The Book Thief (2013)

World War II drama “The Book Thief” is not for me. It is intended for teen girls familiar with fantasy and romance, not familiar with the Holocaust. “Thief” -- based on a YA novel -– wants tragic and magic as it follows every crushing blow -– death, illness, bombing -– with an immediate balm, often so fantastically out of place, it made me laugh. In disbelief. It is narrated by “Death” (why?) in a voice not different than Gandalf or Dumbledore, assured words pouring bright magic over the terror of Hitler’s Germany. The titular character is Liesel (Sophie Nelisse), ferried to rural Germany to live with childless peasants (Emily Watson and Geoffrey Rush). On the way, Liesel’s brother dies. Cry not. Rush’s new poppa is Mr. Rogers kind. Liesel steals a “criminal” book from burning, and is seen by the wife of the head Nazi. Fear not. Kind frau lets the girl steal books from her own home. The town is bombed. Scores die. Fear not. Liesel is found, adapted, loved, and saved. In two minutes. I know “Thief” must speak gently to and not horrify its young audience, and I get that, but I still cringed. Sage narrator, gorgeous cinematography. Cringe. C-

Spring Breakers (2013)

Harmony Korine’s purposefully delirious drama/horror/satire “Spring Breakers” is shocking, but not for any onscreen debauchery, but how bright and shiny, and dull it is, and how much it strives to be “Girls Gone Wild” meets “Natural Born Killers.” Circa 1994. The story: Four college girls (led by Disney princesses Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, plus Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) head to Florida and plunge into binge drinking, drugs, sex acts, and scooter racing without helmets. When they land in jail, a redneck drug dealer (James Franco) “saves” and woos the group with guns, piano skills, and love of “Scarface.” After Gomez as a Christian named “Faith” (fancy that, eh?) bolts for home, the other three turn pink-masked gangbanger. Really. Korine spills ironic observations about youth obsessions with sex, gun culture, and celebrity, and our affinity to get bored, no matter where or what we are. But he’s working from a sketchy 30-page culture thesis triple spaced to 90, with scenes and sounds (guns!) repeated without end. Boiled down: Korine’s only real trick is getting two Mickey Mouse stars to go Mickey and Mallory for faux shock value. To break taboos? Or filmgoers’ patience? Franco, btw, is madly genius. C+

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal scored Oscars but little box office traction with 2009’s Iraq-set “Hurt Locker.” In “Zero Dark Thirty,” they go bigger and bolder by following the CIA and then SEAL Team Six as they hunt and eventually kill Osama bin Laden. 

This is an openly controversial film. It invites scorn and bravado, as does any good piece of journalism. And this is a hard-hitting news piece a la spy/war film. A fantastic, bewildering, white-knuckle thriller, hard to easily grasp on a first viewing, but mesmerizing. In short, one of the year's best, most complex films. A must see.

After we hear 911 calls from that terrible Tuesday over a black screen, we delve for 40-some minutes into the capture and torture or an apparent terrorist at the hands of CIA operatives, as well as the back office paperwork and myriad details of the largest manhunt in U.S. history. The torture scenes hit hard. Our government denies torture ever took place. Nothing happened. I tend to trust the film. Torture happened. The detainee -- one of scores of captured men seen put through various acts of distress -- cracks a peep about a courier for bin Laden. From there a tiny, illusive thread is tracked for a decade by Mia (Jessica Chastain), a CIA field agent who has no other mission in life but to find the Al Qaeda leader. 

Leads dead-end, attacks rock London and elsewhere, colleagues are killed, and Mia is targeted by would-be assassins. It makes her more determined. Mia is an enigma, her inner character only partially revealed via child-made drawings on a wall and a daring taunt tossed at Leon Panetta (James Gandolfini), where she declares herself the “mother fucker” who found the mastermind of 3,000 deaths. She also makes a crack at him over lunch, and constantly hounds her supervisors. She is one rocking red head. Angry.

The backlash against this film is insanely grotesque. Many liberals want a neon sign damning torture as bad. Poor dears. Conservatives just hate the idea bin Laden went down on Obama’s watch. Jack asses. Both are off-base, lost between ignorance and delusion, and not a little denial. 

