If Terrence Malick is a saint of cinema, then this is his holy lesson. Over a four-decade career, the mercurial American visionary has mastered absence and flowered a daunting mystery. After making one of the most impressive debuts in American film history, 1973’s "Badlands," he quit talking to the press. After the dreamy masterpiece "Days of Heaven" five years later, the perfectionist dipped a toe back in and quickly removed it. He then famously disappeared for twenty years.
Swathed in stunning cinematography, pieced together by mood and memory (rather than linear story), "The Tree of Life" is a radical contemplation of mystery. These mysteries take forms from childhood curiosities to cosmic riddles, stretching from the Big Bang to a fifties Texas family and on to the end of time.
Michael Phillips, the Chicago Tribune critic, calls The Tree of Life “an infinitely more forgiving 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Critics and viewers will find a natural similarity with "Tree"’s centerpiece, an already famous twenty minute pre-historic spectacular, sketching the origins of the universe and the planet Earth. Stars, cells, seas, volcanoes, trees, sharks, jellyfish and, yes, dinosaurs. This section, though, seems to be a critique of "2001" rather than agreement. If Kubrick were still with us, he might feel the need to reply.
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Spotlight on this year's Cannes Selection and who the Palme winner will be. What's playing out in the jurors' hotel suite as I type these words is anyone's guess. How Robert De Niro will steer his jury is hard to tell. When Tim Burton was at the helm last year, people guessing "Uncle Boonmee" by Apichatpong Weerasethakul wouldn't have been too far off. Burton responds to dream-like, fantasy-related content, and the bewitching but slow movie by the Thai filmmaker was right up his alley. And "Boonmee" did win in the end. But De Niro? "Taxi driver," along with "Easy Rider," was one of the best-known movies out of the first independent cinema surge. Since then the "Meet the Parents" actor has usually worked with large, well-heeled movie productions. At the same time, he and Jane Rosenthal started Tribeca Film Festival which tends to showcase little-known filmmakers.
The buzz on the street has Lars Von Trier winning for "Melancholia." That's unlikely, considering what took place earlier this week (see our News article). I don't think De Niro would hand him the Palme given the Danish director's outrageous comments during the film's press conference.
Twelve year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), abandoned by his father (Jérémie […]
The 8:30am screening at the Cannes Festival is the most important one of the day, for a number of reasons. It's held in the Lumière Theatre, which sits over 2,200, it's early, and is bound to be attended by serious cinephiles and journalists (parties-bound festival-goers can't be expected to roll out of bed until about 11am and will try and catch Competition films later on in the day, if they make it). Finally, and because of the previously cited reasons, that screening is also a good yardstick for a movie's success for the remainder of the festival, and, often, beyond. In this case, Terrence Malick's "Tree of life," which was expected last year but not delivered (at Grand Hotel press conference, the single question raised by a fearless journalist was, "why is Terry Malick's Tree of Life not included in the selection?"), and which was shown on Monday, was the film-event of the still-ongoing Cannes Festival (and no, these sorts of events don't happen at every Cannes Festival) and a divisive one at that. Are all film-events divisive ones? No. When E.T. was shown, Steven Spielberg got a standing ovation that lasted nearly eight minutes. "Tree of life," with its overwrought message about the meaning of life and eminently-good Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, got boos, hisses, and plenty of applause. How that reaction will reverberate over the life of the movie is anyone's guess.
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