The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

Malick continues to walk his own lonely road on which cutaways to sumptuous nature shots are preferred to plot development as carriers of meaning, with the human element reduced to muttered voice-over banalities addressed to some deity or other. He's getting better and worse at the same time, with each successive film: the preoccupation with the natural world is bringing more and more dividends as the images are refined, becoming the primary point of interest, while the inclusion of two-legged characters seems a concession to an audience expecting something of the sort.
The story, as far as there is one, is of a man's Texas childhood with an authoritarian father and doting mother, with the man in the present day trying to make sense of those years. It's essentially a fuzzily religious and deadly earnest video art filtration of a Stand By Me menage, book-ended by a creation of life on Earth sequence. There are some scenes where a moment of real insight into the personae does stumble out, but for the most part the film is characterised by Malick's obvious struggle with trying to crystallise his ideas while being hindered by having as little notion of timing and editing as ever. Endless shots of people walking slowly and looking somewhat discombobulated is not a failsafe formula for conveying the complexities of existence.

5/10