Awww, wish I had seen some sort of disclaimer that this is the same director as Tree of Life before I sat down for another disappointing art school student film. No shot over 20 seconds, just short take after short take like some moody 1983 new wave MTV video. Long on stubble, short on story.
2
I used to love Malick's movies. But I just walked out of this one after an hour. Ugh.
2
"Days of Heaven" is one of my all-time favorite films. I know Malick has only made a half dozen or so films in his life, and he's 70-something. But it's like after "Days of Heaven", something happened to him -- something that destroyed his genuine creative gift and just left him spouting gibberish.
2
I'm not always a fan of Malick's work, but I absolutely loved this film. For a critic to reduce the brilliance of it to a superficial story of gendered malaise is at best disappointing. It makes me wonder how someone could be so blind. Yes, it's possible to criticize the film for refusing to hand-hold the audience, but to do so without acknowledging the genius of the project borders on embarrassing.
To me KNIGHT OF CUPS sends a signal that's both more pure and more profound than anything else I've seen come out of Hollywood recently, and it does so with a lushness that makes the entire experience one of sheer pleasure. I'm looking forward to a second and third viewing.
To me KNIGHT OF CUPS sends a signal that's both more pure and more profound than anything else I've seen come out of Hollywood recently, and it does so with a lushness that makes the entire experience one of sheer pleasure. I'm looking forward to a second and third viewing.
5
According to Malick, men have souls and women have bodies. Ugh.
But there is a good reason to see this film: its depiction of Los Angeles. Each "chapter" is set (for a local) in an easily recognizable part of the city. What's included and what not, and which (cliched) meaning each neighborhood seems to signify, is utterly fascinating. Ten or fifteen years ago, the San Fernando Valley--an aging white flight suburb--was the seedy setting of choice. Now rapidly gentrifying historic downtown gets the nod.
But there is a good reason to see this film: its depiction of Los Angeles. Each "chapter" is set (for a local) in an easily recognizable part of the city. What's included and what not, and which (cliched) meaning each neighborhood seems to signify, is utterly fascinating. Ten or fifteen years ago, the San Fernando Valley--an aging white flight suburb--was the seedy setting of choice. Now rapidly gentrifying historic downtown gets the nod.
For those of you familiar with Malick's work, his whole work, this movie will come as no surprise and be immediately familiar, as he continues to explore the themes and perspective he's worked with throughout his career. i find his work beautiful, but his audience has had trouble following his trajectory. If you need story (beginning, middle, end), you will be disappointed with his later work, and especially this film. If you can do as i believe Malick wants you to do, which is to live in the moment he presents on the screen, you will revel in the marriage of sound, time, image, light, and music that he puts to his understanding of what makes us alive, all the while presenting us with a person who feels none of it.
The film is also one of the most beautiful portrayals of LA i've seen. The ugly is next to the beautiful next to the banal next to the precious, the caring next to the uncaring, and this synthesis is what i think the director has explored through all his movies; that we don't exist as linear creatures apart from the natural world, but part of a whole of which we experience only a tiny slice, and memory tosses about like a salad. In the end, though, there is no ending, and movie goers beware..
The film is also one of the most beautiful portrayals of LA i've seen. The ugly is next to the beautiful next to the banal next to the precious, the caring next to the uncaring, and this synthesis is what i think the director has explored through all his movies; that we don't exist as linear creatures apart from the natural world, but part of a whole of which we experience only a tiny slice, and memory tosses about like a salad. In the end, though, there is no ending, and movie goers beware..
8
I saw the movie. Most of the way through I found it incomprehensible but by the end to my surprise I thought I understood to some extent. Whether that is true or not, one thing is clear. It was nothing at all like the description in the review.
It is not about the sex life of a screenwriter. It is about a man who feels completely alienated from his life. Two or three of the major characters are women and the other two are his brother and his father. Women are certainly important to him but no more so I think than to the average man.
