tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post3817607876349353264..comments2024-03-14T03:15:28.803-07:00Comments on The End of Cinema: Quick Thoughts on The Tree of LifeSean Gilmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-5779026440366299202011-07-13T15:38:15.833-07:002011-07-13T15:38:15.833-07:00I agree!I agree!M. Tamminga (@oneaprilday)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10369421041119819033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-27231247857705027002011-07-13T14:24:25.701-07:002011-07-13T14:24:25.701-07:00Yup, that's exactly what I'm thinking.
Th...Yup, that's exactly what I'm thinking.<br /><br />The question is, does that negate the complaints about it being pretentious New Agey gooeyness? I think it does.Sean Gilmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-67458474478739338022011-07-13T11:55:56.189-07:002011-07-13T11:55:56.189-07:00Yes, that's helpful. I agree that Jack is not...Yes, that's helpful. I agree that Jack is not Malick (no, I can't picture him in that modern setting either!)though Malick is drawing on his own memories and longings even if we can't conflate character and director. And I guess it's fairer to say Malick is drawn to or fascinated by Transcendence more than to say he is is teaching it in any didactic kind of way. I think the film - and his other films, too - raise questions that simply aren't answered completely (eg. the problems of violence, evil, suffering) and I think it's pretty clear Malick understands that those are unanswered, and while we can be drawn into the comfort Jack finds, we can also understand that the comfort isn't, as you put it, The Answer, necessarily, for Malick himself.M. Tamminga (@oneaprilday)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10369421041119819033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-87455978036637187432011-07-13T11:21:52.812-07:002011-07-13T11:21:52.812-07:00I think that through Jack, Malick offers an answer...I think that through Jack, Malick offers an answer, but not The Answer.<br /><br />As I understand it, much of the action in the film parallels is own life (his father is an inventor, the family moved from Waco to Oklahoma when he was about the characters age, he had a younger brother who played the guitar and killed himself in another country (so the family would have been notified by telegram) etc).<br /><br />But that's not to say that Jack is Malick. I find it difficult to imagine Malick living in the type of apartment Jack does, or working in the kind of place Jack does, for one thing. All that modernist white just doesn't seem right for a guy who's never made a film set in the present.<br /><br />I think Malick is fascinated by transcendence, and by Transcendentalism in particular, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that's what he believes in. The ideas and effects of his films continue to reflect that philosophy, however.<br /><br />Anyway, the plot of the film could be summarized thusly: a middle-aged man feels bad, depressed and alienated. He thinks back on his past and imagines a future wherein he is reunited with everyone he loves and that makes him feel better. The end. I don't think Malick intends for Jack's vision of happiness to be The Afterlife, but rather he wants to take us along Jack's path from depression to happiness, from past to future. In the same way you don't have to be Catholic to be moved by scared music (a Requiem say, or Bach's Mass in B Minor), you don't have to believe like Jack to be moved by Malick.Sean Gilmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-16766464456890027362011-07-13T10:59:47.514-07:002011-07-13T10:59:47.514-07:00Ah, of course! How could I forget Hiroshima, mon a...Ah, of course! How could I forget Hiroshima, mon amour?! It's a great parallel film - that one deals with both individual and collective memory, don't you think? I'm kind of thinking Tree of Life does that, too, tying one individual's memories to a more collective kind of memory or awareness or something. <br /><br />You make a great point about the sincerity of the film - the heartfelt questioning of it - and the distinction between Malick's and the character's point of view is essential, I think. I posed the problem of the idealization of the mother to my friends in discussion after we watched the film together, and we agreed that it's not a problem at all if we understand that idealization as coming from Jack. If he identifies with the father, if he sees himself (and his flaws) in his father, then it makes a lot of sense that the father would be more complex, not ideal. <br /><br />I've been struggling though, once I realized that the film is so much from the character's point of view, with trying to distinguish between Malick's perspective and the character's perspective. It's been said that this is a personal film for Malick - Waco is his childhood home, right?; and he had some tragedy with a brother, too (?); and, of course, themes here are also present in his other films, maybe most especially TRL and TNW. So what is from Jack and what is from Malick? Is the comfort of the beach scene all Jack? In discussion with my friends, again, we all disliked what felt like the patness of the answer of that scene - but if it's Jack and not Malick, maybe it's not pat, or not the kind of trite comfort I feared it was. Did you listen to Kermode's review? He believes the film is much more flawed than I think you and I do, and his conclusion was that the film is Malick's offering comfort, an "it's going to be all right." If Kermode is right, I'm less happy with the film - but I'd like to think, based on what we've been saying about character perspective, that Kermode doesn't have it quite right. <br /><br />But I'm still struggling. Malick, surely, does believe in some kind of transcendence, as that transcendence is tied to new birth, the natural world, don't you think? Where and how do I separate Malick and Jack - is it even possible or helpful to try to do so?<br /><br />Maybe, to return to Hiroshima, mon amour, the individual is completely bound up in the collective and it's impossible to separate the two, impossible to separate here, at every single moment, Jack and Malick.M. Tamminga (@oneaprilday)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10369421041119819033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-52626924016946735272011-07-13T00:29:17.908-07:002011-07-13T00:29:17.908-07:00For memory, the closest I've seen might be Hir...For memory, the closest I've seen might be <i>Hiroshima, mon amour</i>, another film that floats, especially in the beginning.<br /><br />It's interesting I think that while I think the film is utterly sincere, I don't think it's ever explicit about what it's about. For example, many reviewers latch onto the opening "Way of Nature/Way of Grace dichotomy, or the Mother's "That's where God lives" line as examples of the film's theme, when in fact I don't think that's Malick's point of view at all. I don't think the Mother is idealized by Malick, but rather by the character Jack. <br /><br />It's an example of that old critical trap of mistaking a character's thoughts for the authors. I think a complete reading of the film understands that the Mother is <i>not</i> ideal. In fact, the film can easily be understood as completely secular, which would negate everything the Mother seems to represent.<br /><br />The sincerity comes about not in the obviousness of it's themes but in the heartfelt and serious way the film struggles with very real issues that are rarely treated with respect in popular culture. Malick isn't trying to pander to us, to comfort us or to reaffirm what we already know.Sean Gilmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-30623686017509319192011-07-12T23:55:45.993-07:002011-07-12T23:55:45.993-07:00Love your review and your reflections bring a numb...Love your review and your reflections bring a number of things together for me: the idea that Malick is uniting oppositions, water as a connective tissue (which reminds me of A River Runs Thriugh It, which I just re-read and fell in love with all over again), the trees/Tree as parallel to 2001's monolith (re-birth more than evolution though, no?). I was also in awe of the editing - it kept me both rapt and concentrated, as if Malick was leading me along a fine edge. And the evocation of memory, too, as you note - is there snything else like it? Some things don't work for me, but I think I can only embrace the absolute sincerity of <br />the film - your word, "sincerity," works so well here in understanding much of the power of the film.M. Tamminga (@oneaprilday)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10369421041119819033noreply@blogger.com