Counting the one I just watched, I have watched the movie "The Tree of Life" 4 times. This time, do I understand?
After 4 times, have I understood Terrence Malik's amazing work "The Tree of Life", let's talk about it again. What is certain is that the first time I played it 5 years ago, I was in a fog. I didn't know what story the director told in 2 hours and 45 minutes. And many fans like me who went to Brad Pitt, the star of the movie, were like me, confused in a half-hour-long cosmic prehistoric story?
At that time, at the 15th minute of the movie, Mrs. O'Brien had been informed of the unexpected news of the drowning death of the youngest son of the O'Brien family. Feeling grief-stricken, Mrs. O'Brien picked up the phone, feeling that the only way to alleviate the pain of the loss was to talk to her husband. Mr. O'Brien, who is busy at work, can't let his grief turn into tears like his wife. However, his out-of-focus eyes that occasionally look into the distance when he works diligently as usual, still let him be. We read that he was heartbroken.
I thought the director would let us follow Mr. O'Brien's recollections and see how well-behaved or naughty or stubborn the younger son was when he was alive. However, I was wrong. From the 15th minute of the film, Terence Malik uses the "National Geographic Channel" narration method to present the Big Bang and the Cretaceous crustal nuclear explosion and the emergence of life for half an hour. Compared with the 4.6 billion-year development history of the earth, Terence Malik gave a brief overview of the earth's history in 30 minutes, which is not too much space at all. The question is, isn't The Tree of Life trying to tell the story of the growth of the O'Brien family's three sons? What does the Big Bang, the Cretaceous crustal nuclear explosion, and the emergence of life, the three most important nodes in Earth's brief history, have anything to do with the growth of the three sons of the O'Brien family?
When I watched "The Tree of Life" for the 4th time and saw the half-hour "National Geographic Channel" style brief history of the earth, I was suddenly enlightened. Why did Terrence Malik insert a 30-minute "documentary" into a feature film, from the picture to the background music? When he created "The Tree of Life", what he wanted to express was not just the story of the O'Brien family, but also wanted to use the story of the O'Brien family to comprehend the stories of human beings on earth.
The story of "The Tree of Life" took place in Texas in the 1950s, where director Terence Malik grew up. He was born in 1943. The life trajectories of the three O'Brien brothers coincided with it. Therefore, Terrence Malik chose the story of a middle-class family in Texas in the 1950s to map a brief history of the earth, in order to borrow the story of the O'Brien family to describe his own basic human emotions such as pain, happiness, sorrow, love and death. experiences, and what imprints these experiences will leave on individual lives and the brief history of the planet.
However, from the big bang, the explosion of the crustal core in the Cretaceous period to the joys and sorrows of O'Brien's house, the span is so great that we feel that to connect the two, we must cross a gap, Terence Malik's " The Tree of Life connects the two seamlessly. How did he do that?
I think he used the masterpieces of the most representative composers in the history of classical music to synthesize the flowers that bloom on two branches into a parallel tilian.
In the order of phonics in this world, let's first rank the names of composers whose works appeared in "The Tree of Life": Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Smee Thane, Mahler, Respighi... From the Baroque period, to the classical period, to the romantic period, to the national music school, to the representatives of the classical music scene in the early 20th century, Terence Malik, who is familiar with classical music, used The soundtrack of a movie almost outlines the history of classical music, so as to coherent a movie, is there any reason why it is not smooth?
Long or short appears in the classical music works of "The Tree of Life". I think the most appropriate ones are Smetana's "Vltava" and Bach's "Equal Temperament".
The former, in the 57th minute of the movie, Terrence Malik chooses a movement "Vltava" from Smetana's "My Homeland" to match the picture, which is in front of Mr. O'Brien's house It is the scene where Mrs. O'Brien tells a bedtime story to the youngest son on the grass in the middle of the night, and it is the scene where the three sons, who have become teenagers, are running, chasing, and seeking pleasure. The effect of such a combination of sound and picture shows the vigor of human growth period incisively and vividly.
The latter appears at 1 hour and 10 minutes into the film. That morning, Mr. O'Brien went into the children's bedroom, tossed the covers off them, and the three sons gathered around their father, who was sitting in front of the organ, and listened to him play Bach's "Equal Temperament."
Generally speaking, the equal temperament refers to the basic temperament of European classical music. Bach set a model for the creation of the well-tempered piano for the first time with the Well-Tempered Piano Collection, which has a far-reaching influence. But the law of averages has another meaning: we have no way of knowing which of a series of big and small things that are going on will succeed. The law of averages tells us that if we do one thing over and over again, we will get closer and closer to our goal. close, or even reach the goal. So, on that morning, when Mr. O'Brien played Bach's "Equal Temperament" to his three sons, did he put all the two meanings of the Equal Temperament in the sound of the piano? Look, as soon as the camera cuts, what we hear is still Bach's "Equal Law", and what we see is Mr. O'Brien teaching his sons how to behave in a very strict manner.
In this way, the O'Brien's sons grew up in the music of the obvious theme. Of course, the younger son didn't have time to grow up to the age where he could compete as evenly as his older brothers with the harsh father. But so what? The short-lived little O'Brien, like his parents and his older brothers, has merged into the swift river and has been written into the law of averages.
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