At the beginning he tells a story about a man who was sent to India by his father, the king of a country to the east, to find a certain precious pearl. When he got there he was given a poisoned cup that put him to sleep, and when he woke he had forgotten that his father was a king and that he was looking for a pearl. But his father kept sending messengers to him to try to jog his memory.
The first shot of the movie showed the earth from space. The protagonist felt like he had been dropped on an alien planet and he couldn't relate to his surroundings. Most of the time he was like someone walking in his sleep. The disjointed sequencing of the images mirrored his confusion and put us subjectively in his place. I don't know if this is a good way to make a movie. It was unpleasant and I wish it had not gone on so long, but it worked.
(To be continued)
It is not about the sex life of a screenwriter. It is about a man who feels completely alienated from his life. Two or three of the major characters are women and the other two are his brother and his father. Women are certainly important to him but no more so I think than to the average man.
At the beginning he tells a story about a man who was sent to India by his father, the king of a country to the east, to find a certain precious pearl. When he got there he was given a poisoned cup that put him to sleep, and when he woke he had forgotten that his father was a king and that he was looking for a pearl. But his father kept sending messengers to him to try to jog his memory.
The first shot of the movie showed the earth from space. The protagonist felt like he had been dropped on an alien planet and he couldn't relate to his surroundings. Most of the time he was like someone walking in his sleep. The disjointed sequencing of the images mirrored his confusion and put us subjectively in his place. I don't know if this is a good way to make a movie. It was unpleasant and I wish it had not gone on so long, but it worked.
(To be continued)
4
Then somewhere near the end his daffy girlfriend said "Wake up" and I woke up and he appeared to wake up too. He started looking around curiously. The progression of the images started to feel meaningful and the objects came clear. Soon after he had a talk with a Buddhist teacher. I know enough about Buddhism to know that awakening is the essential meaning of it. It is another word for what they call enlightenment.
In retrospect I have no idea why we both came awake at that instant. I don't know what, if anything, he learned. But merely to point out the possibility of awakening to life is to say a lot, and to not only show it on the screen but evoke something similar in the consciousness of the viewer is a very unusual achievement. I can't think of any other filmmaker who has done anything comparable.
I don't know how many people will respond on that level. It is possible that it will only reach viewers who have done some meditation. But I think that in effect Mr. Scott's review was another poisoned cup. If he found the movie incomprehensible he should have said so and left it at that. Instead he described it in a trivial way that would be likely to drive away its audience.
In retrospect I have no idea why we both came awake at that instant. I don't know what, if anything, he learned. But merely to point out the possibility of awakening to life is to say a lot, and to not only show it on the screen but evoke something similar in the consciousness of the viewer is a very unusual achievement. I can't think of any other filmmaker who has done anything comparable.
I don't know how many people will respond on that level. It is possible that it will only reach viewers who have done some meditation. But I think that in effect Mr. Scott's review was another poisoned cup. If he found the movie incomprehensible he should have said so and left it at that. Instead he described it in a trivial way that would be likely to drive away its audience.
7
I wholeheartedly agree. To me the film was an absolutely brilliant portrayal of the process of awakening in the absence of a clear path and without an explicit master. To me Scott's review reveals more about himself and his own unexamined attitudes toward women than it does about Malick's film
6
Malick has made great movies - Badlands and Days of Heaven - but he's gotten less interested in narrative and seemingly indifferent to the audience.
Tree Of Life was a half-baked mess, so disappointing that I'm reluctant to see his new film. Fool me once...
Tree Of Life was a half-baked mess, so disappointing that I'm reluctant to see his new film. Fool me once...
1
Tree of Life was a mess all right -- not even worthy of half-baked. Malick's elliptical, sleight of hand storytelling meshed splendidly with the narrative in The New World, but this technique descended to Euro-trash self-parody by the time of ...oh, what was that picturesque film with Affleck in the suburbs??? To the Wonder! A film that skirted by on strong visuals & sheer impossibility. In Tree of Life, the director's distancing effects had already become cliches: improbable, unwatchable.
