The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick, 2011 (9.2*)
Palm D'or, Cannes

Rated only 7.3 at IMDB by fans, received much higher 8.5 from 43 critics at Metacritics. I'd say it's even better than that, worthy of at least a 9.0; it's more a work of art than a film. I believe this film will take more than one viewing.

As it is now, it really seems like two films. There's a short one of cosmic creation that looks a lot like weaker, but still effective versions of Jordan Belson’s short art films (from the 60’s forward), the man Stanley Kubrick wanted for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), but who refuses to work on commercial films. His 'non-object' films defy description -suffice to say they are the most metaphysical ever made.

The other film is a story of a dysfunctional 50’s family in Waco, Texas led by a strong-willed Brad Pitt, who appears to be a loving father of three sons, but who in reality is alienating all three and his wife, newcomer of the year Jessica Chastain, by being too stern and demanding, and basically robbing the boys of their grace of childhood, of the innocent joy they feel just running in the yard with each other and their mother.

He seems to be a typical American materialist, making a comment to the effect that the world operates on trickery and if you don’t take your own share, you won’t have anything. On the other hand, he’s an industrialist who holds several U.S. patents, they just don’t seem to be enriching him, a fact that he shows bothers him in small ways, as he's often mentioning richer men in town.

The film doesn’t follow a straight narrative, sometimes jumping to one of the sons played by Sean Penn as an adult – which son is not clear, and is really not important. (Leading Penn to criticize Malick for his role in the final film; he claims the script was more touching than the result). The film is really more of a series of images, and the story will be largely up to the viewer. In this respect, the film attempts what Michaelangelo Antonioni perfected in L'avventura (1960), a film whose story is told more pictorially and less with dialogue, action, or plot. In fact, that film won a special jury prize from Cannes for “cinematic beauty and giving us a new way of looking at films.”

Though this was is a very creative endeavor, it did remind me visually of Jordan Belson’s films in the cosmic scenes (though those did feature some entirely unnecessary and confusing dinosaurs at one point!) and then Antonioni’s in the family story, but an homage to the influence of each. Throughout all, there is a strong classical music score, used in much the same way as 2001, and others have brought up comparisons to 2001 as well, as Malick sought technical advice from Kubrick's special effects director Douglas Trumbull for this film, since he used more traditional (non-digital) film techniques. Some say having planets doesn’t make it similar, but they’re ignoring the use of classic music along with those images, and also that each film basically deals metaphorically with creation and evolution of life. So it’s more similar to Kubrick’s classic than even I realized while watching it.

For that matter, both this film and Aronofsky's The Fountain (2006) use a tree of life metaphor, and that film was also spiritual in nature, questioning the nature of god and life and the apparent fragility of individual human lives, which is a major theme of Malick's film. Aronofsky's was even more complex than this, weaving together three stories, from a mythical past, a present, and a visionary future.

This is certainly one of the most beautifully shot films in recent memory, with stunning cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki - look for an Oscar® here. Though many of the space images are really just Hubbell telescope photos (and one I’m using as wallpaper currently of my favorite nebula), some are abstract and in motion slightly (some special effects were added) and those resemble the Belson films most closely.

A Malick film is like a Kubrick film in another way, since he has made only five, and Kubrick only made 11 in his lifetime, so he’s on a similar pace. All of Malick’s films are very good, but he’s still about three masterpieces short of Kubrick however: 2001, Dr. Strangelove (1964), and A Clockwork Orange (1971). And one short of Antonioni, L’avventura. But he’s getting closer with efforts like this one, his best film yet, though Badlands was a very good debut film.

Winner of four awards so far, out of 7 nominations, I'm sure there will be about 30 more to follow.


Note: Several of Jordan Belson’s short art films are available on one dvd now, online, for around $35. Most were award winners, and they are like nothing else on film, created frame by frame by hand, taking years for a few minutes of length. He also created the soundtracks himself, sounds which changed as the images changed as if they were co-dependent. Wikipedia calls them “non-object films of spiritual content”.

