By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or-winning metaphysical 2011 drama The Tree Of Life, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain and a few random dinosaurs.
“The Tree Of Life?” we hear you bellow angrily, fists raised in fury. “Is The Butcher carving up women’s clothing stores now? What the fuck??!! What’s next? Witchery? Suzanne Grae? Kookai? Surely not Millers! Leave Sportsgirl alone, you bastard!”
Relax, ladies, The Butcher is not talking about that hippy-dippy clothes shop for gals who like to look like they’ve just gotten back from a wellness retreat in Byron Bay…no, no, no, I’m definitely not referring to that Tree Of Life! Trust me, this is something far more horrifying than a $220 Mythic Angel Dress or an $89.95 Flower Kimono…no, this is 2011’s The Tree Of Life, a cinematic nightmare from director Terrence Malick that everyone has now pretty much forgotten about…but not The Butcher! This poor fucker is scarred for life!
For once in his sad, pathetic life, however, The Butcher actually has a few fellow travellers when it comes to one of his cinematic opinions. On exiting Terry’s The Tree Of Life way back on its movie release all those years ago, many punters scratched their heads, with a fistful of critics sharing their slack-jawed sense of confusion. Even the donkey who reviewed the flick for FilmInk back in its print days didn’t like it very much.
So why has The Butcher opted to talk about The Tree Of Life, all these long, hard years later? Well, to begin with, this pretentious, incomprehensible pile of bilge actually picked up the “coveted” Palme d’Or at The Cannes Film Festival, a continuing testament to pretension without rival. Speaking of which, does everyone realise that this Palme d’Or thingy is actually decided upon by a jury of just nine people?
When The Tree Of Life picked up the Cannes gong, the President of the jury was actor Robert De Niro, the star of Righteous Kill, Hide And Seek, Shark Tale, Showtime and The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle. Also on the jury were Jude Law and Uma Thurman, two shithouse actors whose choice of film roles indicates that they know SFA about movies altogether. Sure, the award is a joke, but The Tree Of Life won it anyway.
On top of that, The International Federation Of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) granted its Grand Prix for the year’s best film to this ridiculous slab of arthouse philosophising. Really? The best film of the year? Huh? I mean, seriously, what is this shit even about? Is it about a boring fifties American family and their arsehole father? Or Sean Penn wandering through the desert? Why are there dinosaurs in it? What’s all this palaver about the origins of the universe? Why is The Tree Of Life so mind numbingly boring? How did the editor stay awake while he was cutting it?
Actually, why are all of Terrence Malick’s films so boring? Does he only do a movie every ten years because he actually gets bored making them? Either way, the fact that The Tree Of Life won this FIPRESCI gong thingy just hammers home a brain-smashing truism that The Butcher has held dear to his blackened heart all along: film critics are complete and utter tossers who don’t know anything about anything…especially movies.
