A Short Attempt At Intellectuality Through Making Eh Words Sound Smart By Turning Them Into Nouns That Are Longer Than They Need To Be, by William Tran

AKA: MY SORTA REVIEW OF "The Tree Of Life", Terrence Malick

The Tree of Life was... interesting. It was strange. It's a film about a dude thinking back to the days when he was raised in the fifties with a somewhat problematic father-figure/father. Here's the trailer?



Didn't get it? Neither did I. Anyways, it's pretty whack. And, depending on what mindset you get into before you watch the movie, you're either gonna love it or hate it. If you read the youtube comments, you'll see a lot of people who came into it thinking it would make sense and be wholesome, at least plotwise. They're a bit cynical, I must say, but in saying that, I don't want to give the impression that I think that means their opinions are invalid or dumb. Because really, you can bring up a lot of good points as to why this movie is not the best. Such are:

• Where da plotline, baby?
• wtf is going on
• why is sean penn there, who is he, why is he in the future, isn't this set in the 50's?
• *reads synopsis on imdb* ohhh sean penn is future version of kid, got it, wtf
• where did these dinosaurs come from? Why are we in pre-history?
• "However .... the blatant pseudo-intellectual symbolism that this movie shovels down the viewers throats made it a pain to watch. At least for me. I never like it, when symbolism is meant not to elevate or add depth to but to pretty much replace a storyline. The result is meant to be a pompous, spiritual orgasm .... but it is shallow as hell and drowns in it's own pathos. It just doesn't work for me because I always feel as if the movie wants to spoon-feed to me how !oh-so-incredibly-deep! it is. And that is just cheap and not deep at all." - MightyJabroni, youtube-commentator

Basically, it's like those short films that artsy people make where it's seemingly the most random clips strewn together with ambiguity and FLARE. Except, this one goes on for two days hours. And yeah, basically no plot. BASICALLY (sayin dat a lot, soz), it's a family growing up spliced with a shit load of scenery and imagery and symbolism and meaning. And even with the complication named daddy issues brought on by Brad Pitt, (spoiler? Idk, just read it lol) there is no real resolution. In fact, the resolutions more like something that was always there. UNLESS, the resolution was sean penn on the beach finding closure in his memories, looking back at his family, with his family on that white, white beach, cleansed with salvation?

ANYWAYS, so you can go in two ways, two mindsets - if you want to enjoy this film:

1. Patience is a virtue. Be patient with the film, you ain't in a rush.
2. Prepare your body, this film is visually fantastic. Embrace everything, every leaf, every ray of light. Envelope yourself in Terrence Malick's art style and let him make love to your eyes and ears.
3. Don't expect anything. Which, I guess you've sorta ruined by reading this review (GOOD JOB, M8). But like, even after reading this, I don't really know what you're supposed to expect. I mean, I'm telling you to expect the unexpected but at the same time, the film is exactly how it sounds, it's a family growing up. IDK, BRUH.

Essentially, this film is a cinematographic masterpiece, imo. You've probably heard me say this before, but if you were to gif any part of this film, it would be art/a tumblr post with lots of notes. It's absolutely beautiful, I recommend just watching it for this aspect alone. Do it. The film happened to be home to one of my absolute favourite gifs on tumblr.com, which was what prompted me to it in the first place. Here, I'll link: shameless promotion of side blog also. 

That's pretty much all I had to say about the movie. I recommend it. Thanks for reading.

Moving on, I wish I cried at the sight of beautiful things. And I don't mean just anything beautiful, that's too much. I want to cry at videos LOL I wanna cry at sad films, I want to cry at gorgeous scenery. I wanna be in gorgeous scenery and CRY. I wanna cry because of love, immersed in love, about love. 

I watched this music video and I wanted to cry at it haha Watch it strictly for the scenery and you'll love it (@collin, jess, anybody else who likes scenery, idk)

Okay, that's it, I'm done with this post. Thanks for reading, y'all.