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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.

For the last twelve months the film world rallied behind […]

A deep premise with facile tendencies. An emotional story at […]

Babel (Inarritu; 2006) raises an interesting question about the relationship between a film and a filmmaker. Is it entirely a symbiotic one? How much Inarritu is in Babel, and vice-versa? Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu seems very much present in Babel's stories, taking a prominent position among the individuals who form this wide net of a cast. He lifts the veil draped over human suffering and lead us toward our redemption.