'Voyage of Time,' Terrence Malick IMAX film with Brad Pitt narration, is an awesome cosmic meditation

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/06/voyage-of-time-terrence-m.html

3 Likes

You know, I actually feel a just a little bit sorry for Trump, whose narcissistic universe will never be larger than his own tiny childlike hands.

6 Likes

I wish we had a “local Imax” (but we have two pot dispensaries!). I love Terrence Malick films. My wife hated “Tree of Life”, so I will probably have to see this one with the kids, or wait for the Blu-Ray.

1 Like

From Xeni’s description of it, this film sounds like a continuation of Tree of Life. I saw that movie only once but it struck me as a film that requires repeat viewings, so I can’t really say I have a perspective on it yet.

I did see a few folks leave the theatre when the film backtracked on a geological scale back to the primordial era and then the dinosaurs but I actually felt that was one of most intelligible and meaningful parts of the movie. It was the sequence at the end that felt unraveled to me.

3 Likes

We saw “Tree of Life” in Asheville, and a retirement community picked that film for a group outing. They sat through the whole thing, but the conversation afterward indicated that they had no idea at all what they had just watched. My wife just found it pretentious. But I liked it, and the kids liked the atmospheric depiction of life and childhood. I have the Blu Ray, and have watched it a couple of times since, to better understand it. Repeat viewings do help.
I watched “Thin Red Line” a bunch, when working in the Pacific to locate and identify US aircraft wreckage and human remains from that war. Just watched it over and over. It became really important to me.
So I will find a way to get to “Voyage of Time” somehow.

5 Likes

Me likey, me likey very much.

Sounds like Tree of Life minus the child abuse.

1 Like

Love your last line, I’m in!

My wife hated ToL too. She still talks about how much she hated it.

The film sounds great, but this article reads like an IMAX advertisement.

When credits rolled in the theatre I saw it in (Tree of Life), there were 3-4 of us who just sat their stunned and/or in tears. During the film several people had walked out, loudly and derisively sharing their views that the film was complete garbage. Personally, it was one of the most moving experiences I have ever had; I wept, my daughter laughed at me, and I’ve watched the film several times since (you are absolutely correct that the film rewards repeated viewings). For me, it is a close tie with Bela Tarr’s ‘A Torinoi Lo (The Turin Horse)’ for the most moving, provocative and evocative film I’ve had the pleasure to see. As much as I adore Malick’s films, I think it does him a disservice to show his films in places where there is little chance they will be appreciated. (Which sucks because I really want to see this in an IMAX theatre, and my town isn’t showing it as far as I can tell).

Edit: Apparently, according to Fandango, it’s not showing anywhere in Oregon? Not even Portland? WTF?

Further edit: Apparently it is showing in Bend. That’s it, one theater in Oregon.

@GulliverFoyle[quote=“GulliverFoyle, post:2, topic:86962, full:true”]
You know, I actually feel a just a little bit sorry for Trump, whose narcissistic universe will never be larger than his own tiny childlike hands.
[/quote]

Really?

@Max_Blancke[quote=“Max_Blancke, post:3, topic:86962”]
I love Terrence Malick films.
[/quote]

We’ve argued about a bunch of stuff here, but this alone is enough to make me forget the most flagrant ideological differences and like you. It also makes you part of a select group of outcasts about as much understood as haggis afficionados.

‘Tree of Life’ was the type of film whose narrative is as much dependent on the film as the viewers subjective identification with it. It is a communal meditation on topics such as love, family, nature, death, grief, childhood, innocence, fear, etc… I suspect those who were disappointed with the film were looking too hard for the ‘plot’ to the detriment of allowing themselves to ‘feel’ and let the film bring out the relevant memories and thoughts in their own lives.

2 Likes

Really. Every narcissist is a pitiable tragedy, a loss both for the narcissist who wastes his hour upon the cosmic stage, and the world who suffers an empty shell of a person in lieu of the possibility to whom it gave life.

2 Likes

And you think this is an appropriate thread to talk about Trump’s personality disorders?

I think I made an off-hand comment about the stark contrast between circumscribed worldviews and the transfinite scope of Malick’s contemplative films, to which you replied with (what I now think was) a rhetorical question that I interpreted as a serious one. If your actual meaning was to chastise me for bringing up Trump in an unrelated thread, you could have said so, to which I would have replied: fair enough. Maybe be a little clearer next time please?

I’m leaving up the meme I made because it’s more about the film’s theme than it is any individual person.

Thank you for the kind words. I will locate Turin Horse, and let you know what I think of it. My oldest child and I share a love of “atmospheric” films, where the experience itself is transformative, sometimes independently of the story.

1 Like

Same here. It was one of those experiences where I’m not altogether sure how the work reaching me but it is. I had the same reaction the first time I saw Magnolia (still my all-time favorite film) and the second time I listened to Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. And afterwards yeah, you’re just sitting there asking yourself: what just happened and where am I?

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.