Latest movie you watched (1-10 scale)

[Honky Kong 64]

also silence of the lambs - 0/10

I momentarily just flipped out on the last page.

[Necrometer]

Super 8 - 8/10 Went down easy and covered all the bases. At least one critic said "this is a good movie that makes you want to watch a great one" but that's bullshit, it's just as good as ET or whatever else jewberg is responsible for.

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I love how they solve all alien exposition problems just by having the characters go to school and learn the plot.

That part was OK - I mean they dropped hints earlier on so that it didn't feel out of the blue... efficient exposition is where it's at in that sort of movie.

[badgevvrecker]

kick ass : most enjoyable flick i've seen this year, hands down/10

[badgevvrecker]

do you hate comic books, too? i mean that was a live action comic in every way that all of these modern comic movies completely and totally fail at.

[Whee of the Dead]

Super 8 - 8/10 Went down easy and covered all the bases. At least one critic said "this is a good movie that makes you want to watch a great one" but that's bullshit, it's just as good as ET or whatever else jewberg is responsible for.

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I love how they solve all alien exposition problems just by having the characters go to school and learn the plot.

That part was OK - I mean they dropped hints earlier on so that it didn't feel out of the blue... efficient exposition is where it's at in that sort of movie.

Thanks for spoiler heads up.

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It just seemed that the director was "oh shit, almost near the runtime, let's just cram it all in there while we can." and the fact that it was actually in a learn stuff room just made it that much funnier to me. Didn't really detract, I enjoyed the flick.

Though I kinda wish the alien was evil and caused more mayhem. It would've added to that semi-Phantasm vibe I was feeling a bit.

[Whee of the Dead]

it's just as good as ET or whatever else jewberg is responsible for.

This movie does not deserve to suck the shit out of Jaws' ass.

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And it even had a relatable fat kid with Dawn of the Dead poster.

[kickpuncher]

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With - 6.5
Coming to America - 8
Groundhog Day - 9.2

[Necrometer]

it's just as good as ET or whatever else jewberg is responsible for.

This movie does not deserve to suck the shit out of Jaws' ass.

never seen it

is it even remotely comparable? I'm not saying that Super 8 >>> Raiders or anything

[Honky Kong 64]

it's just as good as ET or whatever else jewberg is responsible for.

This movie does not deserve to suck the shit out of Jaws' ass.

never seen it

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[fallbacktostone]

I thought it was borderline unwatchable

yeah i thought it was excruciating too. without nicholas cage there would've been no point.

[Dr Yail Bloor]

8mm - premium nick cage/10

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the faces he makes when he watches the snuff film the first time told me right away that i was in for a wild ride

also the machine had danzig posters on his wall

I was talking about this on saturday! also the bit where he refers to machine as 'that animal', his face then is truly amazing.

[Liam Spengler]

Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre - 6

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

8mm - premium nick cage/10

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the faces he makes when he watches the snuff film the first time told me right away that i was in for a wild ride

also the machine had danzig posters on his wall

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http://www.the7thhouse.com/news/Articles/d6_art2.htm
A: What was your reaction to the idea of using "Danzig" posters etc, in the movie "8mm"?
G: I thought it was cool! I asked what it was about and they told me it was about a guy that calls himself "Machine" and he kills people in Snuff movies and wears a leather mask and I was like "ohh cool! Where do I sign?!".

[copstache]

hah!

i need to watch that movie again. i think that was the first movie i ever watched for free as a theater employee

[caldwell.the.great]

Alright Necro-Ross, here's my ultra-long, rambling, mostly unedited response:

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response to Luke re: Tree of Life

Just to frame my response, I’m very much entering argumentation mode. Your initial thoughts cover a lot of things the movie is, but I’ll explain why being these things doesn’t make it a broadly resonant movie. I won’t deny that it is most of the things you claim, but I don’t feel that it effectively employed these massive-in-scope and varied themes in communicating with viewers who lack a particular loose-Christian outlook.

See, that's just it, though. I think the movie is pretty ambiguous on the whole, and refuses to communicate a single kind of interpretation that would work for everyone. In fact, what Malick communicates is a world full of images and events and ideas; he isn't presenting a very clear interpretation at all. There's a point in the movie where everyone is at church, and the priest is delivering his homily. He asks a question, something like, "is nothing in the universe permanent" or "is there anything in the universe that doesn't change?" And I think that's maybe the question Malick wants you to ask while you watch this movie. At the very least, it's one of the big question in The Tree of Life. In response, I want to answer a certain way: yes, Malick believes there is a God, that creation is divinely infused, and that the world around us is an expression of the divine, both material and spiritual, if you'll forgive the loose language and the fact that I'm not explaining precisely what I mean. But, there's so much Malick doesn't say, so arguing that such an interpretation is the ONLY POSSIBLE one is probably and rightfully impossible. If anything, the themes and images BEG the audience to complete them, so I'm not surprised you feel it failed in effectively communicating a single, definite theme where particular religious beliefs are concerned.

