“self-absorbed,” and “achingly slow, almost buckling under the weight of its swoony poetry.”
“The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I’ve seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and it lacked Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling. There were once several directors who yearned to make no less than a masterpiece, but now there are only a few. Malick has stayed true to that hope ever since his first feature in 1973.”
“unashamedly epic reflection on love and loss” and a “mad and magnificent film.”
“Brandishing an ambition it’s likely no film, including this one, could entirely fulfill, The Tree of Life is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind’s place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amidst its narrative imprecisions.”
“a cinematic credo about spiritual transcendence which, while often shot through with poetic yearning, preaches too directly to its audience.”
“represents something extraordinary” and “is in many ways his simplest yet most challenging work, a transfixing odyssey through time and memory that melds a young boy’s 1950s upbringing with a magisterial rumination on the Earth’s origins.”
“Shot with a poet’s eye, Malick’s film is a groundbreaker, a personal vision that dares to reach for the stars.”
“a gargantuan work of pretension and cleverly concealed self-absorption.”
“gorgeous photography”
“The sheer beauty of this film is almost overwhelming, but as with other works of religiously minded art, its aesthetic glories are tethered to a humble and exalted purpose, which is to shine the light of the sacred on secular reality”.
“The Tree Of Life is beautiful. Ridiculously, rapturously beautiful. You could press ‘pause’ at any second and hang the frame on your wall.”
“to say that Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or winning fifth film is ambitious would be to make the understatement of this young 21st cinematic century… an epic, meditative exploration of life, including the meaning of it, The Tree of Life is Malick doing what he does best but on a scale even he hasn’t attempted before.”
-Critics
i liked it.