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Premiering a film at Cannes is a big deal. Each year, everyone who’s anyone gathers on the French coast to see, be seen, and watch some of the year’s most talked-about films. Getting your film booed at Cannes, however, could put a damper on things just a bit.
Then again, booing crowds at Cannes aren’t entirely unfamiliar; they’re actually pretty common. In fact, all sorts of talented directors have gotten a less-than-favorable Cannes reception. But when you consider that the festival’s crowds have booed deserving films like Marie Antoinette and The Fountain, it might come as no big surprise that the latest target, Terrence Malick’s long-awaited The Tree of Life, is a big, pretentious, self-indulgent mess.
It’s hard to say what The Tree of Life is really about. It opens with a couple’s discovery that their son has died, before skipping years ahead, to the couple’s oldest son, Jack (Sean Penn)—who, as an adult, reflects on his brother’s death.
The opening scenes may pique your interest, but you’ll have to wait an agonizingly long time to find out more about Jack’s family. In order to tell the whole story, Malick decides to go back to the beginning—not to the beginning of the family’s story, mind you, but to the beginning of the universe. For more than 20 minutes, the film is just a collection of images and scenes that represent the world’s creation—from stars and planets to forests and dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs)—accompanied by a bold classical soundtrack and the occasional whispered pleas to God.
Following this lengthy introduction (which, incidentally, isn’t nearly as gripping as a BBC nature documentary—perhaps because it’s missing the proper David Attenborough narration), the film eventually moves on to explore Jack’s own history—including his conception, gestation, and birth—before finally focusing on his family.
Somewhere in here, there’s a story—the slightest trace of a captivating family drama. But it’s buried in so many layers of dull, pretentious nonsense that it’s almost completely unintelligible. It’s told through hints—brief glimpses of seemingly unrelated events—presented in fits and starts and interrupted by scenes of flowing rivers or sunlight through trees or swirling nebulae, along with some disjointed thoughts, statements, or bits of conversation. Somewhere in the midst of these self-indulgent distractions, however, we’re introduced to Jack’s playful, loving mother (Jessica Chastain) and his stern and sometimes severe father (Brad Pitt).
Mostly, though, The Tree of Life is just a slow and bloated drama that merely hints at interesting characters and a moving story. There are snippets of memories that seem to be suggesting something, but Malick never puts the pieces together to form a coherent story. The brother’s death, for instance, seems as though it should be an important part of the story—the culmination of something or maybe a turning point in the story—but it’s actually the basis of nothing. You’ll spend 138 minutes waiting to find out what happened and how it affected the family and why Jack is (apparently) still angry about it all these years later—but the subject is never mentioned again.
Perhaps The Tree of Life makes perfect sense to Terrence Malick. But, for the rest of us, it’s a long and bewildering drama that will most likely leave audiences feeling little more than tired and confused. You’d be far better off spending the two hours and eighteen minutes with your own family.
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