Japan Times

BEVERLY HILLS, California — Terrence Malick kicks off his new film, “The Tree of Life,” with a bang. The Big Bang, actually. Over the next 138 minutes, the viewer witnesses a journey through history that ends up in a small town in Texas. Critics seem to agree that you’ll either love it or hate it.

“Terrence Malick has vision,” Brad Pitt, who stars in the film, tells The Japan Times. “He’s not about commercial concerns, he’s about stretching filmmaking to the limit.”

It’s a vision that not everyone is seeing, but those who do are impressed. The critic Roger Ebert called the film a “form of prayer” that made him “alert to the awe of existence.” The film also won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in France.

Malick is famous for not giving interviews. He has directed six films since debuting with the short “Lanton Mills” in 1969. This lack of output has been attributed to his perfectionist approach to making movies. As Japan Times film critic Giovanni Fazio pointed out in last week’s review of “The Tree of Life,” this can be both a curse and a blessing.

However, Pitt stands by Malick’s perfectionism, “When Terrence makes a movie, he takes his time. He can’t be dictated to. He’ll wait just as long as he needs to start shooting.”

Read more @ BP Press. Thanks Anu.