November 7th: THE TREE OF LIFE (Terrence Malick, 2011)

NOTE: This film will be screened in the high-definition Blu-ray format.

A man reflects on his childhood in 1950's Texas and ponders the mysteries of existence.

Writer-director Terrence Malick attended Harvard University before becoming a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, then later taught philosophy at M.I.T. At some point he transitioned from freelance journalism into screenwriting, and was an early student at the American Film Institute conservatory in the late 1960's. His debut feature Badlands (1973) was a festival and critical success, and paved the way for his follow-up Days of Heaven (1978), which won a directing award at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award for its cinematography.

Malick disappeared from cinema for twenty years, during which he moved to Paris and worked on a number of unrealized screenplays. He finally returned in 1998 with a sprawling adaptation of James Jones' acclaimed World War II novel The Thin Red Line, featuring many of Hollywood's most notable actors, which garnered seven Oscar nominations.  The Tree of Life is a project Malick had been developing since the late 1970's, and his most autobiographical work to date. 

Various actors became attached to the project since its announcement in 2005, with Brad Pitt serving as one of the producers before stepping forward to taking one of the main roles. Previous Malick alum Sean Penn also came on board to play the main character in the present-day sequences. Up and coming actress Jessica Chastain was cast in the role of the "mother", in a year that saw her appear in several other major releases. The rest of the cast was made up mostly of local non-actors. Another return collaborator is cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (The Revenant, The New World)

In addition to being set in several different 20th Century time periods, the film also features an extended sequence going back to the origins of the universe and the evolution of life on earth. To take on this massive challenge, Malick enlisted special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Close Encounters) to assist in the mostly non-CGI, in-camera effects using liquids, gasses, and photographic tricks. Malick would explore these ideas and images further with his subsequent documentary Voyage of Time.

The Tree of Life premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or (top prize). It was named the best film of the year by various critics groups, critics polls by Sight & Sound and Film Comment magazines, the site IndieWire, and the Village Voice/LA Weekly. It received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Malick's direction, and Lubezki's photography. In 2012, the once-a-decade poll for the Greatest Films of All Time by Sight & Sound was taken, with 16 critics having it on their ballots.

In 2018, it was revealed that back in 2011 Malick had made a deal with home video label Criterion to produce an extended cut that would be available on an eventual Blu-ray release, with the company putting up the money for scanning the whole negative and providing a new sound mix and color grading. While Malick was busy making several more films since then, he eventually spent close a year on the cut, which includes 50 minutes of new material.

Running time is approx. 3 hours.