Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Tree of Life

Before seeing The Tree of Life i had no idea that the lives of rich white people can be so deeply moving in such profoundly cliche ways. i had no idea that their privileged private tragedies are connected with the suffering of like, DINOSAURS from the TURN OF THE LAST ICE AGE. Coupled with amazing use of stock footage, whispering, and befuddled story arc, this is truly a masterpiece in sophomoric pretension and pure, grade A+ horse shit.

To drive the point home, the film's inclusion of a few scenes showing the disenfranchised, blacks, and mexicans provided a silent background for the drama of our upper class main characters to unfold. All of this makes it all too clear that the lives of the underclass is filled with common place misery and garden variety pain, nothing remotely similar or even comparable to the intensely poetic, exalted, noble, transcendent and COSMIC suffering of the rich, set to an ethereal and elegiac soundtrack of Mahler's soprano solos, ECM favorites like Górecki and Tavener, and emotive pieces from the top 40 Classical cannon. So deep... BBBAAARRRFFF

While i always like to see more abstraction in films, and in some ways this one can be said to be pushing the envelope, it ends up as nothing more than a garishly sentimental bourgeois product just like the suburban setting it takes place in. Hallmark™ Surrealism at its finest.

i can't believe how many otherwise (seemingly) non-stupid people are praising this rubbish.

Do not, i repeat, do NOT mention Andrei Tarkovskys' The Mirror in the same paragraph or page as this supreme idiocy.

Ehen hollywood tries to be artsy it makes me want to dig my eyes out with a rusty tea spoon. i knew we should have seen Transformers 3 instead.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011