Tree of Life - A visual tour de force

Tree of Life – Unrated on the Jay Wolin Scale (ok, I will give it a 9) – a beautiful experience

This is unlike any movie I have seen and is not for everyone. In fact when I went, it was clear that most people walking out felt they had wasted their money. I read that it was actually booed at the Cannes film festival. When you go to a Terrance Malik movie, you should not expect it to be Transformers. In truth, I am not sure I would call it a movie. Which of course begs the question, what constitutes a movie. This is more of a piece of multimedia art, using mostly images and music with voice overs of whispering to express itself. I was concerned every time my chair creaked that I would miss some whisper of insight :)

It is surreal, ethereal and slow paced. It is a beautifully done visual tour de force. It imagines (similar to images I have seen from the Hubble telescope) on screen in a beautiful way, the creation of the universe. It shows the experience of a family, birth and death, tradegy and beauty and everything else that fills up the space of our lives…What I enjoyed as well was how it captured the little sometimes innocent, sometimes cruel, sometimes fun things that children do and think as they experience the world and themselves. The movie made me slow down, and appreciate all the beauty in every day objects, sounds, and sights. It is a movie that is somewhat unexplainable, so I will only repeat a line that the movie repeated - “The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by.” I loved it.