I was standing in the right-rear section of the orchestra when The Tree of Life ended and didn’t even hear the booing, which reportedly came from the upper balcony. In any event I think it’s beastly to boo a film as hauntingly beautiful and immensely ambitious and spiritually directed as this one, and which is so dazzling and transporting during its first half-hour to 40 minutes.

I understand the frustration, mind, because The Tree of Life does lose itself in its own impressionistic quicksand after the first half-hour. It begins to drown, sink, swallow itself. The center cannot hold. But it’s entirely worth seeing (and praising) for the portions that clearly and unmistakably deliver. I’m especially referring to what people will soon be calling the 2001/Douglas Trumbull section. Who in the big-budget realm is even trying to make pure art films like this except Malick?

But over time he’s been given, I feel, a bit too much freedom and time to do whatever he damn well pleases. There’s a part of me that would dearly love to see Malick suffer under a brutal Harry Cohn-like taskmaster producer because as unhappy as that would make him personally, he’d make tougher and more rigorous films.

Malick’s staunchly non-linear, 136-minute poem about beauty and Godliness suppressed and the unfortunate legacy of brutal paternal parenting in the 1950s is a sad and beautiful…wank? The ultimate refutation of narrative? An often captivating but rudderless impressionistic exercise?

Yes, I know I twittered the last passage only minutes after emerging from the theatre, but it came out well and on-target so there.

I understand why distributors and exhibitors were apoplectic about this thing last year. It’s not going to sell a lot of popcorn. Or tickets, for that matter. But fuck those guys. The Tree of Life is, of course, essential viewing if you care at all about movies that aspire to more than showing us Johnny Depp mugging and rolling his eyes and pocketing another paycheck.

You know what? I’m just going to re-run and in some instances re-write my tweets and possibly elaborate here and there:

Tweet #1: “Terrence Malick made The Tree of Life in this free-flowing, free-associative way because he could, because he doesn’t have Bert and Harold Schneider riding his ass in post, and because God told him to…like it or lump it.” That’s pretty much on the money. I adore hundred of things that Malick captured in The Thin Red Line and The New World, but there was more discipline in Days of Heaven because (I’ve read) of Bert and Harold, and Badlands was just as tight.

Tweet #2: “Terrence Malick needs a trainer, a tough collaborator, a friend with a stick. No such luck.This movie is the fault of his many enablers.”

Tweet #3: “The first half-hour of The Tree of Life is magnificent. But then it begins to dissipate because the center cannot hold. Airy fairy.

Tweet #4: “The Tree of Life should have been shorter. It’s the first ten minutes of The Thin Red Line — meditative, jungle-leafy, reptile in water — only set in 1950s suburban Texas” — the film was primarily shot in Smithville, about 40 miles southest of Austin — “rather than an island in the South Pacific.”

Tweet #5: “Shorter Tree of Life: Life sure could be symphonically, heart-stoppingly beautiful if it wasn’t for my hard-ass, totally frustrated, spirit-suffocating dad” — i.e., Brad Pitt’s character. Imagine The Tree of Life without those tree shots, those kick-the-can moments, Jessica Chastain‘s looks of disdain for Brad Pitt, etc.” I can’t. But there are an awful of those tree shots. Scores. This must be acknowledged because I think it’s overdone.

Tweet #5: “Don’t get me wrong — The Tree of Life is, at times, transcendent poetry. I’m glad I saw it, but I’m not sure if I’ll buy/get the Bluray.”

If nothing else The Tree of Life is one prolonged Emanuel Lubezski orgasm. Every shot is captivating, sublime, amazing, heavenly.

I love this passage from Justin Chang‘s Variety review: “[At] roughly 20 minutes in The Tree of Life undergoes arguably the most extreme temporal shift in the history of cinema. Comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey are perhaps intended, not least because Stanley Kubrick‘s special-effects creator Douglas Trumbull served as a visual consultant on Malick’s eye-candy evocation of the dawn of time (conceived by several visual-effects houses but designed with minimal reliance on CGI).

“We observe a flurry of awe-inspiring images at astronomical, biological, macro- and microscopic levels: a nebula expanding in outer space; cells multiplying in a frenzy; a school of shimmering jellyfish; darkness illuminated by a volcanic eruption; a bubbling primordial ooze.”

Pitt plays the villain, all right, and delicate, red-haired Jessica Chastain plays his tender, spirited, angel-like wife. Their taxed and tormented son Jack is played an adolescent by Hunter McCracken, and as an adult by Sean Penn (who’s barely in the film, and has maybe five or six lines).

There’s a young blonde kid who plays McCracken’s younger brother, and who resembles Brad Pitt quite unmistakably. It’s almost like he’s Pitt’s actual son, which is all but unheard of in movies. There’s one rule that Hollywood casting agents seem to go by when casting families, and that’s to never, ever allow for the faintest resemblance between on-screen parents and children. On this point alone The Tree of Life deserves high praise.

Tip of the hat to Slashfilm‘s Peter Sciretta for posting this work-priint version of an alternate ending to Alexander Payne‘s Election, etc. Horrible!

If Terrence Malick could somehow swing it, I’m sure, The Tree of Life wouldn’t be about to screen in 70 minutes’ time. (It’s now 7:20 am.) However good or great or whatever it turns out to be, there’s a certain satisfaction in one of the most prolonged hiding-from-the-world acts in modern cinematic history about to come to an end. I briefly discussed it last night with a friend. Friend: “So how sucky is the Malick going to be, do you think?” Me: “It might not be what some want, but it can’t suck — it’s Malick.”