1
'...“Knight of Cups” is an encyclopedia of its protagonist’s love affairs, casual and serious, painful and frolicsome, blonde and brunette...'
At least this movie is not about a middle-aged man who young women cannot keep their hands off, as are most of the movies made by...wait for it...middle-aged men, but it sure would be nice to see a movie with the roles reversed, for a change.
At least this movie is not about a middle-aged man who young women cannot keep their hands off, as are most of the movies made by...wait for it...middle-aged men, but it sure would be nice to see a movie with the roles reversed, for a change.
It seems that a Terence Malick film is like a dream.
The story line only reveals itself later, after the dream is gone.
Like good poems/stories they require re-reading/re-watching.
The story line only reveals itself later, after the dream is gone.
Like good poems/stories they require re-reading/re-watching.
4
Malick still owes me the 2 hours and 19 minutes of my life he siphoned out of me with his Tree of Life. Any slower and it would have run backwards.
3
This sounds like what we used to call a "rental".
3
A.O. Scott did not reveal any spoilers. Don't worry. As for the film, Malick is really good (as Scott noted in his review of the Tree of Life') at conveying what life feels like, at capturing 'lived experience', especially of childhood. Most of the visuals and music are gorgeous. As for what it was about, the story of the Prodigal Son comes to mind. A response to the movie, Savages, also? There is a billboard on it in the film. There was also a quote of the 4th century philosopher/theologian, Augustine, Love and do what you will. In Augustine's Confessions, he wrote about how when he was young, he was dispersed among many earthly loves. They gave him temporary pleasures, but none of them lasted. If he didn't treat them as mere instruments of his own pleasure or enlightenment, they might have. That said (here comes a spoiler alert), the film was hard to sit through. It was like a beautiful nightmare or waking dream (to paraphrase Richard Linklater) that he couldn't get out of. Or rather, given his traumatic childhood and dissipated adult life, he couldn't find a reason to go on. Maybe the lesson was that humans possess an almost infinite capacity to begin again, maybe do it right this time. Live and love for the right reasons as his wife seemed to do...
7
Terence Malick is a poet. Maybe this film is terrible, I'll see it anyway. Unfortunately, AO Scott pre-ruined the experience through this spoiler-ific review.
4
Malick is one of the very best. Even when he's 'off' he's leagues ahead of most American filmmakers. I'm stunned by the philistinism revealed in most of these responses. It's the Decline & Fall baby ...
15
The decline is Malick's. His best work came early. Downhill since.
He's not alone. Scorsese and Coppola had major fall offs. I never count artists out and still hope these men will surprise us again with thrilling late-career films.
He's not alone. Scorsese and Coppola had major fall offs. I never count artists out and still hope these men will surprise us again with thrilling late-career films.
2
Judging from the comments here, most of the people who read the review will go watch a Marvell flick instead. Do you feel good about that Mr. Scott?
4
Hardly.
Had Malick set this story in ancient Rome, say, introduced some subplots injecting risk and intrigue ("Knight of Cups" acquiring some meaning by transforming it into a vulgar Latin insult -- word-play in a long-dead language, an epithet for an inebriated thug who terrorizes the streets around some downscale Roman pub), and used its overflowing sexuality to make it a kind of kinky sex-voyeur junket into the sensual mores of a long dead world with whatever vision Malick tried to project in his released version -- it might have attracted a bigger audience.
But Malick doesn't strike me as a particularly good screenwriter, scenarist or plot developer.
Had Malick set this story in ancient Rome, say, introduced some subplots injecting risk and intrigue ("Knight of Cups" acquiring some meaning by transforming it into a vulgar Latin insult -- word-play in a long-dead language, an epithet for an inebriated thug who terrorizes the streets around some downscale Roman pub), and used its overflowing sexuality to make it a kind of kinky sex-voyeur junket into the sensual mores of a long dead world with whatever vision Malick tried to project in his released version -- it might have attracted a bigger audience.