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127 Hours

Danny Boyle, 2010 (8.8*)
This is a true story of hiker-climber-biker-canyoneer Aron Ralston's solo trek into the Blue John Canyon section of Canyonlands in southeastern Utah, some of the most remote canyon terrain in the U.S., not made a national park until 1964, when re-discovered in modern times by Secretary of State Stu Udall during a helicopter flight.

Ralston is excellently played by Oscar-nominee James Franco, who captures the youthful exhuberance of a child at heart, mixed with an older man's previous wilderness experience - he was actually a volunteer wilderness rescue expert and part-time canyon guide and knows this area well.

I've been in this exact part of the country (and Joshua Tree outside L.A.), and we did a lot of what we called bouldering, or climbing rocks without any equipment, but we never took the chances that Ralston did. About half an hour into the film, Ralston meets some lost ladies (one of whom is one of film goddess Kate Mara, Transsiberian) and shows them both their intended trail, and a hidden underground pool by dropping about 30 feet through a crevice from above (which is shot with some excellent cinematography).

After saying goodbye to his new friends, Ralston is climbing alone when he dislodges a loose boulder at the top of a crevice, which causes him to fall into it and the boulder lands just the right way to pin his right hand and arm to the side of the narrow crevice.

He's now trapped in the bottom, about fifty feet below sky, but he does have his video camera, and his daypack with water and a little food. Of course, the title of the films implies how many hours he remains trapped, you should know that much. But since he has a video recorder, we would know his story whether he survived or not. He certainly thinks he's doomed, and records final goodbyes for his mom and friends.

I went into this with some trepidation about the film's pace and creativity, but the on location terrain in southeast Utah that I've been in myself (Arches Nat Park and Canyonlands are two of my favorite in the U.S.) was the hook for me. I've been there many times, at various ages - it's a desert paradise on earth, one all climbers and hikers should visit, and re-visit.

Boyle has a way to make any film engrossing - I enjoyed Shallow Grave, Millions, Trainspotting, and Slumdog Millionaire, the latter a best picture winner and all definitely worth seeing. I thought Shallow Grave was a perfect parody of Hitchcock suspense thrillers, with three robbers trying to both hide the unspent loot and live together, two guys and a girl, a formula that you know spells disaster.

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Off the Map

Campbell Scott, 2003 (8.5*)
This small indie film is a most unusual tale, directed by actor Campbell Scott, son of Oscar®-winner George C. Scott. A small family farm is truly off the proverbial beaten path, so isolated that nearly no one can find it without a hand-drawn map. In fact, early in the story an IRS agent, Will Gibbs (Jim True-Frost), gets lost trying to find the family, who haven't been filing tax forms due to little or no income.

When he finds the farm after searching a week and walking 10 miles after sleeping in his car, he finds Joan Allen naked in her garden, staring at a healthy coyote who stalks and preys on rabbits that hang out in the garden. He immediately falls in love, even though she's married. Her husband, Sam Elliott, is mired in a months-long depression of unknown cause.

Daughter Valentina de Angelis [photo below], who narrates this story from her adulthood (Amy Brenneman, who somehow gets top billing with only a couple of minutes onscreen), is outgoing and self-confident, and along with her mother, they nurse Gibbs through days of a fever caused by a bee sting. After regaining his health, Gibbs is no longer interested in his prior life, and returns to his artwork, capturing the beauty of the New Mexican landscape surrounding the farm, and also Joan. Elliott's character is actually closer to catatonic than depressed, so the addition of Gibbs to the household is actually welcomed by the women.

Valentina de Angelis, then and now,

was 13 when she filmed Off the Map

The artwork used is very colorful, and mostly abstract, watercolors painted by local artist Stan Berning (whose art can be seen at http://www.stanberning.com/, along with all the paintings done for the film project at Scott's request). The centerpiece painting is a 41-foot watercolor done by Gibbs to show the young girl the ocean meeting the horizon, since she's never seen an ocean.

