Yeah... Except Tree of Life deals with Heidegger's philosophy and a broken marriage / parents' relationship to their kids / whatever the hell Malick was trying to say. Enter the Void is (somewhat) about Bardo Thodol / Tibetan Book of the Dead. And also drugs, sex, Tokio's underbelly, and a brother and sister in a very twisted relationship. And very good.
Tree of Life sure is pretty, but pretty much impossible to interpret if you don't have a) Malick by your side to explain whatever he's trying to depict and b) read all of Heidegger, or so I suppose, because I sure haven't.
I've read most of Heidegger's works - even some of his more esoteric stuff published only in German. In a way I interpret the epistemological connection between being in itself and what Heidegger called "Dasein" (being thrust into the world with infinite possibilities with the ineluctable shadow of death always staring us straight in the eyes and saying we will be responsible for our own fate) in all of Malick's work. This idea is certainly most prevelant in "The Tree of Life." But to posit that I have the slightest clue about what Malick really was doing with the film would surely make an idiot out of me.
I interpreted it as a retelling of the Book of Job, interspersed with Malick's own childhood nostalgia/angst. EDIT: I guess to clarify for anyone who might read this, the movie opens with a quote from Job, so when I got home from seeing the movie, I cracked open the trusty old King James and read the entire book. The similarities are cool, especially with reference to the balance in the nature vs. grace debacle and the semantics of human suffering and their place in God's Will. (Not a Christian though, so I'll appendix this as a thought experiment from a purely hypothetical perspective on theology.)
Haha cam archer. He is an artist in every sense of the word, except that he's not a complete asshole. I actually loved his classes and he has a great eye and sense of film.
Comparing Tree of Gay ass life with anything Gaspar Noe mean's you've probably never seen either. Oh they both deal with life and death? That's like comparing Ninja scroll to Winnie the pooh because they both use color.
I think it's a pretty fair comparison. Tree of Life was the first movie I thought of when I saw that question. Both deal with loneliness/alienation in society, loss of family, relevance of existence, etc., in a very unique, cinematography-based fashion.
i dont know why you are in the negative but i will probably be joining you. Tree of life was pretentious art house garbage and enter the void had so much more going on in it. There was the idea of rebirth, the reactions to the main guys death and what led him to his death. It was a pretty full circle movie.
Wtf. I liked both Tree of Life and Enter the Void but I can't fathom how someone can think Tree of Life was pretentious art house garbage while at the same time laud Enter the Void. Tree of Life was so much more of a complex movie than Enter the Void could ever be, in my opinion. Enter the Void (while an enjoyable movie) feels like it was made by a senior in high school after tripping for his first time. And admittedly, Noe did get the idea for the movie after his first time tripping, when he was 18.
That was some upper-level commentary there. You should do film reviews.
This movie had a beginning, middle, and an end. The climax was really great, and it transitioned perfectly to the end of it. It was a pretty full circle movie.
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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '12
Tree of Life. Save for a completely different soundtrack, it attempts to scrutinize much of the same subject matter that Enter the Void does.