Dir.: Terence Malick
Plot: The death of his brother prompts a middle-aged man to reflect on his conflicted childhood in 1950s Texas
Like the chubby girl who 'doesn't even go here' in Mean Girls, as I approached the local multiplex to see notoriously challenging auteur Terence Malick's divisive Palme d'Or winner, I had a lot of feelings. Chief of which was a decidedly unprofessional last-minute urge to duck into the screen next door and rewatch Deathly Hallows Part 2 -an urge apparently shared by the two people who walked out during the first hour of The Tree of Life, although that was a mild reaction compared to the pockets of rebellious critics who loudly booed the film at its screening in Cannes. Of course, the self-appointed elite vocally professing their disdain for anything that becomes popular enough to win a prize is a long-established tradition at the festival, but nonetheless I was uncertain: what exactly was I about to see? Just what had Malick put on the screen that so aroused the ire of many well-respected critics, including the likes of Mark Kermode, no less?