But Malick doesn't strike me as a particularly good screenwriter, scenarist or plot developer.
It's hard for a movie journalist to really take time to think through a complex experience like a Malick film. Scott is a good, middle-brow critic, but I would not take his word on this film. Malick is a great artist -- with Godard, Kiarostami, Tarr -- and demands a lot from the audience. Specifically, it strikes me as superficial to think that beauty need operate to induce envy. Beauty -- whatever that is precisely -- is a multivalent experience. "Looking good" is not synonymous with it. Go see the film and make up your own mind.
18
The best reason to see this film is Lubezki, not Malick. Malick has always been visually self-indulgent and uneconomical. Scott is sometimes unaware that making a film beautiful to watch does not make it a great film. That about sums up much of Malick's work. As other readers have noted, the sketchy story is an old one, told better before onscreen and in literature. Never was an interesting story viewers can relate to. "Least Jewish director?" Are we stereotyping? Who knows what Scott means with that phrase!
3
Titles should convey some sense of what's coming, effectively accomplishing the one thing that really matters in this business: attracting an audience. Since there is no such thing as "an audience" per se, the aim is to winnow the set (as in set theory) to movie-goers who will be receptive. "Receptivity" is the high concept here. Receptive to its designs: look, feel and moods. Attracted to the subject, setting; onscreen talent; cathartic triggers; action and reaction. Open to its emotional evocations. It's a cynical calculation. The hope is to kill bad word of mouth to keep paying customers coming until theater ticket sales pay its negative cost. A business calculation as much as anything else.
How does "Knight of Cups" winnow, exactly?
I've aIways sensed that Malick and his producers don't really care about any of this because the finished product is really about the inane musings of a filmmaker last name "Malick" blessed with bottomless pockets of money.
Scott's review is curious. He praises the look of the film although the DP (director of photography) is responsible for it, not the director. According to Renoir, the director's role is all-encompassing but extremely limited on-set because what he really directs is countless people yet to materialize: the audience. "The function of the director is to direct the attention of the audience". Director Malick is curiously incapable of doing it.
There's incompetence, and then there's waste. "Cups" strikes me as waste.
How does "Knight of Cups" winnow, exactly?
I've aIways sensed that Malick and his producers don't really care about any of this because the finished product is really about the inane musings of a filmmaker last name "Malick" blessed with bottomless pockets of money.
Scott's review is curious. He praises the look of the film although the DP (director of photography) is responsible for it, not the director. According to Renoir, the director's role is all-encompassing but extremely limited on-set because what he really directs is countless people yet to materialize: the audience. "The function of the director is to direct the attention of the audience". Director Malick is curiously incapable of doing it.
There's incompetence, and then there's waste. "Cups" strikes me as waste.
3
I saw Brian D. on a FOX morning show and he was unable to articulate what the storyline was. He grew more frustrated as he continued to try.
First I suspected maybe it was too early for him--then it became crystal clear, the movie was mud.
First I suspected maybe it was too early for him--then it became crystal clear, the movie was mud.
3
It seems so difficult for critics to say anything bad about a Malick movie. It seems easier for the movie goers. They stay home.
4
From looking at the preview I see what it is about. The guy is confused. His need to love God is diverted into loving women. Religion is really quite simple but hardly anyone understands it, and probably this was always true.
1
Perhaps Religion is sensed rather than understood. 'The Razor's Edge' might be about a man who does not believe in God but is deeply religious.
1
" It’s all very poetic and rarely boring" Sorry, but to this viewer it was very boring. I recommend viewers stay home.
5
Thanks for telling me the last line.
3
There are so many excellent comments warning people away from this pretentious essentially home movie my comments on that issue would be less useful. However, in the hope that if he doesn't one of his minions will: Mr. Scott-Sir. I get it, you think critics are the base/backbone/underpinning etc.
of all that is meaningful in our lives. But, good gracious, can't you just admit to yourself if not to us moviegoers when a movie is so bad in spite of who made it that it belongs on the death list page of multiple reviews of movies, most of which are paying rent for the theater spaces in which they are being shown? At what point do you have some shame sir?
of all that is meaningful in our lives. But, good gracious, can't you just admit to yourself if not to us moviegoers when a movie is so bad in spite of who made it that it belongs on the death list page of multiple reviews of movies, most of which are paying rent for the theater spaces in which they are being shown? At what point do you have some shame sir?
