Heavy Stuff

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Movie City News had this first and then The Playlist, etc. On top of which the video was posted two days ago. But I'm copy-pasting this 11.15 video of Tree of Life composer Alexandre Desplat talking about Terrence Malick's film at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival for a reason.

I'm running it in order to address a quote from Desplat about the film, which deals with families and anguish and infinite time streams and dinosaurs, and which will presumably come out sometime in 2010...unless, you know, Malick needs more time to finish it.

Tree of Life, Desplat said, is "a deep story about love, how you transmit love, through your family; from the parents to the children. And the evolution of mankind...since the creation. Heavy things, but with everyday life things. That's one of the great ideas that Terrence has been working on. We see a family in the '50s in Texas in their everyday lives, but there's more, of course, connections to the big picture."

The thing that gets me is Desplat's decision to describe the basic thematic bones and/or philosophical through-line of Malick's tale as "deep" and "heavy."

There isn't a day that goes by when I don't say to myself, "Well, here I am, debating whether or not to order a Ceasar salad with or without chicken/buy or not buy a new Criterion Bluray that costs $40 and change/call or not call her back to either explain or elaborate or simply hear the sound of her voice/sign up with that health club despite the exorbitant monthly fee/write emails to publicists and ad buyers or put it off...all these things on my sponge brain, a mind trying to sort through and make sense of my life on this planet, and yet all the while I know -- have always known, from the time I was four or five -- that life is a constant refrain of struggle and pain, and that to find our way through it we all need to express love and worship rather than bicker over prices and invoices, but mainly that we're all connected to dinosaurs.

"Which is to say time is relative, existence is relative, and my life will one day be as over and extinct as the life of a certain Tryceratops who may have had or felt similar grunting concerns during his/her time on the planet, and that one day my skeleton might well be hanging in a natural history museum and that people who've paid $12.50 to get into the museum will wander up to my skeleton and say, 'Wow, for all we know this guy was one of the beautiful people!" and I won't be able to say anything back, obviously, but if I could I would say to them, 'Laugh now but you'll be dead too someday, so keep in mind as I tried to keep in mind when I was alive that time is a river and it's all over before we know it and...you know, whatever, we're all connected to dinosaurs.'"