As someone that is religious, and in a particular way, I think the movie lacks much in the way of religious specifics; there's definitely a pseudo-spiritual message flatly delivered in the monologues, but I don't think I can even pretend that they're "loose-Christian" or Christian at all. In a couple of the links you posted, other viewers noted the same thing. There are spiritual messages in the movie, but connecting them to any one dogma is impossible. While the young children experience a presumably Catholic upbringing, they never once mention Christ, the saints, the mystical body of the Church (that would have been such an easy connection to make, seeing as it is very much a tree-like body!!), the Eucharist (another easy metaphor for a Tree of Life), or any of the fundamentals so important to the practice of Christianity, in whatever form it might come.

So, if you're argument is that this movie fails to communicate something specifically religious, then I have no argument. I think it refuses to communicate a direct message of that kind. We're shown events and ideas, what comes next is entirely up to the viewer, IMO, but not in some wishy-washy way. The topics are explicit, the scope is apparent - the movie is as much about how you interpret the data as it is about how the family deals with their lives. That's one of the things that makes this movie so great!

I was going to employ the term “post-Christian” but this term is already used to describe societies (typically European) where Christianity’s impact is felt most strongly by way of cultural runoff as opposed to ongoing practice. With “loose-Christian” I refer to either the people or beliefs of a well-populated though necessarily non-organized demographic in (at least) the USA consisting most stereotypically of a modern spiritual person who subscribes to many of the take-home messages of Christianity while rejecting the dogmatism of organized religion. A loose-Christian will tend to emphasize the “universal truths” held in the Bible while taking a relaxed view regarding the specific details therein; this grants them all the security, comfort, and spiritual grounding of the ideologies held within while freeing them from the concern over the inconsistencies that arise in light of modern observations about the state of the universe. The most typical loose-Christian was introduced to a rigorous form of Christianity as a child and proceeded to move to a more open spiritual outlook; hence many of these people report that The Tree of Life as “not Christian” since it represents the place they moved towards while simultaneously moving away from Christianity.

Now you're confusing me. I would not classify myself as a loose-Christian. I've accepted many of the Church's contradictions, I refuse to abide by some of its absolutely stupefying and ignorant dogmas, I've grown closer to it rather than farther away, and I feel that the movie is absolutely not Christian, but I see many non-Christian or loose-Christian viewers claiming that it is.

Also, I don't buy that someone has to move away from Christianity in order to become more "open" spiritually - I'd like to think that I've brought some openness to the Church I visit by refusing to give up what I see as incontrovertible truths. I guess that's neither here nor there, though. What I want to say is that non-Christians are more likely to think the movie is Christian, and the further you are from Christian beliefs, the more Christian it will look. On the other hand, Christians will find that the movie is less obviously Christian than others think, though (like me) they might be tempted to read Christian ideas into it.

However, The Tree of Life’s central theme – nature vs. grace – seems to me (an atheist) a mere reframing of typical Christian good/evil morality, while it’s a vast distance from the chaotically amoral nature of the universe as viewed by a nihilist/existentialist. From this perspective I see the film as Christian (among other things).

I don't even know that the central theme is nature vs. grace; that's one of them for sure, but I think you're being reductive in a seriously erroneous way by comparing those two to good and evil. For one, Christians (at least Catholics) don't think that nature is evil, or that desires are all bad, 100% corrupt, etc. Two, I think Malick leaves it wide open as to whether or not the universe is chaotic or meaningful; even with the end of the movie being what it is, Malick confirms nothing. The universe will end. We try and reconcile ourselves to it gracefully, but how much further does that get us? Will it matter? For what it's worth, Malick does show us a dead earth, with a white dwarf glowing in the sky. His vision is at least partially apocalyptic.

Again, I won't argue that we can read some very spiritual, very Christian themes into the ending, and I'd like to think that Malick is arguing for some kind of spirit in the universe, but there's absolutely zilch in the way of heaven, bliss, or anything like it portrayed in the movie. At best, we have some vision of what grace might be like were humans to live it, even after death.

