This coming Friday June 17 marks the long-awaited arrival of Terrence Malick’s magnus opus The Tree Of Life in Montreal cinemas. The seeds of the story came to Malick all the way back in the late 1970s when he was wrapping up work on Days Of Heaven. Originally entitled Q, the film is loosely autobiographical — it centers around a family with three boys in the 1950s, and follows the eldest son’s tumultuous relationship with his father and his eventual loss of innocence. And although the title of the project may have changed along the way, the subject matter has not: the film promises to be a spellbinding tour-de-force exploration of both the meaning and origin of life on earth. I’ve certainly done my share of promotion for this film over the past several months, and at this point there’s nothing more to say or write. The only thing left to do now is forget everything you’ve read, suspend your disbelief and expectations, and allow one of film’s grand masters to tell you a story more than thirty years in the making. For all FEELguide posts relating to Terrence Malick and The Tree Of Life CLICK HERE.