The last hour, where bin Laden -– barely seen -- meets his end, is flat-out riveting in its stark matter-of-fact rawness. Like the great book “No Easy Day” by SEAL Team Six member Mark Owen, “Zero” somberly lays out the cards of today’s reality. Here, flatly stated, no holds barred, it says we torture to get intel, and then we act on it. To save the day, or so we hope. Sure Bush, Cheney, and our current government call it, what, “enhanced interrogation techniques”? A quick note: As with any film, dramatic license is taken, most especially during this climatic raid of the bin Laden compound -- see, Bigelow and Boal have their SEALS talk -- talk! -- inside the chopper as they approach their target, and then on the ground -- shouting and what not -- and that stuff never happens. Silence, always. Any one remotely familiar with Army tactics knows that. Paint ball war enthusiasts know that. You shout, talk, yell, you might as well draw a hand flare to bring on enemy fire. It is a small, but significant deviation.

“Hurt Locker” and every film ever made, including “Lincoln” take dramatic license, add a flare, a chase, a drink, a conversation. It is drama. That does not take away from the case of the film, the depths America goes, and likely has gone in the past, but never debated. Damn sure in World War II, enemy combatants I am sure were ... interrogated to the fullest extent. 

And how does that stack against the terrorists? Have we sunk to their level? Recall the days when Saddam in Iraq caught our airmen, he was beaten and tortured. The U.S. balked. Now we do that, and call it patriotic duty to God. I know people in the Army who have looked me square in the face and say they witnessed it, and it works. Do they not lie, I ask. To get out of the pain? Sure, they say. But you compare the different lies to find the truth. Morality, mercy has no bearing. This is the way it is for them, no questions.

If Iran or Syria did these acts to our troops, bombs would fall. Rage would flame across America. Fact. Hell, yes, it's disturbing to see here, the shit and piss, the man stuffed in a box like laundry. The food games. The dog walk scene. They ought to make any sane viewer cringe, to hate the action on screen. Boal and Bigelow do not allow us to flinch, and we are forced to watch, and see it eat up the perpetrators, and they allow us to maybe, just maybe, see -- most disturbingly -- into the mindset that it is worth the price. 

They do not judge, or comment, or place in mock-shocked characters. They want the anger, the debate. The critics be damned, let them foam. And what happens? They get investigated. They. Get. Investigated. By our Congress. To squash any talk on torture. It is a sick ironic twist of our new American values.

As with “Lincoln,” this is a vital film that transcends Hollywood entertainment. It’s a mirror of our grim reality. And Mia -– based on a real CIA agent, but also fictionalized and combined with the actions of others like her -– is our best hope of a good future. Chastain carries the film on her back, her final scene tearing the lid open on her greatness as the leading actress of her generation. yes, she is an agent, but she is no super spy. She does not pop a gun, kick butt, or go James Bond. Her weapons is her brain, her determination, he eye for detail and language, and a laptop. The new weapon of our day, the laptop.

Bigelow is making the best war films of our time. She is tackling the effects of violence on our warriors and nation, not mindless gun porn. Wonderfully ironic as our military finally allows women into combat, and conservatives blanch hard about old-time values: A

Bully (2012)

“Bully” is a brutal documentary look at five stories of youths bullied, beaten, and taunted by peers, and ignored by clueless or uncaring adults. It brings anger and tears, especially for a guy who was himself heckled. Three stories (a lesbian, a boy with cognitive/emotive issues, and a poor girl pushed to violence) are told in present tense; two in past tense as the tormented committed suicide rather than live miserable. Director Lee Hirsch takes inside schools, on buses, and into the homes of its subjects. He shows an 11-year-old’s casket, and a broken father whisper, “We need to tuck him in one last time,” to his wife as they follow behind it. Brutal. Its strength lays in damning school administrators who dismiss the concerns of parents and youths, opting to say “just get along,” outright lie, or change the subject and talk about their new grand baby. But, hate to pick, it’s not a full-rounded film: Every story is set in rural America, no cities whatsoever, and Hirsch never confronts the bullies. Why not? Last thought: It’s a crime the MPPA bullied “Bully” with an R-rating, when “Hunger Games” got a PG-13. Senseless. B+

The Hunger Games (2012) and Battle Royale (2000)

Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” trilogy stirs up the ultimate taboo as its selling points: Children, forced by an Orwel government, hunt and kill each other in a techno-possible “Most Dangerous Game” scenario. Until only one remains. Crazy scary.