I don’t think the Christian imagery is merely incidental. If it were only a relic of the time and place and unimportant-in-retrospect to Jack (who we can assume is standing in for Terry), these elements would be down-played instead of propped up. The Book of Job is brought to the forefront via opening text and the sermon scene, the latter of which holds considerable power in a film where words are scarce. The traditionally-Christian theme of “nature v. grace” is placed at the thematic center and the parents are drawn as archetypes embodying the two poles.

I'm wondering why you think nature vs. grace is such a traditionally Christian theme. Analogues exist in philosophy, Judaism, Buddhism, and many other religions. Malick's particular ideas about grace and nature aren't exactly the same as what you'd find in works by the Church fathers, like Augustine and Aquinas. Furthermore, the distinction you're making between nature and grace isn't as absolute in Christianity as it might be in The Tree of Life: in fact, grace exists in nature, as a gift from God. This is one of the reasons I think Malick moves toward eliminating the distinction he posits at the outset, but the fact remains that his grace and nature do not look exactly like the grace and nature with which I am familiar as a Christian. There is a resemblance, but not a perfect correspondence.

As to Job, I think that book is brought to the forefront because it sets up one of the film's biggest questions so beautifully: where do we fit in the universe? Have you ever read Job? It's hard not to read it and be completely cynical about God.

I understand Malick to be an Episcopalian (or at least was raised that way), yet based on my knowledge that he has a degree in philosophy, has been published translating Heidegger’s essay The Essence of Reasons, and created The Tree of Life, I have no doubt that he must have evolved towards my category of loose-Christian.

This is a huge assumption. I'm not sure where to go with it or what to say about it, except that we really don't know anything about Malick that would help us interpret The Tree of Life as anything more than a partially auto-biographical film. I see much more philosophy and Plato in it than anything religious, and since we know he studied philosophy, I think that's about as certain as we can get. We do not know, however, whether he's continued to practice Christianity or any other faith.

Had he given up Christianity altogether, perhaps we would have been treated with cries to a sky-dwelling God from young Jack and his parents, but we’d probably not hear any from adult Jack/Malick. Let’s not forget that the title could have been a number of more apt things, yet instead we have a semi-pertinent one that references the Garden of Eden.

Yeah, I don't think of the Garden at all. In fact, the title reminds me most of a genetic tree, with the birth of the universe at the root, and all the kinds of life Malick shows us as its branches and twigs, etc. - I guess the question is, where is the tree planted, and toward what is it growing? Hell, what feeds it? Anyways, I've seen these "genetic trees" on the Discovery channel before, I think you know what I mean. It's amazing how all life appears to come from a single source, which we can trace back millions of years to the sea, and from the sea to the cosmos. Part of the origin of the universe sequence is a portrayal of the tree in the title. There are other trees, too, and maybe one of them is a mystical tree, but I see no reason to favor it among the other symbols fit for the title.

The autobiographical nature of this movie might be the origin of my biggest gripe. Despite all the film’s lofty and admirable aspirations, Jack’s story never registers as anything but a highly stylized filmic depiction of a man’s midlife crisis and its ensuing philosophically self-congratulatory aftermath.

Here I think you're being too harsh. I don't think Sean Penn's character is in a midlife crisis. I think he's thinking about his brother's death, and about what his life has come to. I don't think it's any coincidence that Penn's character is seen among modern buildings, which may or may not represent technology. Malick studied Heidegger, and some of Heidegger's most influential work deals with themes of technology and, I bet you've already guessed, nature.

Also, I see nothing self-congratulatory going on - I'm not really sure where you got that idea?

This is in line with a message the movie sends: there’s beauty and magic permeating the universe and as long as you strive for grace, your life will be meaningful and special. This sort of spiritual warm-fuzzy copout is central to protestant and loose-Christian thinking, isn’t it?

Not really. I think protestants are less warm and fuzzy, I don't know exactly. I grew up in a Lutheran church, but I never really found a sense of community while there, so it's impossible for me to say exactly whether this kind of spirituality is central to protestant religion or not. I became an atheist for a long time after that, and one of my biggest gripes was how severe Christianity seemed, not how fuzzy it looked. If there's anything permeating the universe, it's mystery. And if you want your life to be meaningful, at least from the film's perspective, I think love is the most important ingredient. I think many people may strive for grace and still find no resolve. All we know is that Penn's character found something, and that his mother let go of her grief, and therefore found a way to walk the path of grace. That's what we see. That doesn't necessitate that everyone else will have the same experience.

