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One major problem is that Malick is unconcerned with whether the audience knows what's going on. I was paying attention and even checking my progress in the movie with wikipedia's entry on it, when I realized, Maybe that boy that drowned was the other brother! At first, I thought he was just some kid in the neighborhood; most bloggers thought so too. Then I noticed that the third brother just disappeared. The story didn't just focus on the main character and the blond brother; the third brother wasn't even in the car with the family when they moved. Why wasn't he mourned as much as the other brother? He just dropped out and no one ever mentioned him again. When the blond brother dies at 19, it wrecks the father and mother. The blond brother apparently meant a great deal to the main character. What about the drowned brother? No love for the brother who can't swim.
Another narrative gap which troubles me is: what am I supposed to make of the grown-up main character? Why is Sean Penn in this movie at all? The main character boy grows up, becomes an architect, and contributes nothing to the story whatsoever. He doesn't even wear billowing clothes.
Oh, the treetops with the sun shining through them! Ah, the white billowing curtains being moved by the wind! A man touching another man's shoulder--how tender. Can't you feel the magic? In case you can't there's narration and loud Anglican-style choirs to tell you how spiritual it all is.
Malick insults my intelligence with the voiceovers. I would have understood the film was about God without the simplistic prayers. It's like Malick has so little trust in his audience's intellectual ability to divine themes he has to explicitly tell us the film is about nature vs. grace. I feel like the narration and the bits about the Big Bang and the beginning of life are unnecessary. I would have appreciated the weight of the story without these things. Really. Life is important. I get that.
Let's explore a more troubling byproduct of Malick's dualistic ideas about the world. The portrayal of the mother as a sinless saint makes me mad. Can we please get away from the goddess-of-the-hearth architype? It's sexist. It teaches young women that they should be perfect angels--a harmful, impossible goal to attain. And Chastain's portrayal of the mother--or possibly Malick's direction of her--annoyed me. She's too soft and "graceful" to say boo to her husband when he hurts their son, or to discipline her children when they terrorize her while the dad is away. Her character is weak. Her self-consciously graceful arm movements, filmed like so many beautiful affectations, exist only in film. No one waves their arms like falling leaves as they lay in the grass. Her scenes are more like magazine photo shoots that have been filmed than real scenes. Real scenes would have, you know, acting.
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| She charms the butterflies! Submissive feminine perfection! |
When the credits rolled I heaved a sigh of relief. Only 2 hours and 13 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I wish I had known how rough this movie was before I began. I can meditate for a few hours at a time. If I had said to myself, "Ashley, you are now going to watch these images and meditate" I could have handled it. As it was, I thought I was watching a movie. I expected to be challenged--Palme d'Or should mean something!--as well as entertained. I was sorely disappointed.
To all the people who think a great art film needs patience and multiple viewings, I say TRUE but that doesn't excuse the director from incoherence or pandering. One or the other is enough to damn a film. This is a difficult film, but not because Malick thinks the audience is bright enough to analyze it like Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. It's difficult because he thinks you are too stupid to get the dualism or religious themes unless he hits you over the head with it. It's difficult because it sucks. Malick sucks too. This movie is so bad it's bad.