Earlier today I tried to catch a 5:15 pm screening The Snows of Kilimanjaro at the Salle Bazin. This is what I saw when I arrived 15 minutes before showtime. I went to the end of the line and stood and waited and stood and waited. I knew I’d never get a seat but I toughed it out to the end. And then I said “eff it” and got on the train to Juan-les-Pains.

Late this afternoon I took a quick ride between Cannes and Juan-les-Pains, except the train decided not to stop at Juan-les-Pains and dropped me off at Antibes instead. So I impulsively asked Sasha Stone and her daughter Emma to join me there, and we had a pretty good time detoxing and sipping rose and roaming around the marina area and contemplating the Picasso museum exterior.

Any and all theories about why Paul Feig and Judd Apatow‘s Bridesmaids exceeded expectations this weekend to earn an impressive $24.4 million are hereby requested. The expectations were between the low teens and $16 or $17 million. So what happened? Was Saturday Night Live‘s” Kristen Wiig the big selling point? The girlie poo-poo humor? Or what? And what were the gender and age breakdowns?

The film’s B-plus from Cinemascore is a result of it not being a start-to-finish laugh riot so it’ll probably drop at least 40% next weekend, but still…

Here’s an excellent analysis of John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott. Spoiler whiners are hereby advised that Scott reveals the third-act secret in this 49 year-old film.

Have you read my review, Cedric? I put the word “minor” in the headline. Lord…please don’t let me be ignored.

Two days ago Deadline‘s Michael Fleming reported that Ryan Gosling will star in and direct a remake of Taylor Hackford‘s The Idolmaker (’80). Gosling will be playing Ray Sharkey‘s role, I presume, which was based on rock-music promoter and manager Bob Marcucci.

The first two-thirds of The Idolmaker are brilliant. It’s probably my favorite Hackford film, closely followed by Against All Odds. Marcucci discovered and managed Frankie Avalon and Fabian, among others.

Michel Hazanavicius‘ much-anticipated The Artist, which just finished showing in the Grand Lumiere, is a winning “success,” and at the same time a half-and-halfer — a film that delivers beautifully but also leaves you wanting in certain ways. It’s a black-and-white silent drama with dashes of humor (i.e., I wouldn’t call it a dramedy) that’s first and foremost a tribute to the lore and sheen of 1920s Hollywood. And that much is fine.

If you’re any kind of film buff it’ll work for you and then some, but I’m not so sure about the under-45 set. Monochrome plus no dialogue are obviously stoppers for the majority of filmgoers out there. Let’s face it — The Artist would have seemed like a quaint exercise if it had been made 35 or 40 years ago by Peter Bogdanovich.

My basic impression is that The Artist is a very well-done curio — an experiment in reviving a bygone era and mood by way of silent-film expression. Is it a full-bodied motion picture with its own voice and voltage — a film that stands on its own? Not quite. But it’s a highly diverting, sometimes stirring thing to sit through, and the overall HE verdict is a thumbs-up.

The Artist has been very carefully assembled, but chops-wise it’s not strictly a revisiting of silent-film era language. It visually plays like a kind of ersatz silent film — technically correct in some respects but with a 2011 sensibility in other ways. It has a jaunty, sometimes jokey tone in the beginning, and then it gradually shifts into drama and then melodrama. But it tries hard and does enough things right that the overall residue is one of satisfaction and “a job well done.”

Shot in Los Angeles, the story of this French-financed production recalls the plots of Singin’ In The Rain and A Star Is Born with a little Sunset Boulevard thrown in.

It takes place in Hollywood between 1927 and 1931 and focuses on George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) a Douglas Fairbanks-y silent film star who stubbornly refuses to adapt to the advent of motion-picture sound, and Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejoa), a Janet Gaynor-like or young Joan Crawford-y actress whose career takes off with sound.

Hazanavicius uses an entire passage of Bernard Herrmann‘s Vertigo score in the final act, when Valentin is at his lowest ebb.

It’s interesting that Dujardin strongly resembles Fredric March, star of King Vidor‘s A Star Is Born (1937). It’s doubly interesting that Dujardin apparenty gained weight for the role, as his appearance today (i.e., in the press conference inside the Palais) is definitely slimmer.

John Goodman plays a studio chief, James Cromwell plays Valentin’s chauffeur, and Penelope Ann Miller plays Valentin’s unsatisfied wife.

From the Wiki page: “Director Michel Hazanavicius had been fantasizing about making a silent film for many years, both because many filmmakers he admires emerged in the silent era, and because of the image-driven nature of the technique.

“According to Hazanavicius his wish to make a silent film was at first not taken seriously, but after the financial success of his spy-film pastiches OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio, producers started to express interest.

“The forming of the film’s narrative started with Hazanavicius’ desire to work again with actors Jean Dujardin and Bereenice Bejo, who had starred in the OSS 177 films. Hazanavicius choose the form of the melodrama, partially because he though many of the films from the silent era which have aged best are melodramas.

“Filming took place during seven weeks on location in Hollywood. Throughout the shoot Hazanavicius played music from classic Hollywood films while the actors performed.”