TIFF 2012 - To The Wonder

With almost no dialogue, a wisp of a story and a vigorous repetition of images and sound Terrence Malick has entered full-on self-indulgent mode in this relative quickie from the revered enigmatic director. However beautiful and elegant the imagery is, given the issues noted above we can feel the director's hand at work creating a greater disconnect between style and substance than in any of his previous films.

To the Wonder (2012) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem

By Alan Bacchus

When we look back on Malick's career I have no doubt that To the Wonder and Tree of Life will inexorably be linked together. The small amount of time between these films makes them seem like Siamese twins. Although in each of Malick's films there's a commonality in his use of voiceover and a fetishness with respect to the relationship between his human characters and nature, his style and tone change ever so slightly with each picture. But in To the Wonder and Tree of Life his wide-angle roving camera work, as lensed by Emmanuel Lubeszki, never stops moving and subliminally links these two films. In fact, as per the final credits, Malick even uses footage shot for Tree of Life in To the Wonder.

While Tree of Life spans the life of the universe before settling into a short period in 1950s Texas, here we're in contemporary Oklahoma. Well, first we're in France to establish the frolicking love affair between Neil (Affleck) and Marina (Kurylenko), an American and a European drinking in the culture of Europe's landmarks, including the luscious mystique of Mont Saint-Michel.

Then Malick moves Marina and her daughter to Neil's home in Bertlesville, OK, the worst kind of antiseptic suburbia imaginable with huge cookie-cutter houses, big-box stores and cul de sacs barren of foliage other than then manicured lawns. Malick charts the disillusionment of Marina's and Neil's marriage starting with Marina's inability to adapt to the environment, but even deeper, her inability to connect with Neil.

With only orchestral music (some composed, but mostly classical pieces), a disconnected voiceover and scraps of dialogue from the actors, To the Wonder pushes the Terrence Malick aesthetic to the extreme. In fact, there's almost no dialogue with some from Kurylenko and Bardem and none from Affleck. In fact, Affleck seems less of a character and more of a mere presence, an anonymous male figure in Marina's life representative of the foreign land in which she lives but never really connects with.

Rachel McAdams, in a minor role really, enters as a former girlfriend with whom Neil has an affair while he is separated from Marina. When Marina returns to America married and with a full green card in hand life is not better but worse, a down slide into emotional hell culminating in another act of infidelity.

As an experiment in narrative story telling with Malick's unique visual sensibilities, we have to admire the artist's attempt to push the medium beyond conventionality. And certainly at less than two hours in length, despite the massive critical disparity between the two films, the experience will be more accessible to some than the lauded Tree of Life.

But at the end of the day, this experiment just doesn't sustain itself and fails to generate the emotional attachment to the character that Malick desires of his audience. Thus, the break-up between Neil and Marina fails to move us, leaving us only with a shrug of acknowledgement or admiration that Malick managed to show a film about a romance and break-up without any dialogue.

**½

The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn

***½

By Alan Bacchus

On second viewing Terrence Malick's divisive headscratcher has certainly elevated a notch towards greatness. But considering my consistent glum opinion of The New World,I wasn't convinced I'd swing back this way. However, The Tree of Life is different. While I appreciated the ambitiousness in theme and often astounding execution of such vision, there was a repetitiveness in the second half that tarnished this 'masterpiece'. And yet, on this second go 'round this block of the story clicked in place perfectly.

I refer to the guts of the film wherein, after the eye-opening montage sequence depicting the creation of earth leading into the birth and rearing of Sean Penn's character, Jack, the film settles down into a contained story of Jack's upbringing at age 12 by his saintly mother and rock hard father. On first viewing this half of the film seemed like an endlessly repetitive series of boyhood frolicking told with the disjointed dreamlike visual style of Malick.

But there's actually a subtle structural form to Malick's frolicking, which fits directly into his overall arc of life, death and rebirth. At first we don't see Brad Pitt's character at all involved in Jack's life. Instead, it's the mother rearing the boy from infancy to childhood. Malick dramatically shifts focus to the father at this pivotal moment in his life when the boy must turn into a man, thrusting his own ideals, motivations and discplinary tactics. Jack's relationship with his father is structured with the ebbs and flows of the boy's complex emotions. For example, there's a long sequence when the father is abroad on business, which becomes a time of joyous respite from the tough disciplinarian rigour. There's also a key sequence where Jack discovers a sexual infatuation before he can even understand what sex is. And before the loopy 'Eternity' sequence that ends the film, the arc of Jack's boyhood is completed with his father's comeuppance, which, on second viewing, is wholly satisfying and complete.

I still haven't figured the final act, which attempts to echo the final sequence in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - a spiritual journey into the afterlife wherein Jack reconciles his bitter emotions towards his father and the death of his brother. Elder Jack's journey across those rocky landscapes and uniting with the characters from his past on the shallow ocean bed still feels contrived and on-the-nose compared to the remarkable sense of realism and authenticity we saw before these moments. But who knows? Maybe on my third viewing this scene will click into place as well.