The first book adaptation is solid, for the most part. The story: In the ruins of what was once America, now Panem, Appalachian-bred teen Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) illegally hunts to feed her coal-miner family alive, with dad dead and no brother around. When her tween sister is drafted to participate in the nation’s Hunger Games –- the Richard Connell challenge -–Katniss volunteers to take the suicide mission, partnered with a local baker’s son (Josh Hutcherson). At the Capital City -– think the most vile capitalist dreamscape, with bad hair color –- the public awaits its entertainment, with Donald Sutherland as ruler and Wes Bentley (“American Beauty”) as game master. 

Director Gary Ross and his writers nail the horrors of the children murdering children, without going overboard. A split decision, as maybe going overboard is needed? The film exceeds its PG-13. Why not go mall the way? Further limits: The screenplay skimps on some emotions and deeper threads found in the book, mostly on dead dad, which damages dampens the drama in a major way. But, tech geek “Wired”-wise,  Ross smartly takes us behind the scenes of the games, to show the techno-marvel perversion of these Apple on crack fascists, with no small nod to America’s past use of The Draft to send teenagers out to die for God, country, mom, apple pie, and a stronger stock market. 

Sutherland grins hungry with Cheney-esque malice and sleaze, but this is Lawrence’s film. The “Winter’s Bone” star kills here, starved and scared, yet strong, and she refuses to be identified by any label other than “sister,” and it’s a joy to watch -– especially in light of “Twilight,” which shot on young women as slaves to the men in their lives. Fuck that.

Amazing imagery abounds: None better than a young black girl, mortally wounded, lying in Katniss’ arms, bleeding out as Primrose -– that baby sister –- would have. The scene hurts as much as it did off the page. A rare trick that. That moment, one knows the Oscar nom Lawrence received for “Bone” is no fluke. B+

If you’re in the mood for a grisly double feature about children killing other children, again for sport, then you must see the infamous, “Battle Royale.” But it’s a dare. The gore.violence in this Japanese flick remains so intense, it was banned for a decade in many countries, and only now just received a DVD release stateside. It is a must watch, but not for anyone young or sensitive: The bloodletting of youth here may never be surpassed.

We’re in Japan, a future (now our past) where the world economy has collapsed, jobs are vapor, and a twin devil of anarchy and uncertainty reigns. Sound familiar? To reel in the run-amok youth, the government takes one class of students each year, kidnaps them, puts them on an island, and ticks off with ESPN clarity the bloody carnage and body count. 

“Royale” also was based on a controversial book, and many believe it actually inspired Collins’ books, with her as a copycat. The game master (Takeshi Kitano) here is a former principal with an ax to grind, and he viciously slays two students before the “games” even begin. The urvivors are then given a weapon, survival gear, and orders -– kill or be killed. 

If the youth refuse their homicidal orders, an explosive collar around their neck detonates. Sick. Right? Further sickness: The children here, though, all hail from the same class, and harbor friendships, crushes, parental friends, and festered hates. Actors Tatsuya Fujiwara and Aki Maeda are the lovebirds, while Chiaki Kuriyama -– she later played a psychopath in “Kill Bill” -– is the girl who sees the kill island as new inspiration. 

This is twisted stuff and director Kinji Fukasaku pulls no punches with violence that borders on unwatchable, and kills loved characters with no mercy. This film cannot be interrupted as celebrating violence, each death is more heinous than the last, and as the film draws on, the flashbacks and dreamy asides flesh out the characters onscreen, even if some scenes cross far too fantastical or too sentimental. (Note: I watched an extended director’s cut, the original may not have some of these scenes.)  

“Royale” has its own faults: The teens coo having never heard of this TV run-a-mok, even though the opening scene shows the games are required viewing of all citizens. Amnesia? Denial? Hell, no ... despite denials ... maybe the Collins took her ideas from here after all… A-

Shame (2011)

“Shame.” Call me crazy, but it’s all about the liquids inside us. Poison. The bodily fluid liquid Shame in all of us. A weight, a black hole, a soul crusher. The bodily fluids must be purged, at all costs. They. Must. As demons are exorcised, memories are downed in drugs and booze. Liquids purged. This crazy-daring-disturbing-beautiful art flick, from Brit director Steve McQueen (not the dead Hollywood star of the 1960s, but a young black Brit artist) follows Brandon, an Irish-born, American-raised 30-ish man in New York City. Some dub him a sex addict. Maybe. He certainly relentlessly, ceaselessly, and carelessly picks up sex partners where ever he can find them, or pays for the pleasure for quick encounters. And if no woman is available, porn via Web or magazine will do, and he can masturbate out the semen from his body. His rage, his demon. Men will do, too, to help get that liquid anchor out. What past he leads?