1
pilgrimage-wise, there's only here here, no there.
3
I wouldn't want to see a film where a callow youth goes through so many women. I want to study and relate to someone who isn't callous towards women who are also drifting and lost. Male anguished self pity is a needed condition that should lead to understanding the similar rueful anguish in women. Maybe Malick himself never made it out of the self pitying stage.
2
Mr. Scott, in the first sentence of your review, you reveal the last line of the film and go on to describe how it has a "startling effect." I was unable to read your review any further and I expect that any "startling effect" I feel at the end of the film will be diminished. Thanks a lot.
5
Thanks for the warning. Hollywood is producing virtually no good movies, nor have they for years. If you subscribe to Netflix, you can see movies so awful that no one has ever heard of them.
5
No good movies?
You've seen "Spotlight", "Bridge of Spies" and "The Big Short"?
"Selma", "12 Years a Slave" the year before?
You'd consider those worse than what's on Netflix or cable, shows that just want you to keep watching to drive up advertising revenue?
You've seen "Spotlight", "Bridge of Spies" and "The Big Short"?
"Selma", "12 Years a Slave" the year before?
You'd consider those worse than what's on Netflix or cable, shows that just want you to keep watching to drive up advertising revenue?
2
As I'm already worrying about poor Syrian refigees, children drinkng posioned water in Flint, and the breakdown of civility in our political discourse, I just don't know that I have enough sympathy left for Hollywood screenwriters. Sorry.
11
Looks like another voiceover-driven, ludicrous self-parody from the most overrated filmmaker working today.
7
Don't need to read the review. It stars Christian Bale so I think I'll pass.
2
As with all of Malick's oeurve, don't mistake confusion for profundity.
5
Terrence Malick is the pretentious thinking man's Adam Sandler without the box office success. Both are well-known filmmakers who make terrible movies. So, Mr. Malick has discovered Californication. David Duchovny is no Christian Bale but Christian Bale is no David Duchovny. I haven't seen "Knight of Cups" but until a review tells me there's a Runkle somewhere in the script then I'm not biting no matter how HBO D-L-S-V the auteur has gotten. Mr. Malick already owes me $28 for his other two movies I've seen.
11
Having seen it at the premiere with a panel event after, I can attest to how maddening this movie was to view, much as it must have been to make (the actors and producers bemoaned and made fun of the process). It was an overlong perfume commercial with the plot of Entourage, all privileged white people, all whispered monologues over dreamy footage. Cheevo was the real star here. Best footage of L.A. extant.
12
Hard to trust Malick or Scott. Still got the bad taste of Tree. The movie TED accurately described it. Thank heaven someone is watching and critiquing as most everyone else in the paying public has checked out.
Hollywood navel-gazing again. Screenwriters writing about how fascinating the life of a screenwriter is. Movies about making movies. Count me out.
11
sympathize, but before you quit, see "day for night."
2
Hugh,
Perhaps you have heard of 'Barton Fink', loosely adapted on how the famous American playwright, Clifford Odets, was asked to go to Hollywood in 1948 and write a script. It may set your hair on fire and it ends on the beach. There are worse things in life than wandering in the desert and admiring the view.
Perhaps you have heard of 'Barton Fink', loosely adapted on how the famous American playwright, Clifford Odets, was asked to go to Hollywood in 1948 and write a script. It may set your hair on fire and it ends on the beach. There are worse things in life than wandering in the desert and admiring the view.
5
When I read a review of a Malick film where the dialog ISN'T all rendered in voiceover, THEN I'll buy a ticket. It's such a cheap, lazy, tired gimmick of his.