Click HERE for my original review.

Tree of Life is avavilable on Blu-ray and DVD from EOne Entertainment in Canada.

The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn

***

By Alan Bacchus

Malick’s new tone poem about life, existence and our place in the universe, as many critics and this year’s Cannes Jury have attested, is Malick at his most elusive and beguiling. It’s a philosophical treatise writ large, grandiose and passionate, though for most people, including myself, not cohesive enough, both thematically and narratively, to make its point in the most effective manner. That said, The Tree of Life is at times so astonishing, it's no doubt a landmark film worthy of its attention and multiple viewings.

There’s only a wisp of a story at play here, after we see Sean Penn as Jack O’Brien, an older version of one of Brad Pitt’s sons in the present, contemplating his life as a child in the 1950s. Malick doubles back to chart the course of evolutionary history of just how Jack got to where he is and how his relationships with his rock hard father and saintly but passive mother shaped who he is today.

Malick is at his best in the first half of the picture, boldly going back, literally, to the beginning of time to show the birth of the universe, the sun, the earth, water, vegetation, (holy crap!) dinosaurs and eventually humans. These moments, which are clearly influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey are conceptually astounding and gutsy. It's Malick the philosopher wearing his heart and brain on his sleeve, forcing us to marvel at our planet and the concept of existence. Does this inform Jack's actions or thought processes in the present? Not really. But does it give the audience a sense of awe and the feeling that our waking life on earth is only a minor blip in the concept of existence as a whole? Yes.

Remarkably, Malick picks up speed with the birth of Jack and the lengthy but masterful montage sequence of moving images, which shows us the growth of Jack from a baby to a boy. This first half of the film is so brisk, it feels like one long montage sequence compressing millions of years before settling into the guts, heart and soul of the film, which is Jack’s relationship with his father. At this point, Malick has sculpted a true masterpiece.

In a rural Midwestern town in the 1950s, Malick shows Jack’s father (Pitt) as a man constantly chasing the American dream and being beaten down by the competition. But if he can’t succeed, by God his sons will. Jack and his two brothers endure tough love from Mr. O’Brien, but not necessarily in the form of physical abuse (for Malick that would be too melodramatic and expected of him). Instead, the father’s abuse is the unevenness of his love and his frustrating emotional contradictions.

In the present we can thus understand Sean Penn’s malaise, and few actors can chew and spit out malaise better than him. But with almost no words, as Malick follows Penn around his extravagant, emotionally vacant urban jungle, we understand how terribly wrong his father was.

It’s only apparent now as I formulate these thoughts how subtly Malick connects these dots. Pitt’s misguided drive for monetary success for his sons results in a wealthy but decayed, agnostic existence for Penn. Whether it’s God or belief in the spiritual power of love, this is what Penn desperately desires, and it’s why his journey takes him where he goes.

By the end, Malick takes us to a rather confounding and oblique heaven of sorts. It doesn’t quite resonate as well as it should though. The main crutch of the film is a plateau in the second half after the evolution montage, as Jack’s life as a boy spins its wheels in comparison to the awesome forward-moving narrative of the first half. Simply put, Malick spends too much time mucking around with the kids.

Malick’s imagery is typically sublime, if not, dare I say, overindulgent. If it's at all possible, he’s overkilled us with beauty, the relentless assault of beautiful images dulling us to their power.

After a dozen or so potential ‘ending shots’, the film does end, well before the two-and-half-hour mark. On anyone else’s watch these grand themes would have translated into an equally excessive running time. Though the second half and finale drag, 135 minutes might just be the right running time. As was my experience with The Thin Red Line, second and third viewings might just elevate this picture into similar ultra strata of existential cinema. But for now, a first reaction is: curiosity, awe, admiration and then a bit of exhaustion.

Tree of Life is playing in selected cities and is released theatrically in Canada by EOne Entertainment on June 10.

CANNES 2011 - The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

With his fifth feature, Terrence Malick doesn't necessarily need to make another film after The Tree of Life. In gestation for decades, it’s his Apocalypse Now, his Ran, his Once Upon a Time in the America. There is a hugeness about it, as Malick has crafted a work about life, the afterlife and all known creation that boomingly expresses his philosophies and elements of his childhood. The Big Bang (or Genesis) is painstakingly re-enacted from the first pop to forms of interlacing DNA with the consultation of Douglas Trumbull, which gives the film a 2001 star sequence quality. I should mention that the birth of the universe through to evolutionary bloom occurs in the 2nd reel. What could a director possibly do afterwards to top that?

