MovieChat Forums > The Tree of Life (2011) Discussion > Self-indulgent, pretentious piece of jun...

Self-indulgent, pretentious piece of junk


IMDB is shutting these boards down in 12 days so I decided that, as my last post, to reiterate how much I hated this piece of crap. Malick is overrated, yes, but at least The Thin Red Line was a movie. This is not. What plot it has is disjointed and virtually non-existent. Character development is nil. But not all is lost. The Tree of Life should be shown in film schools as the textbook case of how not to direct a film.

Pretentious garbage, virtually impossible to sit through. When I saw it over half the audience walked out. Of course some clueless critics praised it but this why the movie going public says they don't listen to critics. If a critic steered me to this I, too, would not listen to critics.

Roger Ebert named this crap as one of the ten best films of all time, ahead of Casablanca and The Best Years of Our lives, just to mention two films so vastly superior to this that it is an insult to mention them in the same sentence. Did the illness he was suffering affect his brain?

Pretentious garbage. If you can't see that, please, please, please do not become a film director.

Caio!

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I got absolutely nothing from this. Pretty pictures? Woopee. If I want pretty pictures, I'll go to an art museum and see all of what I want, at my own pace. Nature? Zen? Meditation? Inner peace? I don't look to movies for these.

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"What plot it has is disjointed and virtually non-existent. Character development is nil"

That's your mistake, right there. How you approached the movie. In a conventional, American way.

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Are you implying Americans are not the apotheosis of culture and civilized thought?

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Maybe watching the extended version would help fill in the plot holes?

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I don't see it as being a film about plot. It's far more of a symphonic tone poem in imagery. And I realize that this sort of thing isn't to everyone's taste, without my stooping to "you just don't get it" or anything like that. I wouldn't want a steady diet of it myself ... but every so often, a film like this is exactly & precisely what I want. And in those terms, I feel it works beautifully & movingly.

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thought this film had a nice "FEELING" for some memories, other than that, yes, just another art film. very little for plot and characters.
I paid to go to the theater based on all the rave reviews... thought it might have some great depth and interesting points about living etc... nope. just dull, posing, yet, once again, as "high art".

I've enjoyed very little of Maliks stuff (and no I don't like TRANSFORMERS at all!) and now know to avoid all of it.
That thin line war flick was barely okay and I was expecting much more from it also.
Malik's not for me, and it's cool others enjoy his stuff. But he never grow again in my tree of life. ;)

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Lol. This was a masterpiece of art.

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