I don't think I've seen such ambition
in a movie since Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like
2001, The Tree of Life is
bookended by seemingly unrelated, bizarre, pretentious imagery. Both
movies also make tremendous jumps through time. 2001
memorably jumps from
pre-historic humans to a space age 2001 AD, while The Tree
of Life jumps from the big bang
to dinosaurs, to the 1950s, to modern day. However, The
Tree of Life is much more of an
experimental art-piece rather the mostly coherent 2001,
which gave us a plot involving
one of film's most memorable villains in HAL 9000. The Tree
of Life tries to encompass all
of existence, and while it is beautifully shot and has mind-blowing
sound design, it comes off as pretentious because of it's deep
ambition. The film simply tries to achieve too much as a result
doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