Just try and be good, repent in some way, accept God into your heart, and you get to go to heaven? That’s essentially the spiritual path we are left to presume Jack takes.

It is? Jack doesn't even mention God. Does he say the word once? His mother does, but I have no memory of Jack crying out to Christ or God or any one of the Saints. Some vague demiurge looms in the background for sure, but no Christian God. In fact, while the boys are in church, they do what most boys do and ignore the preacher, glancing about the church instead. And where did you get heaven out of this? There's a vision of the end of time, of some kind of reconciliation with the past and with grief, but no heaven. Certainly no vision of angels or any undeniable revelations.

Jack doesn't behold the truth in the end; at most he comes to terms with where he is and who he is. Maybe with WHAT he is

And presume is all the viewer can do: we’re shown many experiences of a conflicted child embodying both spirit and grace, then sparse snapshots of a sad adult whose life appears to have embraced far too little grace during the intervening decades. The path to spiritual enlightenment is a furrowed brow?

That's a very pessimistic and unsympathetic view of what's happening to Penn as the movie progresses. Adult Jack is remembering, maybe thinking through his life, but how do we know his life has been without grace? We see him at work, we see him unhappy there, but that doesn't mean he's always unhappy. Hell, he's commemorating the death of his brother; that'd make anyone feel introverted, quiet, definitely sad.

This relation and equivocation of vastly disparate timescales is something I really enjoyed in a certain, isolated sense. The non-Texas sequence was extremely well done and rewarding to watch. However, I never felt much of a thematic connection between this portion and the story of the O’Briens. To me, the universe itself (excluding life on Earth) is a cold, dead place governed by firm physical laws and devoid of spiritual meaning.

Ok.

Malick clearly feels the opposite and presumes that there is wonder and intent throughout the universe, humans or not.

So then why do you think this? One of the things you should ask is how that origin of the universe sequence fits in with everything else. You don't see a connection, and you feel like Malick doesn't make one. Maybe that's part of the point? Malick might be implying that, in some lives, there is a connection between the human world and the rest of existence. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to say.

Wonder and intent? Do we get that? Maybe wonder, because it is easy to wonder at life in general. We're doing that by having this conversation after all.

But are we told where humans were when the universe was created? Are we told where to find God in all that mess?

This is a view central to Christians and particularly loose-Christians and although I might be open to it with tasteful presentation, the way it’s portrayed in this movie is indirect and clearly intended for those who already believe. Malick is convinced that his view of a fantastic universe is plain to see as long as the viewer’s eyes are open. This may be true for many, but not for me.

The problem you have with this movie has more to do with what you think Malick's perspective is. In this story we see a family having revelations. A mother accepts her grief and discovers, along with her husband, the importance of love. If there's something Malick is convinced of, it's this: that love is essential to human existence. Maybe he wants us to open our eyes to that, but I think he also wants us to speculate how we relate to the universe, and he probably wants us to wonder what love has to do with jellyfish, dinosaurs, sea creatures, fungus, stars, supernova, and everything else. Within the context of the film, it's possible that there's no connection, but that doesn't negate the experiences that the characters have. Malick tries to mediate between the two (the universe and personal experiences), but I don't know that he proves any connection at all. Maybe he thinks there is one, but he definitely doesn't shove it down our throats.

But mere intent and meaning throughout the universe aren’t enough for Malick; I believe that he does sprinkle evidence of pre-human grace into the universe. One explicit example likely lost on many viewers is what I perceived to be a depiction of the origin of endosymbiosis: the evolutionary turning point where the ancestors of “higher” organisms (plants, animals) consumed other organisms and began a millennial collaboration that allowed life to prosper unlike ever before.

I love this! I would have never thought of that. I don't know that it's evidence of grace in nature (because grace is essentially concerned with God, sin, and redemption), but it elegantly explains how the whole Tree of Life might be connected - how we get from the cosmic genesis to the mother's grief and the father's regret. Life is possible because death is possible... very cool.