Tree is an unabashedly spiritual experience that irked my inner Agnostic. And yet, overlooking the predictability of whispering voice-over as hands brush past rock and weed as we'd expect from Malick, the film's scope was quite humbling – a one-second shot of a supernova is still pestering me hours later. Just about every thistle in existence is preciously filmed, as Malick and returning New World cameraman Emmanuel Lubezki tilt the image upwards to turn an oak orchard, crevasse or Brad Pitt into iconography. The film is mostly a multimillion-dollar home movie for the director and merges into a dense narrative successor to Godfrey Reggio's QATSI series.

The more recent planetary-bound story is split between little Jack O'Brien's (Hunter McKraken) Texas childhood with his father (Pitt) and mother (Jessica Chastain), embodying combustible nature and gracefulness, and the cross-cutting of the grown Jack (Sean Penn) and his alienation within cityscapes. Pitt is the featured star, but his role is more of a presence than a performance, a figure of mythical proportions in the household to his children as their saintly mother (Jessica Chastain) is in tune with their nature. The Tree of Life might plumb overwrought moments of golden-era 50s innocence, but the brief sparks of transcendence (kids shadows at play shot with an upside-down camera, Pitt's mute reaction to an unpleasant phone call, the fog of pesticide, Saturn) act as a counter-measure to occasional sappiness.

My star rating is a smokescreen. The Tree of Life could be four stars next week or one. I'm baffled by its leaps in logic and scenario, as Malick's impatient cinematic language is spoken quickly. I'm only certain that it is worth seeing. And my head is throbbing right now.

The Thin Red Line

Thin Red Line (1998) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Ben Chaplin, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, Dash Mihok, John Cusack, John Travolta, George Clooney

****

By Alan Bacchus

Last week for my inaugural Great Cinematography in Revue program, I had the opportunity to host a 35mm screening of Terrence Malick’s deservedly revered The Thin Red Line in a cinema full of cinematographers, and engage in a Q&A with the film’s Director of Photography John Toll.

It’s a glorious experience, a film which seems to gain more levels of depth with each new viewing. Based on the James Jones’ novel about the WWII Battle of Guadalcanal, under the eyes and ears of Terrence Malick The Thin Red Line is an unabashedly artistic rendering of first person’s viewpoint of war. Malick chose to show the battle from the point of view of a number of soldiers from Charlie Company who provide the introspective voiceovers. There’s Ben Chaplin, the defrocked officer who sacrificed all he had earned in the military for his wife, and who now finds himself a private in the front line infantry; Jim Caviezel plays Pvt Witt who, because of his spiritual connection to the aboriginal inhabitants of the South Pacific, comes into conflict with the cynical and hardened Sgt Welsh (Sean Penn); Elias Koteas as Lt. Staros emerges as the people’s leader, who stands up to the authoritative demands of the bullish Capt Tall – a truly awesome Nick Nolte performance whose impressively large jugular vein is strenuously exercised by the excessive amount of terse screaming. Although other famous actors show up for cameo performances it's these five characters who form the heart of the Malick’s unique vision of the war.

After 20 years between films, the ability of Malick to organize such immensely realistic and intense action is astonishing. From our conversation with John Toll however much of the credit goes to producer Grant Hill, who 'made it happen' and got the cameras up the mountains and into the tall green slopes of the Soloman Islands. Toll recounts a story about the use of his Akela crane, an enormous but robust device used to create the smooth camera moves through mountains. Hill had to organize a unit specifically devoted to constructing the platform which supported and levelled the crane, a crew which required a two-day prep time in order to move from one location/position to another.

In addition to production stories like this Toll debunked a number of myths about the film, namely that the film was edited down from a 5-hour cut. Toll admits the assembly (that is, the first edit which assembles all the best takes together in order) was 5 hours, a customary length for a film of that magnitude, but never was there any other versions of the film that wasn't Malick's.

The serendipity of having two seminal WWII films made in the same year, by two equally esteemed filmmakers (Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, the other of course) was too perfect. Like a yin and a yang the two films both compliment and contrast each other perfectly – one set in Europe, the other in the Pacific; Private Ryan representing the visceral gut wrenching realism of violent combat, bloodshed of war, an unfiltered omniscient viewpoint of war while The Thin Red Line is a visual and aural rendering of war from the individual characters perspectives

As such, the squibwork and bloodletting in Line is kept to a minimum. Malick’s perception of war in relation to the organic natural world consistently dominates the visual language. Editor Billy Weber expertly weaves in B-roll of snakes slithering through the grass, iguanas climbing trees and other aspects of nature watching and being watched. Toll’s camera elegantly moves from the soldiers' movements to the trees and the grass and back and forth seamlessly. One of the seminal images of the film is the wandering Aboriginal walking past the platoon of soldiers completely unaware or interested the activities of the men. It’s a great moment of dramatic irony, highlighting the absurdity of war.

