AZ to CO 2011-Dust Storms to Double Rainbows

Artists and miles and miles and miles, bringing art to you.

Beginners - A Review & Comparison

Last post was about our experience seeing A Tree of Life.  Tonight we saw Ewan McGregor and Melanie Laurent in Beginners.  Touching, melancholy, sweet with wonderful expressive actors.  It was, as an experience, exactly the opposite of A Tree of Life.  By that I mean to say that I was always the observer in Beginners - appreciative, sympathetic, engaged - but never did I actually experience the emotions as my own.  A fine film.  I recommend it.  But not a film to experience, to be in.  And not a film that will stay with my conscious or unconscious mind.

Now, as we wend our way to Colorado for this coming weekend in Edmonds at the Vail Valley Art On The Rockies show, we take our art critic hats off and become our artist selves again.  Fun to live another life for a while.  Whitney and Syed and Roger Ebert.

A Tree of Life - A Review & Varied Opinions

Syed and I went to see A Tree of Life, Terrance Malick's new movie starring Brad Pitt, this past week.  I had heard it was a "visual experience", and being into that sort of thing, we wanted to see it on the big screen. Yes, it was that, absolutely.  But it was so much more.  It was, in my opinion, the most exquisite meditation of what it means to be human that I have ever seen.  And the most deeply refined explanation of the metaphor of "tree of life".  I would not, could not, saddle it with easy phrases - "spiritual" or "religious" or "new age" or  "meaningful".  All of that seems to completely miss the elegance and totality of the concept.  The film was, in fact, a true experience of being. Yes, it is a difficult film because it asks of the viewer to give him/herself over - to suspend disbelief, cynicism, guardedness - and just experience what you are seeing.  Once one allows the mind to enter the abstract visuals without conscious criticism, one is able to simply open to whatever is coming.  And when one opens one's mind in this way (and the clue is given by the mother in her first audible thoughts when she tells us that there are two ways of being in the world - the natural way and the way of grace), the experience of being human in all it's history, it's development, it's complexity, becomes something we are able to actually experience while in our role as audience.  Quite amazingly, we can feel what they are feeling, become who they are, without judgement.

This film is so fully conceived, so delicately executed, that it is possible to exit the theatre with greater sensitivity to life than when you went in.  And, because I have read that many people have left early, asked for their money back, and have even been angry, I would invite them all to find other viewers with whom to have conversation and dialogue and above all, to go and try again - go gently, go alone, go without hostility or expectation - and then, let me know if your experience changes.