1
"(V.O.)" in a script is the red flag signaling trouble.
If the entire script is just one big (V.O.) after another it's not really a script.
If the entire script is just one big (V.O.) after another it's not really a script.
You describe the last moment and word of the film as the "startling" punchline to a long joke. Well, thanks. Thanks for snatching up that startled response all for yourself and spilling it in the first few sentences of your review, ruining the ending for the rest of us who will no longer be "startled" as Malick apparently intended. You shoved that down our throats before we even knew what the film was *about*.
Movie reviewing today sometimes feels like reading a bragging "I-saw-it-first" plot synopsis passed off as the definitive last word — but it's ten times worse when the beginning really *is* the end now that we know that ...in his end is his beginning. Argue 'no harm done!' because a (or this) film isn't necessarily primarily concerned with narrative and sequence, or call me pedestrian for wanting to experience the movie as it was designed to be seen, but that's your take on it, and I would've liked the chance to decide for myself. Why tell us the ending in black and white and rob us of the experience we're meant to have?! Making this is piece a kind of PSA ambush, If I knew in advance that you were going to do that, I might have read your review *after* seeing the movie to get your take on it, but now, forewarned, I won't be reading your reviews *at all*. Thanks.
Movie reviewing today sometimes feels like reading a bragging "I-saw-it-first" plot synopsis passed off as the definitive last word — but it's ten times worse when the beginning really *is* the end now that we know that ...in his end is his beginning. Argue 'no harm done!' because a (or this) film isn't necessarily primarily concerned with narrative and sequence, or call me pedestrian for wanting to experience the movie as it was designed to be seen, but that's your take on it, and I would've liked the chance to decide for myself. Why tell us the ending in black and white and rob us of the experience we're meant to have?! Making this is piece a kind of PSA ambush, If I knew in advance that you were going to do that, I might have read your review *after* seeing the movie to get your take on it, but now, forewarned, I won't be reading your reviews *at all*. Thanks.
10
It doesn't matter if you know the punchline if you haven't heard the joke.
7
Check out Richard Brody's review on his New Yorker blog. Very thoughtful.
1
Sounds like a horrible pretentious bore. I'd rather go sit in traffic.
Thanks for the warning.
Thanks for the warning.
3
Too much for a simple moviegoer to think about.
Looks beautiful. Going to go watch it. Yes, definitely envy.
7
Just wondering what method of quantification Mr. Scott is employing to tabulate the sum total of a director's Jewishness ("...one of the least Jewish directors..."). Putting aside the question of why one would feel compelled to undertake such a measure in the first place, wouldn't it be safe to say that the existence in a filmmaker's oeuvre of a film entitled "The Tree of Life," with its direct allusion to the Hebrew Bible, would gain him some traction on the scale? And this is hardly the first time that we find Malick characters lost in "the confusion of eros and cosmos" between a modern Gomorrah and the wilderness, not to mention the all-too Old Testament themes of paternal grievance, filial angst, fraternal strife. Add to this the sense in Malick's work--"Days of Heaven", "Badlands"-- of spiritual groping in a natural world beset by providential yet unsearchable forces, and for someone bent on sizing up the auteur against some supposed cinematic kashrut, it seems safe to say that Malick is one whose celluoid lehem, so to speak, none too rarely goes unleavened.
2
Agree. When Richard Brody reviews this, there will be something better to chew on.
3
Scott's Eliot quote sold the movie instantly for me
2
True, I haven't been to the movies in years for no particular reason, or watched television but this sounds kind of fun. 'Frothy' is the word that comes to mind, and now that you are old enough to be a great-grandparent to this young cast, you might learn if something has changed. Lots of beauty, nothing too violent and a little foray into existentialism is fine from time to time, and reminds me of the handsome young technician who came to visit and went off into the night with my favorite poet, T.S. Eliot, who mentions a room where the people come and go, speaking of Michael Angelo.
1
There is nothing more fascinating to me than the sex life of a Hollywood screenwriter.