And this is, more than nature and grace IMO, a very very important theme in the movie. Nature and grace set up the drama and give us the tension between being human and desiring to be more, but the tension between life and death is what turns the movie's motors. It's a death that sets everything in motion; maybe that's why we hear this Lacrimosa during the origin sequence:

This was depicted in the film as a large amoeba-like blob consuming a smaller microbe, followed by a dramatic flash of light/energy. At first glance this appeared to be an act of violence or consumption (in line with “nature”) but since life has since shown that the two distinct organisms instead managed to cooperate and thrive, we can reasonably interpret this as an instance of grace:

I'm with you all the way up to the grace part. What we get is an instance of cooperation, at most an instance of life being more than just senseless violence and domination. You over-simplify grace and try to smear it into other concepts, like sympathy or cooperation, or maybe even disinterest. This is why you believe the dinosaurs exhibits characteristics typical of grace: because it doesn't kill or eat or simply satisfy itself. But the opposite of selfishness or whatever isn't just grace, it might be something like modesty, humility, or any number of other traits.

each gives up their previous/individual/selfish needs and instead compromises to consider a new set of goals. I also believe that the Malick deliberately used dinosaurs as a demonstration of grace in non-humans and completely disagree with your interpretation of his intent. Along with the collaborating microbes, he’s offering us a conceptual stepping stone between “natural” animals and humans, via “graceful” animals (a dinosaur in this case).

He doesn't need to do that at all. What we're witnessing is the evolution of brains. Minds that can make decisions and not just feed, reproduce, feed, reproduce, die, evolve, feed, reproduce, etc.

If the natural world is dominated by selfishness and survival, wouldn’t the apparently carnivorous dino tear into the downed herbivore dino without hesitation?

Unless it just isn't hungry, or has some instinct about eating potentially sick prey. The one dinosaur steps on the other's face, basically pushing it into the rock to let it know, "I could own you motherfucker," and then it just leaves it there to die. How in the world you see grace in that, I can't understand. There's obviously some show of intelligence, "I choose to eat or not eat," something along those lines, but not grace. You're making the difference between grace and nature so blunt and soft that you're virtually destroying the distinction in the first place. What need does anyone have for grace if it's just the opposite of selfishness? That sometimes happens by accident!

Malick knows this presumption is at the forefront of the viewer’s expectation for the classic scene of a downed prey being approached by a sleek predator. He engages us and heightens/reinforces our expectation with a moment of violence as the predator stomps on the head – but we are shocked when the carnivore turns down an easy meal and trots off into the distance, leaving the would-be-meal to die in peace.

You might be onto something here. He definitely goes against the grain, but I don't think it's for the reasons you say.

I think this scene is an interesting inversion of 2001’s opening: there man’s defining evolutionary moment is the invention of tools and their application in the name of violence, heightening the efficiency with “nature” can carry out its selfish goals. Malick is more optimistic and offers a retrospective counter-view: perhaps there were equally important defining moments of grace in other creatures, but these moments were quieter and more easily overlooked.

Hmm, that's a cool contrast. I wouldn't have thought about 2001 there unless you'd said something. I'm not sure it makes sense, though. I honestly believe that Malick is showing us how nature plays out. It isn't as though the one dinosaur helps the other. One of the things I've noticed is that you think about selfishness and selflessness in a relatively digital way: selfishness is satisfying desires, selflessness is refusing them, and none in between shall pass. But you're not catching the many shades of grey the occupy the center of that spectrum. Being selfless often involves giving your time and energy to others; grace is essentially an act of giving from God, and so acting gracefully probably also involves giving to others. I just don't see that in the dinosaur scenes at all.

I read the asteroid’s destruction in The Tree of Life as a perhaps-inexplicable end to what was a race on the brink of enlightenment and spiritual awakening.

Okay, you need to stop reading that dragon book!!

Also, your assertion that the meteor's destruction of the dinos signifies their insignificance and gracelessness, wouldn't the sun's eventual dying out signify the same for humans?

Quite possibly. Another reason Malick isn't being as plain as you believe.

If there is spiritual meaning in the entire universe, why shouldn’t there be avenues for non-humans to reach a higher plane, or to attain grace?

Good question. I don't have an answer to that one.

though my first paragraph here was critical, I did enjoy the two noted demonstrations of non-human grace; they are instances where spiritually-meaningful, special things are developed explicitly in the pre-human universe. Interestingly, they are both conveyed via living things.

You are onto something with this, though I think it has more to do with cooperation and the play of life and death than with nature and grace. There might be spiritually meaningful events in the natural world. In fact, I believe there must be, but those events don't consist of grace and nature blending in plainly contradictory ways (more on that below). To the extent that I think Malick wants to bring the divine into the natural world, then perhaps grace also comes with it, but not in the way you say... not in a scene where one dinosaur simply moves on as another dies. Were grace there, we would see more cooperation. There'd be a dino doctor or something, I dunno.

