Terrence Malick overrates his tingly inexpressible feelings, and now we all can too. If he could have shot the movie on film made from mulberry bark, he would have gladly. Not that it isn't deluxe enough already, in its fake naive way: the camera stumbles, the editing stammers, and lens flares are stuck all over like sequins. The nature imagery is in a contest with the voice-over to see which can be more generalized, more evasive. What it's all about is nothing more than a grown man having a bad day, remembering his childhood and feeling he was unloved. But no one's childhood was ever as unceasingly idyllic and "timeless" as what we're shown. Malick wants to avoid specificity, and with good reason: it disguises the silliness of The Tree of Life.
Review of The Tree of Life