Rising star of 2011 Michael Fassbender, quickly becoming a favorite actor, should have landed an Oscar nomination for his Brandon, a tortured, lonely, angry soul, long past dead inside, who – in the long, wordless climax (I mean that many ways) – cannot fathom intimacy or love or a relationship, and during a three-way, looks as tortured as a man undergoing water-boarding. His one shot at intimacy, an actual relationship, is a full disaster, he calls the woman boring and denounces love, and fails in bed, sexually. It’s all about release, nothing more. There is no love in this world. Not here.

Brandon’s cold, hard, life, all the sex and porn, leftover take-out, and relentlessly repeated classical music played as white noise is thrown a devastating loop when his equally mentally unstable sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) shows up in his shower, unexpected. Uninvited. Unwanted. Unbounded. She longs for a connection to Brandon. His openness at her nudity and she at his, hints at a dark, horrible childhood. Never explained. We don’t need to know, and maybe would be too horrified to know the truth. Their first run-in onscreen, I thought she was his ex-wife. I said dark and disturbing, and I meant it. Few films ever go this dark.

If Brandon ejaculated out his pain through sex, masturbation, or any stimulant, Sissy is a cutter. Blood. A long series of scars mark her wrists and arms, and she wants to lose more blood. And she will in the end. Pints. The whole movie is liquids -- blood, semen, music, fast-moving subway cars, and rain, never stopping, spinning in an endless circle, down a bottomless drain. Even the music is liquid. Always moving, flowing.

The final scenes mimic the first scenes. McQueen’s film is epic, and cold and small, and amazing, full of sex and nudity. That climatic three-way starts out explicit and erotic as hell, as porn, and then turns painful as Brandon shows nothing but misery, a cold, hard punch to audience-mandated expectations for such a NC-17 sex film. This is eroticism turned ugly, anti-erotic. If the screenplay, by McQueen and Abi Morgan (who wrote the lesser “Iron Lady”) is slight on details, McQueen’s camera – the cinematography is beautiful, and in ultra-wide screen – tells us so much more. Watch how, when Brandon and Sissy talk, the camera is behind them, their faces, eyes, expressions cut off. Cold. Only when they fight, scream, yell, and he attacks her, him fully naked, do we see their faces. As dark as this film goes, I want a re-watch. STAT.

Fassbender bares it all, literally. The rage inside him is barely contained, and when he stares down a woman, his flirtation by eye, masks something far darker. That’s acting. Art. Beauty, Danger. Sex. And ... bottomless doom. The character of Brandon barely speaks. Mulligan, she of “An Education” and “Drive,” will not not speak, and lays out a tortured version of “New York, New York,” so dark, so long, so painful and hopeless, I’m not certain what we saw on screen was reality within the film, but her singing/talking directly to her hardened, hard-on brother, how the cold, dark, big city -- life itself -- will kill them in the end. Brandon cries at the moment, by his sister’s beauty and pain, and is horrified to see that kind of liquid, a tear, come from inside him. Pulsating rage follows.

Do not trust anyone says this film is dead and cold; it is about death and coldness, and sex, in all its glory, and pain and misery and Shame. And always about liquids, bodily fluids, escaping from the body, and the pain of an unexplained past. Pure fucking genius. Bravo, Mr. McQueen, and Mr. Fassbender.A

Trainspotting (1996)

Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting” is an adrenaline shot of cinematic greatness about heroin addicts that dares show the quick pleasure of shooting up. Bob Dole balked. Idiot. No “ABC School Special” has ever shown an addict hand-fishing for a dropped stash in a shit-filled toilet, or a guy waking up slathered in diarrhea after losing his bowels, or an infant dying from neglect. This tale of poor Scots who see their parents struggling to earn a pound and figure why not shoot up, is the real deal writ large and depraved. It’s sickly fascinating to watch, a stoned mad-hatter film akin to “Clockwork Orange” or “Romper Stomper,” but to live it? No. Ewan McGregor is a guy who wants heroin over the big house, bigger TV, fancy car, and a job, and Boyle, writer John Hodge (taking on Irvine Welsh’s book) charge those commodities as no better than a shot of white liquid. Only an idiot, or a conservative, would see the finale as happy when a druggie says life will be OK with a wad of money. In a film full of sick jokes, it’s the most repugnant laugh of all. That said, this pales next to 2000’s stellar “Requiem for a Dream.” A

The Devil’s Double (2011)

“The Devil’s Double” is the tale of an Iraqi Army officer named Latif Yahia who was coerced – under threat of death – to serve as the body double of Uday Hussein, a heinous psychopath who saw his status as Saddam’s son as a blank check to torture, murder, and rape. True story? Not likely. Fascinating? Endlessly. Uday’s life is portrayed as a depraved reality version of “Scarface,” the American dream made into a demonic nightmare of debauchery and excess. It’s a twisted analogy, but not crazy: Uday coveted American products, and likes his sports cars. Director Lee Tamahori (“Once Were Warriors” and then much Hollywood crap) mixes grisly horror, war, sex, action, drama and satire, and shows the fearful anxiety that ruled Iraq for decades. It’s not a deep film, but it’s strong and disturbs. Assisted by special effects, body doubles (heh), and fast editing, Dominic Cooper – a supporting player in “Captain America” -- burns hardcore as Uday and Latif, one a monster unleashed, and the other an everyday man scared that he may lose his soul to the beast. One wonders if Uday had come to power, how many millions he would have killed with sick glee. B+

Melancholia (2011)

Ditching the 200-word limit count here, this film deserves the attention…

“Melancholia” is about nothing less than the shocking, smothering power of depression on the human psyche and the end of all life on Earth as know it, and writer/director Lars von Trier welcomes that end with open arms.

“The Earth is evil. … Nobody will miss it,” he says, through the mouth of his “heroine,” Justine, played marvelously and bravely by Kirsten Dunst.

This film – shocking, maddening, infuriating, heartbreaking and brilliant even when it derails off the tracks in spectacular fashion – is the twisted sister of “Tree of Life,” 2011’s other film about the universe, God, and a shattered family.

Important note: von Trier does not believe in God. Sub-note: This is not a date film.

Von Trier opens with the end of the Earth, as a massive planet -- previously hidden behind the sun -- coined by the press as Melancholia makes its way toward Earth, drifting, and then smashing our planet into bits.

Between scenes of cosmic death, he shows us Justine and her family in their final moments, both in reality, and inside their scarred souls and minds, as they face annihilation. The chunk of film – on first viewing -- is inexplicable and scored loud to Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.”

(A second viewing is a must, and a revelation. On the big screen. With big sound.)

We then flashback months to an equally massive disaster, Justine’s wedding, as she and her new husband (Alexander Skarsgard) arrive at a reception at her sister’s rural mansion. She looks to the night sky and sees a red star, and also – in her mind – death and hopelessness. Justine truly believes herself to be, and her world crumbles.

The reception spirals out of control as the bride drifts into a deep depressed state, one her broken family knows too well, and commits heinous acts as a way to bring on the end, her end, full tilt. Sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) can only attempt to help. Weeks later Justine moves in with Claire and her husband (Kiefer Sutherland, never better as a self-righteous prick).

Similar to Melancholia smashing Earth, Justine’s arrival lays ruin to the family of wife, husband and young son.

Unsettling and uncomfortable from first to last frame, this plays as von Trier’s most personal film, his ode to his own depression. His Justine is unaffected by the pending doom of Melancholia, for her world already has ended. Justine grows strong as her sister falls to despair.

Von Trier – having previously made the grim as hell but wildly imaginative “Breaking the Waves” and “Dancer in the Dark” -- is a madman for sure, a complete jerk by all accounts, and a cretin. But he’s a master filmmaker. Who says Vincent van Gogh was cordial?

The scope of this small epic comes into orbit of the giant Terrence Malick epic “Tree of Life,” touches it. The films would make a perfect double of much majesty, and not a small bit of artistic madness. Von Trier was off his meds when he made this, and was at Cannes.

