“There will not be a more ambitious movie this year than The Tree of Life, and it's almost inconceivable that there could be a better one. The subject is existence itself, in just two hours and twenty minutes. It lived up to my expectations, based on Malick's previous films. How often does a movie come along affording religion, science, and human nature equal respect?”
Shortly thereafter I wrote a review, going into detail and sprinkling praise all over the place. However, at one point I said, “Some will claim the movie is disjointed, people may walk out of the theater annoyed, there may be laughter and general confusion when the credits roll. I'm reminded of Stanley Kubrick's brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey, which experienced these same reactions back in 1968.”
Well, that turned out to be true. In fact, seeing the film again in June, I experienced a restless audience first hand. It was downright uncomfortable, and I got the feeling that ninety percent of them had no idea what they had gotten themselves into. They came for Brad Pitt, perhaps? Maybe they wanted another Fight Club or Troy? Regardless, I think I was onto something in the last line of my review, when I claimed, “The Tree of Life should probably be playing on a loop at the Vatican Museums instead of local multiplexes.”
Audiences, on the other hand, do not share this level of enthusiasm. Only 61% of users at Rotten Tomatoes liked the film. It averages a rather low 7.1 out of 10 score among users at the Internet Movie Database, while Warrior currently sports an 8.2 and The Help is sitting pretty with an 8. Things only get worse when glancing at more mainstream sources (the people who rent movies but probably don't care enough about them to visit film websites). At Netflix, with 154,117 user ratings in, the film averages a 2.7 out of 5 score. Among those who rented it at a Redbox kiosk, 1,079 “reviews” were written, 732 of which awarded The Tree of Life half a star, the worst possible score. It averages just over one star on a five star scale. Wading through the fine criticism, one will come across intellectual gems like, “Too bizzar. Had to shut it off half way through” and my current favorite, “Horrible!!! I would rather what a bug on the wall!!!!”
I have personal anecdotes to illustrate this extreme divisiveness, as well. I recommended the film to three friends of mine. One thought it was the worst movie he had seen, another thought it was the best movie ever made. The third believed Malick took a deist approach as opposed to a theist one, and promoted the theory of evolution, which was not to his liking. Again I am reminded of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Roger Ebert's story about the 1968 premiere. It was a restless audience, a lot of people walked out complaining, including Rock Hudson, who apparently went right past Ebert's seat asking aloud, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?” These days, 2001: A Space Odyssey is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time.
So what is behind all this madness? How can the very same movie be transcendently amazing to some and absolutely godawful to others, with very few opinions landing anywhere between those extreme ends of the spectrum? I believe it comes down to what an individual expects from a film. Obviously not every critic was enamored with The Tree of Life, nor was every average Joe a hater. In general, though, we have two camps: the critics/film buffs and the mainstream audience. Both camps approach films differently.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh. There is certainly no shame in caring little for film, in general. Not everyone responds to the moving image the way I do, and I respect that. I'm that way with music, so I can relate. I enjoy music, but know relatively little about it. I have no favorite “groups”. I couldn't tell you in any worthwhile fashion why I prefer one piece of music over another. I have appreciated music that others have labeled “simplistic” or “trite”. Well, fine. I don't pretend to be something I'm not. I don't engage in deep conversations about music. Inevitably, I would wind up in someone else's wheelhouse and find myself skewered by a contrasting opinion. By that same token, there is nothing more annoying than a so-called “film buff” whose amassed cinematic knowledge begins in 1980. That's like claiming to love literature without reading Tolstoy, Dickens, or Twain.
The fact is, one's taste primarily evolves through experience. Life experience, certainly, but also experience with the medium in question. About sixteen years ago, I only watched new releases. I thought "old movies" were pretty useless, and would have scoffed at the idea of watching a movie made in Hungary. I could view a black-and-white film in school (1962's To Kill a Mockingbird), entirely overlooking the quality because my biased mind was predisposed from the get-go. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), which I rented after exhausting all the new releases at the local Blockbuster, was the film that changed my attitude. A few baby steps later, Akira Kurosawa's oeuvre had consumed me, in Japanese with English subtitles. At that point, I was blissfully lost in it all. A kid in a brand new, massive candy store.
Usually the first misconception to fly out the window is the idea of film as “simple entertainment”. One begins to appreciate that motion pictures, as a medium, are capable of so much more. They helped me realize, for example, that most human problems, desires, etc. are universal, from New York City to Tehran. Relegating this power to a simple diversion is, unfortunately, a rather common attitude among people (thanks in part to Hollywood blockbusters and marketing). If one sees film as a relatively simple medium, one's expectations are understandably in a different place than a person who walks into the theater hoping for something rich, deep, and thoughtful. If one's mind is fixed upon seeing some computer animated battles, a car chase or two, and Megan Fox's ass, then an intellectual treatise on God, humankind, and the universe may very well induce a siezure.
This has been the curse of The Tree of Life. Malick's film does not satisfy all the big studio bullet points. People weaned on modern Hollywood movies often lash out at films that are so defiantly anti-Hollywood. Why do most critics love, or at least appreciate, the movie? Because they have more perspectives from which to observe it. They have seen older films, foreign films, films in color, black-and-white, films with a soundtrack, films without a soundtrack, etc. A critic/film buff understands that movies have not always been made the way they are today, and in some instances still aren't. Movies did not always have these overly familiar rhythms and this breakneck pace to which we have grown accustomed. The visual language was often sophisticated, an audience was expected to absorb story and character through the image, not just the dialogue. Frankly, the critic expects more, not less, from a film. It is more, not less, that the mainstream viewer negatively reacts to.
Again, at its core, this disappointment is simply about shattered expectations. I am reminded of the woman who sued the distributor of Drive last year. She expected something like Fast Five. Instead she got a film with very few car chases and a European sensibility courtesy of Danish director, Nicolas Winding Refn. She also got a better movie than Fast Five, but that didn't stop her from complaining. She expected one thing, and got something else. It is no different with The Tree of Life.
Allow me to reiterate, I'm not saying that the only people who could dislike The Tree of Life should be fitted for dunce caps and probably eat with corks on the end of their forks. It is not my intention to come across that way. There are critics and film buffs who do not like the film, as I've stated. Still, the incredible divide between the overall critical opinion and that of the general audience is a direct result of different expectations and levels of cinematic experience. Before my own transformation sixteen years ago, I concede The Tree of Life would have been prime one star material for me as well.
In Part 2 I will analyze the film further, in a new review.
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1 comment:
Very good points all around. I think that audiences have forgotten (or, on an individual basis, never knew) that film itself *is* a very simple medium, but one capable of so much, and that many of the elements you mention (plot, narrative, even characters) are things we take for granted in a standardized industry. In my opinion, this way of looking at films...seeing them immediately through a set of standards, and not simply beginning by focusing on and making sense of the images, isn't only the wrong approach to film viewing but is completely backwards.
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