We can’t forget Malick’s use of sound which deserves an essay unto itself. Unlike Spielberg whose goal with Ryan was to reflect the realism of the environment. Malick’s sound design serves to adds more texture to the soldier’s individual impression of war. Line also features wall to wall music. Arguably it’s Hans Zimmer’s best score, a giant leap in quality from anything he’d created before – almost as if he were saving his best music for a film as special as this. The most inspired cue being the dramatic village attack, an astonishing orgy of action filmed with some equally astonishing steadycam work from operator Brad Shield.

At the time, much was made of the inexplicability of using such famous actors in unmemorable or throwaway roles, such as George Clooney, who shows up unceremoniously at the end with a speech, or John C. Reilly, who appears mostly in the background until he finally gets some lines of dialogue toward the end of the film. These casting choices work to compliment Malick’s vision and his attitude toward celebritysm. In The Thin Red Line, the film trumps any allusion of celebrity by the actors, just like the nature which will be always survive past the transitory aspect of war.

DAYS OF HEAVEN

Days of Heaven (1978) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard

****

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do another list, but if a poll were taken for the most beautiful film of all time, “Days of Heaven” would probably top the list. The title is synonymous with top notch cinematography and poetic introspective filmmaking. Though it’s shot by Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler it’s Terrence Malick’s film from beginning to end. It’s one of the greatest films of all time.

It’s turn of the century America. A trio of displaced people from the east have moved west to start a new living in the burgeoning Midwest prairies. Bill and Abby (Gere and Adams) are a couple and little Linda is Billy's 12 year old sister. We never really get to know the trio and where they came from. The opening scene shows Bill arguing with a former employer at a steel factory, hitting him in the face and running off into the distance. We don’t know where or when this took place or what happened to the man he hit. Is Bill on the run from the authorities? We never know. It’s this type of non-specific oblique storytelling that makes “Days of Heaven” so fascinating. The backstory is etched in the subtle facial features of Billy, Abby and Linda. The details are their sordid past are not necessary to explain the desperation they now find themselves in.

While working on a farm harvesting wheat, the (nameless) farm owner played by Sam Shepard falls in love with Abby on first sight. I don’t know why, Adams is not dressed or made up to look like a stunner, but there’s an instant connection that sends life coursing through his veins. When Bill discovers the farmer is dying they hatch a plan to pretend they are siblings and milk the inheritance money out of the man before he dies. Since Abby and Bill have kept quiet about their relationship the plan works and so begins the Shakespearan-type tragedy that will ensue between the three of them.

The film is told from the point of view of the child, Linda (Linda Manz) and mainly through her almost arbitrary voiceover. It’s a childlike view into this new world. The passages don’t necessarily make sense or explain the story but it compliments the dreamlike atmosphere of the experience.

The film indeed is dreamlike. Malick’s choice of music washes over you like gentle waves. He uses original compositions from the great Ennio Morricone, but the theme of the film is Camille Saint-Saëns’s “Carnival of the Animals". The opening credits set the tone perfectly - Camille’s piece played with a gorgeous piano arrangement, visualized with sepia toned photographs of the era - a classical story about American history told with the utmost artistic interpretation.

The star of the show is the cinematography. Nestor Almendros, a frequent collaborator of Francois Trauffat’s, shot the film in 70mm and the quality of the higher resolution and detail of the large format is evident. The film takes place mostly outdoors and at the magic hour of the day - the hours during sunset and sunrise which creates a unique colour and softness of the light. The result is the sepia toned look of the opening sequence created in camera. The first time I saw the film (on video) I was astounded - each shot was more astonishing than the one before it. Malick frames his film with perfect composition and, when required, highlights areas with just enough light to create exquisite depth. Watch the shot after Billy assaults his boss at the steel factory. The shot of Gere running away from the camera with the shafts of light in the background is one of my favourites. This scene was actually shot by Haskell Wexler, who famously had to fill in for Almendros after he left to shoot another film in Europe after “Days of Heaven” ran overlong. Wexler’s achievements coming on to finish the film and seamlessly blending his footage with Almendros’ are remarkable as well.

“Days of Heaven” was released in 1978, yet the film was shot in 1976 and took two years to edit. I salivate at the thought of what was left on the cutting room which apparently included more details of the plot and likely more sumptuous photography. But adding footage to “Days of Heaven” is like adding inches to the Mona Lisa, it’s a work of art. It’s now the equivalent of an Ansel Adams photograph or an Andrew Wyeth portrait.

I have a list of films I need to see on the big screen. I was too young to see the film in the theatres when it was original released and I’ve missed every chance to see it on the big screen at various festivals and revivals in town over the years. “Days of Heaven” is at the top of this list. But with today’s big screen TVs the experience of “Days of Heaven” can as wonderful as ever. It’s mandatory viewing. Enjoy.

Buy it here: Days of Heaven