A cosmic relationship with Terrence Mallick

Oh My Gooooodness - just like Mariah Carey would have pronounced it - (download the ringtone mytinyphone.com/mariahDRUNK) Why am I transcendentalized ? Even if this word doesn't exist at the moment, this neoligsm has a great future and you'll soon realized its great potential when I'll tell you about my telepathic relationship with Terrence Malick.

In the last posts, you've probably noticed my frustration and maybe my embittered attitude towards Cannes Film Festival, I hate being in this mood so the first step I took to banish it was to go directly watch The Tree Of Life, the golden laureate. I went there afterwork, my thoughts full of pre-constructed jugements borrowed from critics more or less reliables, with my usal 15min delay to slip out adverstising, then chose the third row (the projection room was almost empty) and laid down my tired legs along the seats.Yes I am this kind of person you've glimpsed going alone to the cinema, it's my little pleasure, my facial expressions can vogue free as others contain themselves pantomiming their friends.

The film starts with a 10 second plan of a strange shape, we don't really know if its a piece of chair, a vegetal or an acquatic being, then ,immediately after, we plunge into the life of an american family stricken by the grief of a child. The first impression I had is that I was carried into an handbag for the first 10 minutes. Alternately held by Brad Pitt & Jessica Chastain's (handbags), the camera is floating along the corridors of the house enhancing the intimacy we immediately share. The ground plan is lyrical and beautiful then we take a flight somewhere in the cosmos, a long bracket right in the middle of the film showing elements of the universe taking back together infinitesimaland infinitely great. He succeed showing how this two poles are esthetically very similar confusing our perceptions of the subtance in all directions. The Off screen voice is Malick typical tic and I usually like it but in Tree of Life, the voice is redundant and keep brooding over the same payer/sentence...too bad :(

Figuring why he blent parallel narrations was not an easy part but I can guess that when you loose a child you want to look everywhere for him, a pursuit from the sky to the dreams to the tiny little glint of your coffee drop (To Nina with love) and for that, Malick did great. Mental landscapes comforting the sight until releasing it into the void...

As a totally pretentious and snooty conclusion, I'll tell all that the reason why I pretend a cosmic relationship with Malick is because we share lots of inspirations even if I'm far away of transforming them into gold.

For the texan standard american family fascination, I send you back to Andrew Wyeth The Floating Dream, an article I wrote one year ago

A 2 minutes focus on the dance of a jellyfish in the film echoed my article The Lake of the Jellyfishes

And aboveall, Malick's obsession with off voices to preserve the essence of the images into an hermetic loud bubble, is a practice I've always used since my first video : youtube.com/alienormeyer

Aliénor.