I don’t have much to add/argue here. I suppose this theme was largely lost on me. Again, a traditional good/evil dichotomy set as a thematic center, and played out dramatically by its two embodiments in the O’Brien parents. I am not convinced that Malick eliminates the difference by the end of the movie; grace is always something to strive for, and nature is a path repeatedly leading to emotional or physical pain.

I don't see good and evil in the mother and father. Both are redeemed in different ways, and the father certainly isn't evil. If he's meant to represent nature somehow, in the end he transcends it. Nature becomes something else. He speaks with his child as thought he were an adult, and admits his love and concern for him. Whatever his pains were, they've been overcome by the relation he has with his children. We see this kind of overcoming throughout the movie, and your observation about the cooperation that exists at the cellular level is really fucking good stuff, because it's an example of how each part of the "Tree of Life" is related to the other. It shows us that life continues in this kind of overcoming, which is populated by life and death, grace and nature, sadness and joy, etc.

A pairwise relation of life/death to grace/nature seems irresponsible here: death is inevitable, but the movie suggests that one should hope to attain grace before it comes. I think the ending clearly enough suggests this; Jack’s regrettable “nature”-heavy life is washed away once he flips a “grace” switch in his head and then all is forgiven.

Grace switch?! Hope is probably worth talking about, but not this grace switch. Jack's "natural" existence will continue after the film is over, the most I think we can say is that it has been infused with something else.

As to your other comment: death is inevitable, but whether or not creation is also inevitable is one of the big questions Malick is pushing us toward; what comes after death? Is creation circular? Does it all end at the end of time? Will it begin again?

He proceeds to (what appears to be) heaven and finds solace. This is another loosely-Christian motif I’m having a hard time seeing as anything else. I don’t see how “death makes way for life”, as you put it.

The scene you talked about, where the two cells merged, is an awesome image of "death making way for life." Two cells die, one is born. Think of it another way: there's a certain amount of space and energy available to plants in any given area, say 30 square kilometers. If some plants didn't die, there'd be no room for new ones to grow and all the old plants would suck up that energy until, finally, there was none left, or they simply couldn't ingest anymore. By dying away, they make room both physically and energy-wise for other plants. It's a simple image; something dies, another is born in its place. If there were no room for life, no life would come.

I think this section of your post is a bit of a mess, and it’s forgivable because the movie elements you’re trying to tackle are correspondingly a mess.

It's a mess because Malick doesn't explicitly state anything about a Christian God or divine presence on Earth, or in the universe for that matter. I'd have to go back through the movie and really do some work to show why I think Malick's spiritual universe (the one full of wonder that you mention) is really the universe of a divine God like the one we see in the Old and New Testaments.

I thought the dead brother was poorly incorporated into Jack’s story. Back to the autobiographical nature of the tale: Malick’s younger brother killed himself as a teenager. While that was certainly deeply meaningful to Malick and led to a reworking of his relationship with his father, we see almost none of the effect this had on Jack from young-adulthood to his adult state. In the film it just felt tacked on.

Really? I felt like it was the thing that spurred the movie into existence. It's the first thing we see in terms of drama, it's the thing that haunts the mother, sends the father into the depression of regret, and it clearly leads Jack to wonder about the nature of everything.

Did Jack really learn anything meaningful from his brother’s death? If so, why did it take ~30 years for him to take any action in response?

We don't know that he didn't. All we know is that he's working thoughts over in his mind. Maybe he's been working with them for a long time? The question you're asking is the one you're supposed to ask. What the movie is about, and what it says, largely depends on what you think the answer is. Malick doesn't tell us.

Life/death could have been a powerful theme in this movie, but there was a weak conceptual connection between the brother’s death and the impact on his family, let alone on the entire universe.

I can't agree with you any less. I think it's obvious the effect his death had on the family. What his death has to do with creation is another story, and what we've been arguing about. So the conceptual connection is there; whether or not that connection means anything is the crux of the matter.

Certainly these concepts don’t need to be linked to any particularly dogma, but they certainly fall in line with (and don’t work to undermine) the loose-Christian outlook.

Yes, but then again almost anything would fit with this loose-Christian outlook that you've defined. I mean, you're sort of begging the question by insisting Malick is taking this position, or speaking to this particular audience, or working from this particular place. You haven't shown me exactly how it all fits together, and you've only managed to make the argument stand by turning faith, grace, nature, belief, hope, and love into shadows of their conceptual selves, at least religiously and philosophically speaking. This is one reason why I don't think the movie is inherently Christian: if pushed hard enough, it could fit any "loose-religion." Once you move into the specifics, all definite relations fall apart, and only certain loose ones persist.

