The year's most puzzling film has viewers scratching their heads. Here's a primer that should help
BY MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
How does one watch Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life"? That is the question. Malick's domestic epic is the most talked-about movie of the summer, and surely the most divisive -- a two-hour-and-38-minute sound-and-light show that doubles as a nostalgia piece. Avoiding a strict linear plot, it instead offers a rush of images, sounds and sensations. It consists of fragments of a life remembered (and in a few cases, imagined) by its hero, an architect named Jack (Sean Penn), with special attention paid to Jack's boyhood in 1950s Waco, Texas, where he was torn between the old-line machismo of his father (Brad Pitt) and the angelic, almost childlike openness of his mother (Jessica Chastain)...[continued]
[Noir Artist Comments: I didn't enjoy 'Tree of Life' - in fact I walked out - one of the few films that I've actually done that.]