1
It sounds like a perfectly horrible film. I'll make a point to avoid it at all costs. Thanks, Tony.
4
And the point is what? A waste of oxygen and money by all the players? A man's hookups convey what message? A pathetic father? Sounds rather self indulgent. I'd rather watch Spotlight again from Amazon, and Zootopia at the cinema, than this lazy piece of film of what really is just a soft porn flick.
7
Seems like C. Bale is doing what R. DeNiro is doing (Dirty Grandpa...which at least has stupid high school boy humor going for it)- - - acting way below their talent for the money.
1
When I was fourteen I would've thought this movie was really cool.
Probably over the past decade Terrence Malick used to fall asleep watching "Californication". What would be fun to do is replace the entire soundtrack; for some reason I kept imagining Marlon Brando's voice-overs from the Superman movies ("..I will be with you..my little Kal-El..") And jaunty banjo music. Snippets of livestock auctioneers and rodeo color commentary during the scenes with the women. And of course, who couldn't resist tacking on the star of the film's own personal very viral my-work-is-important rant from the set of some Batman movie(?) a few years ago. I made it about forty minutes into the quicksand before giving up.
A few years back Sofia Coppola made this very same movie, it's called "Somewhere", which itself wasn't all that far a throw from another one of hers called "Lost In Translation". Both are a lot more fun and succeed in making the point that showbiz is the mountain that gets smaller the closer you get to it.
Probably over the past decade Terrence Malick used to fall asleep watching "Californication". What would be fun to do is replace the entire soundtrack; for some reason I kept imagining Marlon Brando's voice-overs from the Superman movies ("..I will be with you..my little Kal-El..") And jaunty banjo music. Snippets of livestock auctioneers and rodeo color commentary during the scenes with the women. And of course, who couldn't resist tacking on the star of the film's own personal very viral my-work-is-important rant from the set of some Batman movie(?) a few years ago. I made it about forty minutes into the quicksand before giving up.
A few years back Sofia Coppola made this very same movie, it's called "Somewhere", which itself wasn't all that far a throw from another one of hers called "Lost In Translation". Both are a lot more fun and succeed in making the point that showbiz is the mountain that gets smaller the closer you get to it.
3
My problem about this review is that Scott preferred Tree of Life and I much preferred To the Wonder. Where is he keeping his head these days?
Wonder made a very true and important point. That people get so wrapped up in their little personal dramas that they forget the awesome wonder of just being alive. Besides that it had a linear plot, which made it easy for me to relate to the characters.
I thought Tree was pretty incoherent and I couldn't tell what it was about.
So maybe I am a philistine for wanting movies to make some kind of sense. Maybe the highest art must be obscure. OTOH maybe Scott is so metaphysically challenged that he wouldn't know a higher truth if it hit him in the face. God knows.
This one doesn't sound too encouraging but I will go look.
Wonder made a very true and important point. That people get so wrapped up in their little personal dramas that they forget the awesome wonder of just being alive. Besides that it had a linear plot, which made it easy for me to relate to the characters.
I thought Tree was pretty incoherent and I couldn't tell what it was about.
So maybe I am a philistine for wanting movies to make some kind of sense. Maybe the highest art must be obscure. OTOH maybe Scott is so metaphysically challenged that he wouldn't know a higher truth if it hit him in the face. God knows.
This one doesn't sound too encouraging but I will go look.
6
Reviews of this film on IMDB have been pretty scathing.... a real disappointment considering that The Tree of Life was really quite superb (as are his earlier works, of course). He does seem to have entered a phase where its all visual fluff and very little content. A fairly common problem in movies these days; perhaps is the decline of story-telling skills. It's a long-form art after all, and these days its all about instant gratification. Perhaps all the good writers have all fled to television? I couldn't say for sure, but the movies are suffering because of it. All gloss and nothing underneath. Once advertising people all wanted to work in the movies, now it seems that all movies want to look like adverts. Bizarre.
5