The Tree of Life: Blu-rayIf all one knows about Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is that it was awarded the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, watching it at home could either be a tremendously exhilarating or hugely bewildering experience. a highly personal project, the movie has been gestating in his mind for more than 30 years, and only the barest outline of a plot is visible. even those conversant with Makick’s exacting composition, studied pacing, ethereal cinematography and cerebral demands aren’t sure what to make of it. As such, “Tree of Life” is a “2001: a Space Odyssey” for our calamitous times. the movie opens with a quote from the bible, but it could have been prefaced with the enigmatic title sequence from the 1960s’ medical drama “Ben Casey.” As a hand draws five symbols on a chalkboard, a disembodied voice intones, “Man, woman, life, death, infinity.” they could stand as chapter headings in Malick’s near-religious interpretation of what it means to exist in a finite universe, either as God’s children or temporal constructs of ash and dust. Malick intersperses stunningly impressionistic images of the creation process with vignettes from the life of a family of middle-class Texans in the 1950s. As exemplars of the human condition, the O’Briens would appear to be a distinctly arbitrary choice. they are, however, drawn from Malick’s memories of his own family.
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