Review of The Tree of Life (2011) by Vern H — 25 Nov 2012

While it's has beautiful and striking cinematography, dazzling and mesmerizing visuals, great performances especially from Brad Pitt and his eldest son, the whole 50 minute flashback segment is very good, the score is a haunting and seemingly powerful undercurrent pulse that is mostly effective for the 50's scenes, The Tree of Life is as well a, for better or worse, largely ambitious and extremely pretentious poetic movie or with a distant, meandering plot that goes in many unnecessary and purposefully ambiguous directions involving our creation and nature, many moments and shots that just seem as thought the director has gone on a self-indulgent spree of experimentation and exploration with the camera, very slow and deliberate pacing, a frustrating ending that makes little to no sense, and asks too many questions than it can answer.