Richard Brody reviews what is perhaps one of the most difficult movies to write about, 'The Tree of Life'. Here's a clip:
The movie is filled with inequities of all sorts—racial, economic, gender-based, generational—but not with redress or with specific policy proposals. Rather, it seeks the essence of the American ideal, suggests that it is a sort of peculiarly science-based spiritual subjectivity—a kind of inner freedom that is derived from outer freedom—and asks whether the sophisticated modern society that results from it also menaces it. Among other things, “The Tree of Life” depicts the tension between nature and technology and, for that matter, between the more raw and wild aspects of human nature and their cultivation, sublimation, and restraint.
Whew. Brad looks confused. Can't wait to see it.