Tree Of Life (2011)

A mother (Jessica Chastain) receives a telegram telling her of her son's death. The father (Brad Pitt) gets the news via telephone. The brother (Sean Penn) is overwhelmed and begins to ponder and reminisce ..... and thus a mystical journey into the nature of God, death, family and our place in the cosmos begins. Very rarely, if we're lucky, while watching a film we sense the presence of greatness almost immediately and posterity be damned. Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA was one, Kubrick's 2001 another. This is a masterpiece. A polarizing one to be sure, like all great films often conjuring up a "love it/hate it" reaction (my filmgoing companion was positively enraged by it!), but a masterwork nonetheless. It's the kind of film where the "hate it" crowd throw accusations like "pretentious", "self indulgent" or "boring" at it. It's much easier to be glib than actually attempt to decipher a profound work of Art and this is coming from someone who is no Terence Malick fanboy. I intensely disliked his DAYS OF HEAVEN and THE NEW WORLD had me bolting my seat halfway through. To call Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography stunning is to demean it. I don't think the word exists that can do it justice. A great film ... but not for everyone.