Climbing the tree of life
Film buffs from around the world lined up from the early morning to get into the world premiere of "The Tree of Life," the latest drama from US director Terrence Malick and a candidate for the Golden Palm award at Cannes.
The man behind "The Thin Red Line" has been recognized for his philosophical approach to cinema. In fact, Malick did teach philosophy at MIT before going to the American Film Institute in LA.
Each of his films is a spiritual voyage into the maze of the human soul. As if in response to Jean-Paul Sartre, who was quoted as saying that "everything has been figured out, except how to live," Malick`s "Tree of Life" is another attempt to analyze the raison d`être.
Described as an "impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950s," "The Tree of Life" focuses on relationships within one average American household, whose characters are being watched by the keen eye of the omniscient director, building up pressure and suspense throughout the entire film.
"The Tree of Life" could serve as a long lesson in humility and revolt. It revolves around three boys, their loving mother (played by Jessica Chastain) and a tyrant father (portrayed by Brad Pitt). A drama with universal appeal, it has psychological similarities with Andrey Zvyagintsev`s 2003 drama "The Return," which scooped two Golden Lion awards at the Venice film festival.
Chastain was quoted as saying that during the shooting, the cast didn`t think about the final result.
"We let go and lived entirely in the present," Chastain said. "At one point in the film, a butterfly comes to rest on my hand. It wasn`t in the script, but Terence creates the kind of set on which such things can happen."
Life is viewed by Malick as a series of collisions with the past, present and future.
"It would take many days to explain the film`s creative process," Pitt told the media in Cannes. "The screenplay was wonderfully written, very intense, but Terrence Malcik didn`t want to follow it slavishly. He likes to capture the truth between the lines. That`s why this film feels so fresh. On top of that, it was almost entirely shot in natural daylight."
Anatomizing family conflicts, Malick fills his film with surreal images of flora and fauna to the point where parts of the film could serve as a visual manual for keen naturalists. There are also powerful images of the formation of the universe in a blast of cosmic power some 14 billion years ago, and the appearance of the first single-celled life forms in the Proterozoic Eon.
Unrest of spirit is a mark of life, they say. Then don`t get surprised if the film has you up a tree.
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