Brad Pitt Climbs Tree of Life

[Tacit Ronin]

Finally a movie that looks like a movie and not a video game. Gotta love natural photography.

Same here. If you're going to sell a movie with a trailer you have to make it in a way so audience can at least get a grasp of the story.

Nolan seemed to sell Inception fine with his vague trailers.

 

[Bunker]

Finally a movie that looks like a movie and not a video game.

Can you ever not sound like a snob?

Nolan seemed to sell Inception fine with his vague trailers.

The Inception trailers spelled out the basic framework of the plot, while not spoiling anything. They sold the movie perfectly. This trailer, while beautiful, looks like a Levi's ad with some space **** thrown in. People are understandably put off by the vagueness.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

I am a snob because I want a film that is not targeted at 15 year old boys?

 

[Tron Bonne]

Just watched the trailer, and I loved it, definitely looking forward to the film. Not sure what people are saying about it not giving any insight about what the movie is about, seemed kind of obvious it's a movie about life and how people chose to live them. It didn't break down the exact plot points or anything, but I don't know, it was enough to get me interested.

 

[Laderlappen]

Finally a movie that looks like a movie and not a video game.

 

[Rez]

If there are really dinosaurs in this movie I will **** myself.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Yeah, I was like as well.

 

[Dark Victory]

The New World is an absolute bore. It always seems Malick fans fancy themselves superior to those who don't "get him".

 

[Octoberist]

I can't believe Brad Pitt is 47. Even though he looks like he is somewhat aging (his eyes), he still pull of being in his early-mid 30s.

 

[Doctor Jones]

The man looks great for his age. BUt yeah, you can see it in his eyes where he's aging. But this film makes him look older.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Can you ever not sound like a snob?



The Inception trailers spelled out the basic framework of the plot, while not spoiling anything. They sold the movie perfectly. This trailer, while beautiful, looks like a Levi's ad with some space **** thrown in. People are understandably put off by the vagueness.

Speaking of which, that Levi commercial was pretty damn well shot. I couldn't believe that was for pants.

 

[Bunker]

Also, Pitt is getting better with age. He's really turned into a classical leading man type, while still being capable of quirky performances. He's gewd.

 

[Sgt.Pepper]

Interview with Emmanuel Libezki about cinematography in the film

As cinematographer Emanuel "Chivo" Lubezki tells it, the shoot for Malick's coming-of-age epic "The Tree of Life," starring Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, pretty much made up its own rules as it went along. Then it broke those too. "Once you think you got the formula, you realized there is no formula," Chivo told 24 Frames in an interview. "It's like no set I ever worked on."

Very interesting article about how Terrence Malick shoots this film.

 

[Crockett]

It's great that Libezki is again collaborating with Malick for this film.

 

[That-Guy]

Just saw Jessica Chastain in Stolen. I've never seen her in anything before that I know of, but was pretty good in her small role there. And honestly, I could watch her in anything. She's beautiful.

 

[Boom]

If there are really dinosaurs in this movie I will **** myself.

Wait. There are dinosaurs in this film?

 

[Tron Bonne]

Wait. There are dinosaurs in this film?

Yes

 

[Boom]

I'm there.

 

[Boom]

I'm there.

 

[PWN3R]

Interview with Emmanuel Libezki about cinematography in the film

Very interesting article about how Terrence Malick shoots this film.

"So the actors are performing the dialogue, but Terry isn't interested in dialogue. So they're talking, and we're shooting a reflection or we're shooting the wind or we're shooting the frame of the window, and then we finally pan to them when they finish the dialogue," Chivo recalled.

^^Ha, sounds like an editors nightmare. Interesting read, I would have loved to just watch that crew at work.

 

[Wefflehouse]

Very interesting article about how Terrence Malick shoots this film.

Great find, thanks for sharing.

^^Ha, sounds like an editors nightmare. Interesting read, I would have loved to just watch that crew at work.

It's funny you say that, I was just watching Making the New World, a ten-part documentary and in The John Rolfe Plantation chapter they talk about the filming style so I wrote down a few quotes for you.

