The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life made me glad I sprang for an enormous tv and a good stereo.  I can’t imagine seeing this film on a computer screen.  This film trades on awe, and awe requires big picture and big sound.  I think the studio will put this back in theaters for awards season.  If you don’t have an enormous tv and a good stereo, take advantage of the theater’s setup and see this film properly.

Sean Penn’s a successful architect in his early 50s.  It’s his deceased brother’s birthday.  He goes about his day, but he’s lost in thought, reflecting on his childhood, his brother, his family, and life.  That’s it – that’s the whole story.

But it’s powerful and it’s beautiful and it’s absolutely effective, and it’s so because director Terence Malick captures the perspective of childhood as seen through the lens of recollection.  He uses vignettes and camera angles and selective audio to approximate how children see and adults remember.  He weaves it with a meditation on life, and the meaning of life, that put me in a profound, meditative state and took me on its journey.

I didn’t cry during   The Tree of Life.  I didn’t laugh.  Nothing blew up.  But this film moved me, its marriage of music and imagery touched me, and the experience felt like the most profound time I’ve had at the movies since Woman in the Dunes.

See this film.  Soak it in.  When you do, go large.

Taken

A group of actors is about to become unemployed.

There’s a certain kind of actor out there – you know the type. A thespian like Mark Dacascos, say, or Steven Segal or Jean-Claude Van Damme. This guy is a working actor, he’s paying the bills, and he’s turning out one direct-to-video feature after another. In one film, he’s an ex-soldier out for revenge. In another, a kung fu master come down from the mountaintop to get the precious MacGuffin. In yet another, he’s a cop, or a spy, or an accountant who works out a lot. It’s all the same, and it all pays the bills: the actor sneers, he shoots, he kicks people in the face. Then he goes home, cashes his check, and everybody’s happy.

And then, a Liam Neeson comes along. An Academy Award nominee. A marquee name. Darkman, for Pete’s sake! And he makes a movie like TAKEN, in which he plays an ex-CIA agent who is both Out for Revenge and Getting the MacGuffin. Not only does he act the pants off of everyone else in the genre, but it turns out he’s got some pretty good moves in the stunt department, to boot. Hey, Liam, bit of advice: it’s unwise to enter these guys’ territory. They may be desperate men.

TAKEN, then, serves as an exercise in the farfetched: what happens when you take a capable, respected actor, surround him with stuntmen, and tell him to go kick some ass? I’ll tell you what happens: asses get kicked, and they kicked by a guy whose conviction the audience never thinks to question. Liam Neeson takes TAKEN, your standard, DTV-type revenge / MacGuffin thriller, and elevates it to something more: a study in desperation, in love, and in high-class ass-kickery the likes of which you’ve never seen before.

In the process, however, TAKEN calls the entire future of the DTV thriller into question. Will Judi Dench soon play an edge – of – retirement assassin out to do one … last … job? When can we expect Sean Penn to show us his chops as an idealistic former cop who must kickbox his way through a corrupt police force to avenge his former partner? Personally, I’m holding out for the mother lode: Kate Winslet as a post-apocalyptic savior, preferably one with a totally awesome car, or maybe eyes that blink sideways.

It’s only a matter of time. But when that day comes, a certain class of actor will be out of work. It’ll be Neeson’s fault. Perhaps he can hire a few members of the old cadre as bodyguards.

Into the Wild

I was vaguely aware of Chris McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp) before I viewed INTO THE WILD. I knew that Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, wrote a book about him. I thought the guy was basically a spoiled kid who thought he could just tramp off into the Alaskan bush with no preparation and got himself killed.

But you know what I just wrote about MONSTER? About how film can take us into worlds we didn’t know existed, into people we’d never understand otherwise? INTO THE WILD does this, taking us into McCandless’s world and into the heart of a fatally idealistic, romantic young man who wanted only what idealistic and romantic young men have always wanted: to find adventure and find the truth.

Sean Penn wrote and directed INTO THE WILD with a sure control of technical detail and an eye for character. As McCandless (Emile Hirsch, quite fine in the underrated SPEED RACER) travels America, the film wraps us in beautiful foreboding and the love of good people. It leads us to care about the young man at its center without allowing us to forget the damage he’s doing to those he left behind. It shows us that, by the time McCandless made it to Alaska, he actually was marginally prepared to be there. And it takes us on his journey with care and tenderness.

This is a beautiful film, with beautiful images, music, and performances. It’s a thoughtful film, a film that cares about ideas and emotions in a real, personal way. It’s a riveting film, one that keeps us fully engaged though we know how it will end. And it’s a great film, the kind we recommend to our friends. See it soon.