsession with it.

69/100

Verdict: Fail & Recommended