The Tree Of Life may have been awarded the Palme D'Or, but it does not take long to see why this film has so completely divided audiences and critics - indeed, six people walked out in the first half-hour of the screening I attended. This film has all of Malick's trademarks but pushes them as far as possible: 2001: A Space Odyssey via David Lynch, Koyaanisqatsi via Wong-Kar Wai. At heart, the idea is simple - juxtapose images and scenes of child/adult, man/nature, permanence/transience and spiritual/human in order to examine the human condition and man's place in the universe - and the patchwork of visuals and timeframes is artfully constructed, leading to (with a lot of viewer patience) an interesting semi-resolution. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as the central couple are solid but have little to do beyond the one-dimensional 1950s character requirements, and the three young actors playing their children are wonderfully grounded and credible. This is a ponderous film that takes the viewer out of everyday time and space completely, yet it is rarely dreary; it does occasionally veer into moments of self-parody (especially some of the earnest questioning voice-overs), but then it can often be powerful and beautiful, whether in the epic scale of the birth and death of the universe or in small-scale family moments. Like most of Malick's output, The Tree Of Life is intriguing, demanding, poetically stunning in its audio-visual construction, but neither wholly successful nor emotionally engaging overall.
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