I don't usually favour Oscar materials but this one in particular intrigued me... It would be an awesome movie for Literature classes because it's quite deep and beautiful... Thanks to Ridhwan for the awesome copy of this movie...
THE STORY
This movie is all about Jack O'Brien (Sean Penn) and his reminisces of his childhood...
PLUS POINTS
Visual Effects
The visual effects are indeed stunning... I was mesmerized by how beautiful the depiction of how the whole universe was created and the process of earth's transformation from being a burning hot planet to the death of it... It amazed me more to learn that all of the effects are not computer generated... The director, Terrence Malick, didn't like how computer generated imagery (CGI) looks and thus, the special effects supervisor, Douglas Trumbull, suggested that they use a variety of materials for the creation of universe sequence...
Working with visual effects supervisor Dan Glass, Trumbull used a variety of materials for the creation of the universe sequence. “We worked with chemicals, paint, fluorescent dyes, smoke, liquids, CO2, flares, spin dishes, fluid dynamics, lighting and high speed photography to see how effective they might be,” said Trumbull... "We did things like pour milk through a funnel into a narrow trough and shoot it with a high-speed camera and folded lens, lighting it carefully and using a frame rate that would give the right kind of flow characteristics to look cosmic, galactic, huge and epic.”
Non-Linear Narrative
This movie for me is a huge compilation of short video clips arranged in non-linear manner but they are all connected to each other and in a way, they're quite chronological... It's a brilliant technique and it fits this movie well since the whole 2 hours is all about Jack's re-collection of childhood memories which come in bits and pieces... Kudos to the director, Terrence Malick, for the awesome movie direction... I'm impressed...
Brad Pitt
Pitt who played Jack O'Brien's father carried his role extremely well... The father, Mr O'Brien, was an authoritarian, strict and hot-tempered father who spent quite an amount of time preparing his 3 children to face the real world... Honestly, he scared me... Yeah, he was a scary father... The way he talked to the kids, the way he touched them, it's like he wanted to kill them... Very rough and a bit psychotic...
Jessica Chastain
Chastain played Jack's mother, Mrs O'Brien... The mother's characteristics contrast the father's in a very obvious manner... Unlike Mr O'Brien, Mrs O'Brien was very caring, lenient and a happy go lucky parent... She's like the children's saviour against the father... What I loved about Chastain is that she could portrayed emotions such as happiness, grief, fright and sadness very well...
The Kids
The kids, Young Jack (Hunter McCracken), R.L (Laramie Eppler) and Steve (Tye Sheridan), are the hearts of the movie... The most prominent is Young Jack who because of his father's way of parenting, became very rebellious... So rebellious that it scared me... I was scared that he might kill everyone in this movie... Haha...
MINUS POINT
I would to stress that this movie is not for everyone... For me, it's very amazing, deep and beautiful... but others might think otherwise as it's a bit hard to crack what the movie is all about... There are so many personifications and symbolisms... Besides that, the development is quite slow... It's an artistic movie and it was meant to be enjoyed and indulged... Of course the pace is made slow...
THE VERDICT
All in all, this movie is great because of the stunning visual effects, awesome movie direction and also the brilliant performance from the cast members... However, like I said before, this movie is very deep and slow in pace and therefore, it's not for everybody to like...
4 out of 5 stars...
1 comments
looking for this movie....
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