The Tree of
Life
JANUARY SALE
Starring Hunter
McCracken
Y
Melancholia
JANUARY SALE
Starring
Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg
M
The beginning of time, the end of the world,
family, strangers, love, hate and 269 minutes to fit it all in. There’s a whole
other film to be made about the cosmological coincidence that made two of the
world’s most outré filmmakers attempt their grandest statements in the same
year: maybe the world is ending come 2012. Maybe because these two have summed
it all up. Brilliantly, both films will only give up their wares depending on
your beliefs or psychological mindset; a ruthless pessimist will only see the
despair and beatings throughout The Tree
of Life’s big fat roots, while a happy-lucky-goer will only take pretension
and Kirsten Dunst’s tits from Melancholia.
There’s a wealth of debate here, and bar a cataclysmic meltdown during the next
Academy season the debate should carry on for many years to come. Melancholia’s the weaker piece. The
first half verges on camp, plunging into ridiculousness with such abandon that
you can’t help but laugh at the arse-fisted dialogue and annoying character
tics. You’ll want to punch Charlotte Rampling in the smirk, and there’s a
deep-seated fear running throughout that Jack Bauer might not save the world
this time. Listen to it; the second half’s inevitable all-death is possibly the
most heavy handed metaphor for depression of all time, but it’s still a good
one, still loaded with beautiful symbolism and sterling work from the actors. Charlotte
Gainsbourg in particular impresses as a woman who’s entire foundations are
falling down, while Kirsten Dunst takes the annoying quirks of her first act
performance and turns them into something sullen and accepting: for many
depressives the world’s already ended, it’s just a case of waiting for everyone
else to get on the bus. Beautiful, stupid, upsetting. There were people crying
in the aisles.
Tree of
Life is a whole different trough of symbolism. Essentially a transcendently
optimistic visual poem about the unseen unity of the cosmos, it’s more art
installation than film, with what little narrative it holds being chopped and
stretched and intercut with CGI dinosaurs. It’s bizarre, hugely sensory and
unlike anything else seen in mainstream cinema. The fast cuts, the endless pans
through shining fields, across lawn sprinklers and primordial explosions and
Jessica Chastain’s porcelain face, all of them fall into a mosaic of the best
parts of life, the things that keep people alive. It’s a colossal, unwieldy
achievement, the realism of the performances and the period detail keeping the
more outlandish ramblings in check, including Sean Penn staring out of tall
buildings for what seems like eight years and frequent childhood sections that
feel like The Little Rascals with the fun surgically removed. The aspects of
your own life that bubble up in the characters are what keep you watching
through the seemingly endless displays of universal creation, though special
props must go to the effects department, who fill these scenes with a wonder
and beauty that make the run time fly by until the ice cream’s melting on your
jeans.
Both films are grand statements, thrown at
the screen without any of the subtlety or levels of narrative distance of their
director’s earlier works. They span the main thrust of life without resorting
to the usual constraints of plot, time or common sense, resulting in a mass of
pontification that won’t be everyone’s cup of green tea, though if there’s any
justice they’ll both be dinner party fodder for many evenings to come. In an
industry increasingly driven by money and pure unadulterated crap it’s a joy
just to see stuff like this existing, and both are worthy, beautiful and
admirable in almost every way.
But you’ll
only want to see them once.
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