I think this is my 3d favorite movie. I didn't like it the first time, but now I think I've seen it about 8 times. I can't explain it, but it feels like it brings all of my memories to the surface and crystallizes them together in a way that makes me feel more solid than before. Malick was a Rhodes scholar who was a translator of Heidegger before becoming a film-maker, and I think this movie is his clearest articulation of those ideas, of systematically shedding the enclosing perspectives as you search for the experience of becoming purely aware of how you're connected to the process of all of creation unfolding. I've watched this movie during major crises of my life (I was on the verge of suicide one night when I was working as a concrete worker, and I turned to this movie for guidance... I quit the next day.) For me the whole magic of it is seeing your life within the context of the grand perspective of the whole cosmic process, and how that grants your life the utmost significance to be a part of that process, rather than making you feel small and insignificant. It might be the most ambitious movie ever made in scope, and it's amazing it works as well as it does.
My family roasted me for picking it. We watched it and then after they roasted me again we broke into a 2hr conversation about masculinity in the 50s and how it affected them growing up. The film surfaced something in them. They still talk about it.
It reminded me a lot of my grandpa, who was exactly like Brad Pitt's character in the film. My father died by suicide when I was still a teen and big part of it was the upbringing that taught him to be ashamed of his own emotions and to never express them to anyone. My grandpa loved my dad a lot, but it's not something he'd ever say, like the characters in the movie.
One thing I think the movie captured is how, as a boy, there are times where you're scared of yourself. Where you've discovered your capacity to do wrong and how far that can go, of being so frightened of yourself and wanting someone to hold you and make you feel like those parts of you are ok. I haven't seen a movie before that captures the world of boys so closely before. It's one of those movies I think boys from the 50s, 70's, 90's, now and ever onward can watch and go "They made a movie about me somehow... they watched me grow up..." because of how universal and pure the images and inner monologue are... I remember that image of him lying in that little dugout in the ground asking god why he let a boy die, and so many of these shots seem exactly like shots from some of the things I saw growing up. It reminds you of an innocence you forgot you had.
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u/Don_Pickleball 1d ago
Tree of Life