Like you note below, Malick DOES define grace in his film, and since it’s sort of a nebulous concept, I think it’s important to remember how it’s contrasted against nature, which is selfish at its core. I still think the dino-mercy was a moment of unselfishness, so to me it reads as grace.

But as I've said above, unselfishness and mercy are not the same, and neither is necessarily the same as grace. Perhaps they indicate grace, but they are not equal to it.

I feel like you’re sticking too tightly to Christian definitions on this one

As I should. If you're going to call the film Christian, I'm going to compare it to Christianity in at least one of its forms. Catholicism is a good one because it has so much philosophy and definition to it, whether you believe that or not.

I took Malick’s loose-Christian view of grace to be essentially any human super-ego-like essence, something selfless and spiritual that allows us to transcend the base, necessity-driven aspects of existence. I don’t think that definition of grace is too complex to be communicated in a scene with two dinosaurs.

Yeah, I just think that's missing the point. Being generous about this whole "loose-Christian" thing, I have to wonder why Malick would use the term "grace" at all, especially if he didn't mean something very special by it, which is to say, something other than mercy or sympathy or whatever. Why not talk about mercy or selflessness or even sacrifice directly? Grace is a very strange word, with many shades of meaning, but it isn't precisely any of the things you've listed (selfless, spiritual, merciful), at least not at its essence.

Lets use Dictionary.com - in Christian terms it is:

a. the free and unmerited favour of God shown towards man
b. the divine assistance and power given to man in spiritual rebirth and sanctification
c. the condition of being favoured or sanctified by God
d. an unmerited gift, favour, etc, granted by God

Most loose-Christians would be satisfied with that, right? As it has nothing to do with any of the complex or disturbing or displeasing aspects of Christianity, both in terms of its history and its theology. We could take God out of those sentences and substitute it with "creator" or whatever and the meaning would stay mostly the same, at least where loose-Christians would be concerned.

Since Malick chose this term and set it against nature, what we can see here is that it must have something to do with what the universe has given us; there is a gift implied, anyways. I say "universe" in order to stick to the loose-Christian theme, which may not accept a personal God, but still imagines a simplified spirituality or "otherness" that exists non-materially in the cosmos.

I don't see anything here that could apply to dinosaurs. In fact, Grace specifically deals with man and spiritual sanctification. Dinosaurs didn't take part in religious ceremonies or spiritual rebirth, they simply passed by each other, sometimes feeding, other times hiding, but never once contemplating their relation to the heavens. If Malick wanted to convey something human in the dinosaurs, he couldn't have picked a worse term than grace. Mercy, cooperation, sympathy... all of those would have been better choices.

But, he chose grace, and I think there's a reason for that. It may be because he has some ideas about Christianity and grace existing in the world, but it may also be because he sees the universe as a gift... remember that the mother speaks a lot about love, which is another kind of gift. I think these concepts line up quite well and give weight to the argument that the dinosaurs were not an expression of grace in nature, as you say. Mercy, perhaps, but that has precious little to do with grace, both philosophically and religiously speaking.

In addition, The whole loose-Christian thing is wrong-headed from the start... It's too ambiguous for me to know what to make of it, and I can't be sure I know anyone actually like that. Why not call them loose-Buddhists or loose-spiritualists, since nearly any kind of religious sensibility would fit it? It's like new age mysticism or something. Malick might be guilty of presenting us with a spiritualized philosophy, but he certainly isn't in the business of pure, harmless mush; a brother dies, people really suffer, the universe really moves past us, and maybe, just maybe, we're nothing more than a blip on the cosmic radar... or then again, perhaps we are something special?

That's where Malick's going, but the movie ends with a bridge; there's still a great distance between where he's brought us and where figures like Christ or Abraham loom.

I think you're seeing something Christian in the movie because so much of the imagery uses Christian symbols, but I think that's simply a matter of storytelling: in the Midwest, in the 50s, chances are you were brought up in a Christian church. Making the family some other religion would simply be stupid, because it's pretty clear when and where the film takes place, and the when and the where have a lot to do with what experiences as person has. It would also betray the autobiographical aspect of the movie.

You'll also notice that the end of the movie shows us nothing of Christ or God, not even a mention... just an ambiguous "you," which could be almost anything, including love.

