Walkout: The Tree of Life
Tree of life: I’m never normally bothered by how arty or pretentious a film gets – if anything, it usually makes a film at least a little interesting… Despite this my cinema buddy and I endured around 30 minutes in to this before we realised that there was nothing on the screen that could hold down the film and tie together all of the random imagery that we were seeing. Entire segments featuring dinosaurs, stellar galaxies, wildlife, nature, scenery… for what purpose? Could someone please explain this to me? The Tree of Life takes the idea of a ‘narrative’ and clubs it in the face until all that’s left is a few recurring characters at 20 minute intervals. Non-linear storytelling can also be awesome, but if you could find the story in this, you’re a better man than I.
Despite being hooked in by Pitt and Penn, we realised there was around another 1 hour 50 minutes (total runtime of 140 minutes) – this was definitely a case of Tree of Life 1, Paragraph Film Reviews 0.
Alternative plans – 2 bonus hours of Call of Duty: Black ops.
Paragraph Film Reviews 
Hahahaha. Yes, I’m enjoying the series as much as I thought I would. I haven’t seen this one, but I love it when pretentious bullshit gets knocked down to size. I’ve only seen Thin Red Line from Malick and I wanted to walk out about a half hour in, as it was nearly unintelligible to my then teenage mind. I look forward to giving Tree of Life a go so I can have a more definite opinion of it.
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I wanna see dinosaurs…
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Funnily enough, I also want to see dinosaurs and that is kind of the major reason why I’m interested in this. I don’t honestly see how I can possibly like this movie, but I’m willing to give it a shot for dinosaurs.
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Will – Definitely worth trying to watch this. In the UK almost every review has been split into “Best film ever”/”Worst film ever” so it’s one of those ridiculously divisive movies.
Franz – spare yourself the trauma of watching all the other mince in this and hunt down BBCs Walking With Dinosaurs!
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Pingback: From Around the Web… (10/16/11) « Silver Emulsion
Ouch, cold. Didn’t get to see this in theaters and maybe that was a good thing. Now the question is, do I pay for redbox or wait for Netflix/Free On Demand?
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I’ve seen people rave about this film for months, jizzing all over the place “Terenc Malick! … Aaaaah! Tree of Life!!! Wooooh!”. Personally, I’ve never had any interest in it, besides Brad Pitt starring. I like Brad Pitt, especially since “Inglourious Basterds”.
I thought of checking this out simply of curiosity, to see what the fuss was about. I wonder how much will I endure?
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VS – your comment is more entertaining than this review! That’s the only reason we went to see this, Pitt and Penn are usually awesome actors, they just didn’t get enough time to shine here… or a script… or a story… or a chance.
STU – I’d wait til it’s free. It’s not just money, but the runtime that’s a big investment here…
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For the record, I lasted an hour.
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loving loving loving this new walkout feature. Eric Cartman would be proud
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Pingback: From Around the Web… (11/6/11) Tree of Life Edition « Silver Emulsion Film Reviews
Because of this post I get about 2-10 hits a day along the lines of “can someone please explain the tree of life” – brilliant
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It was pretty bad, but I did understand it, so Challenge Accepted! Here is my explanation of the film-
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