This story progresses naturally, and never feels strained or forced. This is a beautiful, small film about being self-sufficient in a harsh environment. Campbell Scott (The Spanish Prisoner, Singles) [photo below] turned out to be a better director than actor - let's hope he makes more films this artistic. Perhaps it's the acting of Joan Allen that makes this film what it is, she's one of the best around, long overdue for an Oscar®. Those who like her should also check out The Contender, which is perhaps her strongest performance.

Director Campbell Scott, son of actor George C.

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Into the Wild

Sean Penn, 2007 (8.6*)
This is the true story of recent college graduate Christopher McCandless, who, after graduating from Emory U. in Atlanta, did not want to continue on to graduate school or join the work force hoping to achieve his own suburban dream like his parents. Instead he embarked on a spiritual quest of self-discovery like many others before him. Little-known actor Emile Hirsch turned in a subtle yet moving performance, and won some acting awards as a result, and made himself known around the world.

We get to see his story in bits and pieces, as he first leaves Georgia in a car, which is later found deserted after a flash flood in southern California, with no sign of Christopher, to the dismay of parents, former Oscar®-winners William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden. He then hitchikes to the Alaskan wilderness, within sight of Mt. McKinley, trying to survive in nature without any help whatsoever, armed with a book on edible wild plants, the optimism of youth, and an abandoned school bus as a home.

Two-time Oscar®-winning actor Sean Penn proved he could direct with this picture, making a seemingly simple travel story into a life changing voyage into the unknown, and a film not easily forgotten. Overseas, the film won some awards for best foreign film. The awards page at IMDB

Into the Wild moved enough people to be currently ranked #145 on the IMDB top 250.

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The Story of the Weeping Camel

Byambasuren Davaa, Luigi Falorni, Germany, 2003 (8.9*)

This German documentary follows a family of Mongolian shepherds' daily lives. After the camel birthing season, the last newborn colt, a pretty white boy, is rejected by his mother. The shepherd sends his two sons on a trip to a nearby town to find a healing musician to help the mother accept her offspring.

We follow the daily life of the shepherds, which is primitive and weather-beaten in the harsh, beautiful Gobi desert, yet they also have total freedom. They can simply move their animals to another location if they want and be elsewhere in a day. In the towns, satellite tv is available and many ride motorcycles rather than camels, so the modern world is there if they want it - they chose to continue to live simply.

This is a beautiful and unusual story in a beautiful setting, even more amazing since it's a documentary - we follow the story of the young rejected camel, played by Botok with Ingen Tenne as the mother camel, as it plays out for the shepherds. This story that seems a much legend as truth won several film festivals, usually the audience award for foreign film, and was an Oscar nominee for documentary. Awards page at IMDB

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Whale Rider

Niki Caro, 2003, New Zealand (10*)
Sundance Audience Award, World Cinema
One of those amazing films that comes along all too rarely in life, one that blends myth into reality, and one that exposes a unique culture, the Maoris of New Zealand, being swallowed up by modern society. Lovingly directed by Niki Caro, from a novel by Maori author Witi Ihimaera, with beautiful music from Dead Can Dance singer Lisa Gerrard, who also scored Gladiator and The Insider.

This film is the story of Paikea, a young girl searching for self-identity in a tribal culture dominated by males for centuries, and whose grandad is intent on finding the next male tribal chief to lead his people back to their ancestral heritage and maintain time-honored ritual as a connection to their identity.

The cast is amazing, the adult Maori actors are excellent, especially Rawiri Paratene as the grandad, Koro, but the entire film is stolen by newcomer Keisha Castle-Hughes, a schoolgirl with no prior experience who was discovered in a classroom by the same casting director that found young Anna Pacquin for Jane Campion's The Piano.

