Tree of Life

I was so excited to see The Tree of Life since I found out that it had won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and that it was probably Brad Pitt's strongest performance to date. I had no clue what the subject or plot would be, only that I wanted to see it. If you don't want to know, I'd suggest you stop reading here.

SPOILER ALERT: The film is full of strong images and a bit too much opera. Coming from an opera-lover, that's really saying something. There is almost no plot. The story centres around the death of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain's son (the second of three) at the age of 19. We never find out how he died, nor do we ever see him at 19. Instead we see snippets of their current life and their life when the boys were younger. There are a lot of whispered questions to God and even more scenes of shots of nature. The film is visually stunning, I will give it that; but there was one part near the beginning when I was in my seat mouthing WTFML?!?!?! (the presence of the "F" means I was really confused)--this was because the action moved from the characters to outer space, to the planets, to cellular life, to forests and waterfalls, to oceans, to deserts, and...to DINOSAURS. When I saw the dinosaurs I really started wondering where the film was going.

There is barely any dialogue, which I am fine with, and I only found out one of the protagonists' names near the end--Jack, the oldest son. Brad Pitt's character is a stern, disciplinarian, perfectionistic father from the deep south and Jessica Chastain's character is that of an ideal, virtuous mother. Sean Penn plays Jack as an adult who is still affected by the death of his brother, but we barely see any of him.

I still can't get over the dinosaurs. During that 10-20 minute scene of nature shots, Posh turned to me and said, "If I wanted to watch this, I would watch National Geographic". Agreed.

Maybe if I saw this film a second time my opinion would change--that has certainly happened for me in the past with artsy movies or ones that make me think. I just don't have the patience to sit through more than 2 hours of this again in the near future. And if you are still reading and curious to see the film, perhaps you should. I have lowered your expectations for you. You're welcome.