CINEMATIC Review

THE TREE OF LIFE   ****

Terrence Malick

2011

IDEA:   ......

BLURB:   A cascading collage of extraordinarily tactile images, light, form, space, and sound swirling into a transcendent, spiritual meditation on life in its entirety. Nobody quite captures the soul of humanity and nature like Malick, and here he does his crowning work; from the emerging of the cosmos at the beginning of time all the way through to our microcosmic 1950s protagonists and eventually something resembling eternity, it is an unparalleled work of sensuous, sensory beauty. Astonishing moments in time trickle and flow across the screen as if a million lifetimes were flashing before us at once, moments as vast as the big bang and as intimate, yet no less relevant, as young brothers roughhousing in the yard. I can hardly think of another film as feeling as this, one so experiential and spontaneous, one that stirred me at such an elemental, visceral level I felt like I had witnessed the world for the first time all over again, awoken to its truths, its rapturous sights, and its inevitable burdens. Standing by The Tree of Life, life itself seems so small. Experiencing it, in that relative sliver of a moment, life is euphoric.