Keisha Castle-Huges, a Maori who relocated from Australia to New Zealand at age 5, was nominated for 13 international awards for this role, including an Oscar for Best Actress, and was a winner of five awards: Broadcast Film Critics: Best Young Actor/Actress, Chicago Film Critics: Most Promising Performer, New Zealand Film and Tv Awards: Best Actress, Online Film Critics: Best Breakthrough Performance, Young Artist Awards: Best Actress in an International Film. In my opinion, this is one of the best performances I've ever seen by either a woman or a child, she definitely deserved some type of Oscar®.

Awards Page for Keisha at IMDB

Awards Page for Whale Rider, with 28 wins and 29 other nominations, including 9 New Zealand Film and TV awards, winning picture, director, screenplay, music, and four for acting

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Baraka

Ron Fricke, 1992 (9.5*)
This is a beautiful visual poem to the spirituality of the planet, mankind included. Director Ron Fricke has given us a film without narrative or even dialogue, yet it's the best description on film of, in his words, "man's connection to the eternal". In order to achieve his vision, Fricke created film equipment cabable of giving us time lapse sequences of both nature and urban settings.

The film primarily shows serene locales in nature (like Arches Nat Park in Utah), or of man's creation, such as temples, zen gardens, meditating monks. Fricke filmed in over 200 locations in 22 countries, many familiar sites, some not so familiar. The beauty is occasionally contrasted by images where we've interrupted the inherent serenity, such as the oil fires in Kuwait, traffic in a metropolis, a hand-rolled cigarette factory in Asia.

This film won't suit all tastes, but if you're of the meditative type, or just love the visual artistry of films, enjoy nature films like Planet Earth, which this preceded by a decade, then Baraka will strike a resonant chord in your spirit.

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Rivers and Tides

Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2003 (9.0*)
This is an amazing documentary that is not like any other because the artist Andy Goldsworthy is so unique. It's slow to get started but once you see how and why he does what he does it all makes intuitive sense. Its all about time and the ephemeral nature of living things. He uses natural media he finds in nature, rarely planning anything in advance. Only his rock sculptures last longer than the day he makes them. Most are temporary: ice sculptures that glow then melt in the sunlight, leaf 'snakes' held with thorns that he sends down a stream, or autumn leaves arranged from dark to light creating an artificial hole. He sometimes build 'rock piles like people use to mark trails worldwide', but they're big egg-shaped and carefully done with no mortar, yet they hold together as if made to stand in this shape like silent sentinels. He has designed a permanent wall in a sculpture garden, but let professional “wallers” build that. You don't have to be an artist to appreciate this movie. It also has several short films as a bonus. Goldsworthy has done so much of this that a film of all his outdoor artwork could actually last weeks! Inspiring...

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The Cuckoo

Alexsandr Rogozhkin, 2002, Russia (9.0*)
One incredibly beautiful location, an alpine Finnish lake without a settlement in sight, makes this small, sparse anti-war film a rare treat. The story begins with a condemned Finnish soldier being chained to a rock as a sniper, and we follow his story in this locale, which appears to be a very rural area of Finland. The tale eventually involves another soldier, a Russian, and a local laplander woman, none of whom speak the same language.

Anni-Christina Juuoso is a delight as the widow they run into, self-sufficient pioneer who lives alone in the wilderness since her husband died. This simple plot device works very well to illustrate the futility of international hostilities, and that compassion and sharing are the true human virtues. One of the more austere, yet thought provoking films you will see, and the cinematography is breathtaking.

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Jeremiah Johnson

Sydney Pollack, 1972 (8.1*)
Just a simple story about "a man called Jeremiah Johnson who wanted to be a mountain man". He was told to "go west of the sunset, turn left at the Rockies", and from sparkling dialogue like this, we thankfully have a quiet film about a pioneer played by Robert Redford who attempts to survive alone in the western wilderness. This is a very well-made and unique western, definitely not the standard good vs evil plot; it's more about survival, cooperation, coexistence, independence. The film introduced Redford to the Wasatch Mountains of Utah (not far from Salt Lake City), where he later built Sundance after falling in love with the incredible scenery there. This is the kind of western that you can watch over and over, and it even casts Native Americans in a positive light. Sydney Pollack would later win a directing Oscar for Out of Africa, also with Redford.
Quote: I know who you are - I've been hearing you for 20 days and smelling you for three!