Von Trier’s miracle move is to make a nightmarish wedding reception seem like the end of the world, only to show us the end of the world, and he makes every moment – even the ugliest ones – a work of artistic beauty.

As for Dunst, she of the recent “Spider-Man” films, she shines bright as a woman so smothered in darkness, so weakened she can barely rise from bed.

In the end, you will want to cheer von Trier, or punch him in the face, but you will react. Strongly. That, folks, is what art is supposed to do.

And “Melancholia” is art. A

Tree of Life (2011) – A second look

On my first viewing of “Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s epic drama of God’s creation of the universe, one Texas family during the 1950s, and such small potatoes as life and death, it took me more than a week to even form words to describe a reaction.

And, now, on my second viewing, I realize those first thoughts and impressions were wrong. Fully and wildly dumbass wrong. I will not re-edit my first review. I still stand by it. As with a diary entry, it must remain, as this film – the most mind-blowing movie of 2011 – is something all new to me. Twelve days later. To understand my second-take reactions, one must read my first (naïve) impressions.

Malick, director of “Badlands” and “The New World,” here has made nothing short of a biblical love poem on film -- a psalm -- to not just the glory and passion of his own family, but God Himself, and all the meanings of His passion. In passion, there is great pain. And there is great pain on screen in this film. Death. (Sorry to get all religion, which I normally approach gingerly and awkwardly, always and forever.)

I realize now, that there is no Rapture or end of world drama in “Tree of Life,” I think, but only an adult man’s dream-like, memory-fueled acceptance of his beloved younger brother’s death by suicide and his re-finding of faith in God and life, the light if you will. That leap, that bridge, inspired by the planting of a tree at a glass-encased office tower.

It recalls the tree, the God-like tree, in front of his childhood home. The one associated with his own mother. Sean Penn is that man, Jack, an architect who was raised in a small Texas town by a strict and over-bearing, but loving and passionate, father (Brad Pitt) and free-spirited mother (Jessica Chastain).

I also now understand Malick’s use of creation and the very start of all life, for the miracle and darkness found in every childhood -- growing up, laughing, playing, maturing, rebelling -- is as majestic and beautiful as the very start of our and God’s universe and as dark as the cataclysmic death by meteor of all dinosaurs. It is beauty. Infinite.

I’m already well past a preset 200 word limit, and ready to spill another 1,000 words on this epic film – ready to spill on the dark traces of father and son relations that I experienced growing up, every boy did I surmise, and am re-living after seeing this work of beauty, and the way Jack’s younger self (Hunter McCracken) has his entire since-birth-driven belief in God and goodness ripped apart after watching a child drown.

An act, an event, I also saw as a child, as I spoke of in my first take.

And I did not realize until hours after my second viewing that the building that is central to Penn’s character, I have not only visited, but stayed at and photographed: The Hyatt Regency Hotel and Reunion Tower. I slept many nights, for several years running on an annual business trip. (It is within eye line of Dealy Plaza.)

I imagine my take will be fully different on a third viewing. How often does that happen in movies, to create such a personal reaction? Me, I loved it. But I respect the haters of this film, too. It is art. Made to provoke. If you think this film is shit, God bless, standby your reaction. Scream it. But know this: Does any human being actually give two farts about "Cowboys & Aliens"? I do not. I cannot even recall it. I bet fans of the film cannot either.

Few other films in 2011, or 2010, or 2009, and on and on, can make that claim. This is art. Mind-blowing, core of the soul, church in a cinema, art. New grade: A+

Tree of Life (2011)

Terrence Malick’s latest ruminating avant-garde cinematic riff is “Tree of Life,” a 2 hour 20 minute drama about the creation of the universe and life itself, a 1950s small-town Texas family and the tragedy that befalls them, and a man seemingly lost or aloof in a city seemingly made of glass, steel, concrete and little of anything organic. That is, of life.

It ends on a beach in a wondrous scene that makes the finale of “Lost” seem as straightforward as a Hallmark card. Without the plane and dog, naturally.

It’s taken me more than a week – almost two to be exact – to even collect my thoughts on this voyage through Malick’s view of God, the universe, life, birth, family and death. Words failed me. Still do.

The movie is that good. Maddeningly so.

Then I realized the answer was in front of me, staring at me in the face. It is in the film’s poster, which I luckily snagged from the local artsy movie theater. (I got connections, don’t hate.) The poster contains 70-some images from the film, stills that represent memories of the film like snapshots from a family album, memories, a group of postcards from the universe’s beginnings to the film’s end.