Sticking to the loose-Christian thing for the sake of argument, if in fact Malick is communicating something loosely-Christian, grace was probably chosen because it deals specifically with humans and with the greatness of the universe, which might be interpreted as representing God in some fashion or another. Therefore, the dino thing you've argued just doesn't make sense. Grace depends too much on intellect and reflection for that to work.

I should note: I think Malick uses the term in at least a semi-spiritual sense for two reasons:

1) its the nuns from the mother's past that give her this sense of the word, therefore, whether it is a strictly Christian idea or not, the mother lives with this special meaning of grace throughout her life

2) the Christian sense is very distinct from all others, and implies something very special. We can remove God from its equation, however, and substitute something like "the universe" or "cosmos" or "all of creation," because it does come to us as a gift, at least insofar as one looks at it all optimistically

I think “natural” traits such as pride greed, and rage are just id-level instincts amplified and actuated through human ego-level capacity… so yeah, greed for a meal was overcome in the case of the dinos.

Man, that's such a weird reading of what it means for a dinosaur not to eat! It's the negation of greed? What if it just wasn't hungry? It has a brain, it sees the prey is down for the count, it moves on because it neither needs to eat nor did it enjoy the thrill of the hunt. There are so many reasons one thing may not eat another, but you see it as the overcoming of greed!! Why??

For what it’s worth I’ve read a lot of web-comments where people interpreted the dino as exhibiting grace. I’ll be glad to link you if you like For what it’s worth, a lot of people also noted that the dino-river does resemble the brothers’ river, and then they find the “dino bone” in the field of course.

I believe you. I think the visual relation between the rivers and finding the dino bone have more to do with what Malick wants to communicate, though. There's visual symmetry there, and a sense of timelessness, but the brothers don't exhibit grace in the dino-bone scene. If Malick wanted to connect the dinosaurs to grace, he could have connected them by drawing up parallel situations. Dinos exhibit grace, brothers exhibit grace where the bone is found... but he doesn't show that. Instead, the bone is tossed around like its a toy.

Here's the nature/grace definitions, for context:

"When I was young the nuns taught us there are two ways through life. The way of Nature. And the way of Grace. You have to choose which path you'll take." And what is Grace? "It accepts all things. It does not mind being slighted, forgotten, disliked, insults, or injuries." Nature, on the other hand, "only wants to please itself," it "finds reasons to be unhappy" and wants to lord over others, have its own way, and finds things to dislike when all else around them is shining with "the Glory," as Malick calls it here... "No one who follows the way of Grace ever comes to a bad end."

Notice that nature and grace, according to the nuns, have something to do with happiness as well as with selfishness and acceptance.

As a final note/thought - realistically I can't invest much more in this topic, so I don't want you to kill yourself with a huge response that'll make you feel burned when/if I can only throw a few thoughts back.

hahahahahahaha
too late!!!



oh well. Hopefully you enjoyed reading it and don't think I'm a giant asshole for disagreeing with you so much. I love the connection to 2001 you found, and I especially like the idea about cooperation you have. That's a fucking awesome way of tying the movie together, and it's a very unusual one that I don't think I would have come to by myself.

I need to see this movie again.

and yeah Luke, I really doubt this image (after the incident) was just plopped on the poster to glorify the meaninglessness of it all:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

it sure is a pretty shot. seems like everything in Malick's universe is loaded with meaning.

[Necrometer]

Luke

read like 80% of that and will finish soon

but it's so weird how many things we perceive so totally differently

stupid open-endedness

[The Real MPD]

The Island of Dr. Moreau - 1
Rifftrax: The Island of Dr. Moreau - 6
Rifftrax: Predator - 6

A Mighty Wind - 7
Best in Show - 8
Waiting For Guffman - 8.5

oh, i wonder who knows i'm vacationing here at the oasis!

fuck...

[The Real MPD]

Westworld - 8
Charade - 9
Frankenstein - 10

[The Schwartz]

Midnight in Paris - 8.5/10

Fantastic.

[strict]

=

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

A Mighty Wind - 7
Best in Show - 8
Waiting For Guffman - 8.5

Yes. Waiting for Guffman is totally underrated.

[fallbacktostone]

i know i've given up on life but green lantern looks like the most marvelous mess that i'll probably enjoy

[riley-o]

A Mighty Wind - 7
Best in Show - 8
Waiting For Guffman - 8.5

Yes. Waiting for Guffman is totally underrated.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

oh you. you can always get a reservation

[Comrade Slinky]

People underrate that movie?

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

People underrate that movie?

Relative to Christopher Guest's other movies, yes.