Aug 12 2011, I finally saw Tree of Life at Landmark Sunshine Cinemas in the city this past Wednesday. The drawing above is a replacement for a photo that I forgot to take of the film poster since I always like to compliment a film write-up with a picture. As if, like a postcard—a film as postcard. So, ToL was great, totally fun and well worth my $13. It’s hard to say in words exactly how and what I saw in the film. But, it reminds me of PBS shows like The Universe and Discovery Channel shows about dinosaurs with a fictional storyline mixed in about an all-American 1950’s-ish nuclear family that’s treated in the film almost like supplementary material one would see in those documentaries about the 1950’s. The subject is treated in such a direct way that it reminds me of a Maysles film and conceptually reminds me of the Up Series of documentaries, as far as, the coverage of Terrence Malick’s fictional family is concerned—spanning the entire life span of the kids, for example. Actually, there are so many references in the film that I see that the film, to me, is essentially almost like a reworking of a 100 years worth of TV-film memory. So, in short, ToL is like a visit to a really cool celluloid-museum that is not stuffy, but modern and breezy. And it only takes 2 hours and a half to see the entire joint.
