u/DuwapDoDat

just like the title says, it's the greatest film I've ever seen but for life of me I couldn't tell you why, it's almost like all the words escape me and I have only the "Pathos" that's left.

after re-watching the film for 2nd time and now with director's cut, I can convincingly say this is the most gorgeous, thought-provoking and transcendental cinema that has ever graced the screen and the crazy thing is this film just simply goes beyond conventional boundaries of the art, it doesn't fall into any criteria when it comes to rating or even reviewing movie and therefore it's something you can only experience, not decipher and dissect it like we do with other movies, I feel like Malick intended it this way.

The Tree of Life is as abstract and directionless as movie can get but with incredible visual story-telling skills of Malick, the way he sets up everything in his films, he can have minimal dialogue in the movie ( although the most spoken words in his films are monologues tbh ) and create the impact so huge that you would think it wouldn't be possible without some kind of build-up and dialogue heavy scenes where each character is fleshed out, which is usually the case and the characteristic of the great film, but no, Malick does everything so uniquely and he is simply operating from his own world. it's almost like the vibe is set by cinematography, soundtrack, camera placement (all those methodical devices Malick uses) and when characters start talking, even from minimal interactions and dialogue you can still feel emotions oozing, one would think the movie like this would come off dreadfully pretentious, instead what you get is an immersive sublime experience that doesn't hide anything and furthermore invites you to be part of it.

as for the meaning behind it, I'm not sure I did grasp all the hidden symbolism in film, as far as I know this is very personal film for Malick, I read somewhere that Malick's brother died by suicide when he was young which is basically what took place in "The Tree of Life". to me "The Tree of Life" is meditative look and study on anything from creation of life to childhood trauma and family relations and how Interconnected we are with pretty much everything even if we seem to be just a speck of dust in this universe. it might come off bit corny but with the universe creation scene I feel like Malick is saying "You are the universe" to audience, that notion for me is also reinforced when Jessica Chastain's character has this monologue where she ask "what are we to you" and immediately solar explosion happens and the "creation" commences. the film of course has some depressing moments but it seems to be ultimately optimistic, in the ending Sean Penn walks into afterworld where he meets his mother, father and brothers. the film definitely pushes the idea for forgiveness, reconciling with your past and loving one another (family mainly but not neccesarily) despite all the hardships you're facing, this is also reinforced by quote "only way to be happy is to love". in the end you have a film that's bigger than pretty much anything imo, it's constantly and abundantly loaded with meaningful implicit messages, many of those messages may get lost due to subtlety because The Tree of Life never tries to stress its concepts like most movies, I've never seen existential film like this that touches on basically everything without overstaying it's welcome. this is how I interpret "The Tree of Life" but like I said I'm sure many stuff flew over my head or escaped my attention so I'd like to ask everyone's interpretation of this film, what you guys think about this film and what it's ultimately trying to say in your opinion ?

this is the best film I've ever laid my eyes on and I'm not sure if I'll see anything better in future, this is also one of those films that I gotta make life-time commitment to see it in theater.