Finally, I got it.

“Tree of Life” is about memories, the aloof man (the family is his, from childhood) and maybe God’s memories. Or Malick’s version of God, looking back at the universe He created out of nothing and then brought to an end. (That’s my theory on the end, it is the rapture.)

In its editing, “Tree” eschews linear design, dialogue, action and time. We witness dinosaurs hunting in a river that we later will see the Texas children traipse through as they play. This is pure Malick -- a polarizing, perplexing, maddening (that word again) and utterly fascinating filmmaker, maybe the best one of our day. (David Lynch being the top. In my book.)

“Badlands” and “Days of Heaven” are among my favorite films, and I’m still mesmerized by “The Thin Red line,” Malick’s World War II drama. The man would rather show forest animals and birds fleeing a South Pacific gun battle than show the men fighting and bullets whizzing by. It is that view that fascinates me, not just outside the box, but outside the world the box is in.

Here in “Tree,” more than any other film, he is saying we humans with all our dramas are part of something much larger than ourselves. As a friend wrote on Facebook the other day, referring to a Rick Warren book, “It ain’t about you.” Or something to that affect.

This is not a film for everyone. Its legion of fans may be rivaled if not well outnumbered by its detractors, many fine and decent (and some stupid ones I’m sure) folks who have walked out lost or outright angry at the inscrutable images of God’s first light breaking the darkness of space, giant fish, cells, blades of grass, waterfalls, cars, bi-planes, and fields of sunflowers. And then much of 2 hours of children playing.

Yes, God figures into this film in a major way, as the Creator of our world and the seemingly absentee Father that he now appears to be. (Go on, debate away. I debate myself on it.)

Sean Penn is Jack, the aloof man/architect in the city, looking back on his childhood, with his overly strict father (Brad Pitt) and his luminous, angelic mother (Jessica Chastain), and two brothers, the most innocent of who will die years later. For reasons never shared.

(News interruption: Malick grew up in 1950s Texas, and had a younger brother who committed suicide at 19. The brother dies at 19.)

Adult Jack lives with a woman, maybe his wife, who he does not look at. Jack’s childhood scenes take up the majority of the film, and they are among the best of Malick’s work: Snippets, chunks and wide-swaths of Jack’s memories and barely recalled dreams are all innocent, terrible and scary. Rebellious, too. As is childhood, no?

Young Jack (Hunter McCracken) climbs trees – the title tree is in the family’s front yard – and swims, and talks his little brother into sticking a metal wire in lamp (it’s not plugged in) and putting his little finger over a barrel of a bb-gun (oops, it’s loaded).

I’ve never seen a film the better captures interaction of a family. The beautiful simpleness. To Jack, the mother is the perfect loving God(dess), and in one scene she floats in the air above the family tree. Like God would.

Dad is not that by far. He will toss the dinner table over to hit one of the children who dares disobey him. He is wrathful. In one scene young Jack sees an opportunity to kill his father. He leaves it be. We can take this as a troubled child reacting to his parents, or as one friend (go Dana!) suggested, mother is the New Testament God, father the Old Testament. My father wasn't Dick van Dyke for sure, and, man, that scene hit close to home. Been there. Dreamed that.

Indeed, church is a major part of the family’s life, and when a child friend drowns (it is shown from afar, but still packs a stomach punch) or a polio-stricken man walks by, the children are confused, befuddled, and ask their parents why God would let such things happen. As do all or most children. As did I, as many of the themes and actions in this film I directly experienced. I at age 9 watched a child drown. It still haunts me. When the youngest boy later dies as a young man, the mother asks God the same question, why?

Malick reaches far. The dinosaurs are too damn much. I only think the ending is the Rapture, some Christ-like figure appears. But the man is reaching. Who does that nowadays? To make a film that will divide audiences and get a group of adults talking about a film for more than a week, as has happened in my circle of friends?

No one is making films like this right now, going for such high themes as God, daring to freely mix the theories of creation and evolution, the universe and our place in it. Children playing, pranking and smashing windows.

This is what filmmaking is supposed to be out, right, the art form of our time? Abstracts welcomed. Love it or hate it, just see it. And see it on the big screen where it belongs. A