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The most-anticipated debut at the Cannes Film Festival - reclusive director Terrence Malick's long-gestating (and partly filmed in Utah) "The Tree of Life" - has arrived.
The verdict from the first screening, early this morning: Decidedly mixed.
According to Entertainment Weekly's Anthony Breznican, there were loud boos from the Cannes audience at the movie's end. But, Breznican reports, "the many supporters of the movie pushed back with counter-applause, but it was a shocking way for the movie to debut."
MSN Movies writer James Rocchi tweeted: "Yes, some booed at TREE OF LIFE's end, but a) far more clapped, b) wouldn't a monobloc of opinion be dull? and, of course, c) jerks abound."
The movie stars Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as a couple raising their boys in 1950s Texas. The story is told in part from the viewpoint of one of the sons, played as a adult by Sean Penn, thinking back on his stern father.
"The Tree of Life" opens in New York and Los Angeles on May 27, and arrives in Salt Lake City on June 17.
Here's a sampling of the early reviews:
Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter: "Brandishing an ambition it's likely no film, including this one, could entirely fulfill, 'The Tree of Life' is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind's place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amidst its narrative imprecisions."
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: "Terrence Malick's mad and magnificent film descends slowly, like some sort of prototypical spaceship: it's a cosmic-interior epic of vainglorious proportions, a rebuke to realism, a disavowal of irony and comedy, a meditation on memory, and a gasp of horror and awe at the mysterious inevitability of loving, and losing those we love."
Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline: "Malick does care about craftsmanship: He's clearly poured thought and care into the images and the editing, and the sections of the film in which characters are actually allowed to interact — instead of just issuing forth in ponderous voice-overs as images of cosmic tadpoles and Ansel Adams-style calendar shots fill the screen — manage some degree of dramatic intensity. ... But through much of 'The Tree of Life,' Malick, characteristically, doesn't seem to care much for people at all."