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Siberiade

Dir: Andrei Konchalovsky, 1979, Russia, 6 hrs. (7.5*)
This massive 6-hr production looks like it was made for Russian tv, a mini-series in 4 parts about 90 minutes each; since the film was also fullscreen, I'm assuming it was made for tv rather than the cinema - too bad I wish it had been widescreen, for the star and subject of this film is Siberia. In particular, a small village on the Volga River, and about three generations of its inhabitants, some of whom leave Siberia, some of whom return. This epic (in time if not in numbers of people) covers nearly a century of this area, from Czarist Russia until Soviet industrial expansion into the area in the 1980's, searching for oil.

This may be a bit slow and unsophisticated for some western audiences, moving like spring ice melting on the tundra, but there are beautiful scenes of a culture we'll never see: a wind-driven ice sled skating over the frozen river and disappearing into the winter whiteout (how did they ever find their way anywhere and back?, fur-covered Siberian peasants with the weather etched in their faces, audacious swamplands when thawed (called the "Devil's Mane" by the locals), as one Russian official puts in from an airplane "a useless area three times the size of France; we might as well dam it up for hydropower and create the world's largest man-made reservoir". This is truly a Soviet-style, industrial strength epic film, unlike anything from the west.

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Never Cry Wolf

Carol Ballard, 1983 (8.3*)
Autobiographical film of biologist Farley Mowat, based on his memoirs, and played by Charles Martin Smith (American Graffiti) in a rare dramatic part. Mowat studied caribou and wolves in the British Columbian tundra of Canada to see if wolves were wiping out the caribou, with surprising findings.

Not packed with action, but there's one terrific scene of Mowat running naked with a caribou heard, and another where he and a male arctic wolf mark his territory. This is a gorgeous nature film, with beautiful cinematography by Hiro Narita, Oscar nominated sound.

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Winged Migration

Dir: Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, 2001, France (10*)
This awe-inspiring documentary was shot over several years, and at over 200 worldwide locations, and is presented without much narration so that we feel like we’re part of the flying birds ourselves. The effect is to show how incredible migrating bird populations are, and how we need to preserve them for the future of the planet.

Breath-taking, one of the best nature films or documentaries ever shot. Another rarity, it's G-rated.. This should be on everyone's top 100 list.

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Planet Earth

Released 2007, 5 discs (10*)
One of the most major undertakings in the history of video, filmed over 5 yrs at over 300 locations on earth and involving thousands of people, and with a 25m budget. This nature film attempts to show the diversity and awe-inspiring majesty of the planet we and other creatures live on. This is about ten hours of some of the most jaw-dropping stuff you will ever see. Some footage is so rare that it took years to get a minute of film, such as snow leopards in the Himilayas. Each type of geography is covered in its own episode: mountains, jungles, forests, deserts, oceans, fresh water, etc. Not to be missed!

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Himalaya

Dir: Eric Valli, 1999, Nepal (8.1*)

Filmed with non-actors and as the French director Eric Valli tells his cast in the documentary included, with the goal of preserving the story of their culture for generations to come so that we will always have a record of a disappearing way of life. The residents live in perhaps the most isolated village or our times (Dolpo region of Nepal), which is a three week trek over gorgeous Himalayan mountains from the nearest road! Their winter survival depends on their trading salt for food, necessitating their driving a caravan of yaks bearing their product to a valley somewhere over miles of forbidding mountains. The story of the making of this film is perhaps more dramatic than the story within the film; how film crews and sherpas can manage such an undertaking (much like Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo) and brave horrific weather defies the imagination of those of us raised in the relative comfort of urban civilization. I recommend this as a must-see for anyone interested in ancient cultures, vast mountain vistas, or beautiful weather-beaten people.

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