Christian Bale:
"On my very first day, I was actually doing a scene...my understanding was that they were shooting the other actor, doing a close-up and I wasn't needed for it. And so I just went, I stayed on the set, but I was just sitting on the side and I was smoking the pipe that John Rolfe smokes and I suddenly realized that the camera was pointed at me."


Christopher Plummer:
"I'm always terrified that when he's got that camera on his shoulders, he's going to follow me into the toilet. I mean he never stops, it's like some sort of great bird-of-prey on his shoulders that's driving him on, saying 'No, no dont ever put me down, you've got to got everything.'"


And in a casual conversation being filmed, Emmanuel Libezki (cinematographer) says to someone:
"I don't know how the editors are going to watch all of this material."


Two editors Hank Corwin and Saar Klein have this exchange:
"How much film did they shoot?"

"A million feet or something, I believe."


Christian Bale:
"I couldn't stop laughing on my very first day, when he did do this thing to me, where he just suddenly turned the camera on me and said, "Christian do whatever you feel like doing." And I walk up and down...so I did--I start doing that, and I realized that, "Okay there was a bunch of crew over there, so if I walked over there what were they going to do?"...so I start walking over there and they were running, they were diving behind bushes to get out the way, you know, because they just knew this was part of the deal of working with Terry, they could spin around at any second."

These quotes were all in reference to Terrence Malick's previous film The New World. I think it's this kind of vision (or lack-there-of) that gives Malick's films this human, almost magical quality.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Hmm. What an interesting approach.

 

[hugekent]

Haha it definitely is interesting. It works for me though, I've loved all of his films so far.

 

[Rez]

Yes

Let's not celebrate yet, we're still missing two hours or so each from The Thin Red Line and The New World... 5 minutes of dinosaurs kicking ass could easily get cut.

 

[Sgt.Pepper]

A small update. According to this site, the running time for The Tree of Life is around 2 hours and 18 minutes.
By way of comparison, this makes it longer than Badlands, the theatrical cut of The New World and Days of Heaven, but half-an-hour shorter than both The Thin Red Line and the extended cut of The New World.

In related news the site also have an interview with the film's composer Alexandre Desplat. The interview is originally in french but I have a translation which you can read below.

Spoiler

Terrence Malick, he contacted me in 2007. And we met at Abbey Road in London. Then he told me about this project, saying that he really wanted, for the first time, to try having the music before starting editing the film. So I told him I would take him up on the challenge… live up to it but that it was something I was not used to do, because I like to see the films to feel the vibrations the energy, and that’s where my inspiration comes. But I told him we could try, so we tried. I wrote the music over the two years he was editing and filming. I recorded several times, 3 or 4 times, sometimes in London, then in Paris, then in Los Angeles, and I gave him, uh, pieces of music he has added at his discretion in the film. I knew from the beginning that there would be a lot of existing music in there, like he usually does in his films; there’s Berlioz, Ligeti’s there, and many more. I haven’t seen the finished film yet, unfortunately. [He talked to me, he guided me (implicit words, maybe edited by the journalist)] in terms of sensation, with classical references, of course, but too by evoking the film, by showing me sometimes clips of the film, by evoking the emotions that are the most, uh.. that are the most intimate in the film and to which he wanted me to refer. He talked about… uh.. He wanted the music to be a river flowing through the film, like that [gesture], coming down from upstream to downstream. Light, silence, innocence of childhood, things like that. Things that come up in all of his films.

Terrence is a scholar, a Francophile. He speaks French as well as you and me. He is nourished [his soul is nourrished] by German philosophy, French philosophy, English literature, et cetera. He knows astronomy and ornithology, and he knows music very well.. even if he tries to hide it. But for example, he can sing the third movement of a sonata of Beethoven.. So he is, he is unbelievable, he’s an absolute genius … For me he’s like the medieval monks who were the bearers of knowledge. He is… he is an extraordinary being, holed up in his house in Austin, where I got to work with him several times. You know, he’s a real character.