vernon film society
Bringing the best in world and Canadian film to film lovers of Vernon and the North Okanagan
THE TREE OF LIFE
Monday, September 12
Terrence Malick
Cast: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn. Jessica Chastain
Run Time: 138 minutes
Country: USA
Year: 2011
Language: English
Rating: G (Violence)
NOTE: Because of the length of this film, the 2nd show will be at 8:00 pm
Perhaps the closest that cinema has ever come to providing audiences with a glimpse into the human soul, this existential epic intertwines a narrative about love and loss with an imagistic meditation on a life’s context amidst all of exis¬tence. This visual elegy by Oscar-nominated director Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven) was the recipient of the Palme d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
In the central story, a family unexpectedly loses one of their three sons. This tragedy introduces a fragmented, non-linear narrative that is gov¬erned by memory, imagination and emotion. The film focuses primarily on the formative years of the three brothers as they grow up in the idyl¬lic suburbs of 1950’s Texas. The contrast between their oppressive father (Brad Pitt, Inglorious Basterds, The Curious Case of Benjamin But¬ton) and uplifting mother (Jessica Chastain, The Debt) is crystallized in the eldest son, Jack (new¬comer Hunter McCracken), who wrestles with their conflicting influences and the loss of his younger brother into his adulthood. In glimpses of present day, which are set against the cold sterility of the modern urban landscape, it is clear that middle-aged Jack (Sean Penn, Milk, Mystic River) is still haunted by the scars of his youth.
The film oscillates between the story of the family’s tragedy and a series of transcendent images ranging from prehistoric to cosmic which give metaphoric scope and dimension to the their pain. Visually exploring creation, destruction and all forms of life spanning from genesis to the birth of a child, the omniscient camera journey’s across the earth, under the sea and into the celestial bodies of the heavens creating a visual poem that contemplates the nature of time, space and spirituality.
“Terrence Malick's mad and magnificent film descends slowly, like some sort of prototypical spaceship: it's a cosmic-interior epic of vain¬glorious proportions, a rebuke to realism, a disavowal of irony and comedy, a meditation on memory, and a gasp of horror and awe at the mysterious inevitability of loving, and losing those we love.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
