Don't you just love it when you walk into a movie with zero expectation? When I walked into The Tree of Life, I had no idea what the movie was about ~ at all. I only knew that it won this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes and that was about it. So you can imagine how (pleasantly) surprised I was when I realise this is not really a movie as we normally see it. "Starring" Brad Pitt and Sean Penn (who just gets better and better as he ages), this is actually a Full On arthouse flick on a general (mainstream) release ... it's basically a poetic rendition of what Life is about. A member of the family dies. What does death mean within the religous, emotional, social and even political context? What is life all about? The movie offers both a scientific and religious response to that, which is interesting. We were even treated with scenes of the beginning of the Universe and the dinosaur age. However, there is a sort of narrative to this drama and that I found a little all over the place. While I realise it has a non-linear narrative, it was somehow presented as a drama-with-a plot, which is as confusing as it is annoying. People did walk out from the screening; perhaps they were expecting to see Pitt/Penn act ... well, Penn certainly just drifted through the whole thing, albeit somewhat stylishly. I thoroughly enjoyed the visuals (cinematography?) of The Tree of Life -- it was like watching an unusually long artsy video (made for art biennials) but projected onto the big screen.
Off to see Transformers 3 tomorrow (got dragged along by my dad, of all people) and then Harry Potter VII (Part 2) on Tuesday. Can't wait!!!
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