The winner of this year’s Palme d’Or in Cannes and the FIPRESCI Grand Prix, The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick is now out on Blu-ray and DVD for you to experience at home.

The acclaimed writer and director, also known for Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and The New World, brought his thought provoking film experience about a Midwestern family in the 1950’s to life after years of development.

Through stunning cinematography and raw emotional power Malick’s hymn to life excavates answers to the most haunting and personal human questions through a kaleidoscope of the intimate and the cosmic, from the raw emotions of a family in a small Texas town to the wildest, infinite edges of space and time, from a boy’s loss of innocence to a man’s transforming encounters with awe, wonder and transcendence.

An impressionistic story of a 1950’s family, the film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack — who is played as an adult by Sean Penn — through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father.

Malick’s experimental work was well-received when it finally premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year, having missed it’s release dates for both 2009 and 2010. According to the film’s trivia on IMDB.com, the first seeds of the mind-bending story were sown in the late 1970s when Malick, fresh of his movie Days of Heaven, started working on a project named ‘Q’, which was later abandoned.

However, it is widely believed that The Tree of Life contains elements of ‘Q’, including the desire to explore the origins of life on earth. The Blu-ray Disc presentation utilizes maximum bit rate encoding and 7.1 audio and a 2.0 stereo mix to bring Malick’s visually stunning masterpiece to life providing you with a premium cinematic viewing experience for the home.

An exclusive 30-minute documentary on the making of the film, Exploring The Tree of Life, allows fans to dig even deeper into Malick’s visionary work and his cinematic legacy through interviews with his collaborators and cast members as well as with directors Christopher Nolan and David Fincher who share an appreciation for his work.

Under Malick’s careful direction The Tree of Life showcases complicated and haunting powerhouse performances by Academy-Award nominee Brad Pitt (Fight Club), Academy Award winner Sean Penn (Milk, Mystic River) and newcomer Jessica Chastain (The Help). 

Image Courtesy of   http://www.facebook.com/twowaysthroughlife

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64th Cannes Film Festival ended with an exquisite award night on 22nd of May, Sunday.

This year’s jury president was Robert de Niro. Other jury members were Olivier Assayas, Martina Gusman, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Jude Law, Nansun Shi, Uma Thurman, Johnnie To, and Linn Ullmann.

Here are the 2011 Awards for feature films:

Terrence Malick for his The Tree of Life won Palme D’or. Malick did not attend the Awards Night. The producer of the film, Bill Pohlad got the prize and said Malick is a shy and a discreet person, but he is very happy to have this honour.

This year, Grand Prix award went to two directors: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, for  Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) , and Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne for Le Gamin au Vélo (The Kid With a Bike).

Best Director award went to Nicolas Winding Refn for Drive.

Joseph Cedar got Best Screenplay for Hearat Shulayim (Footnote).

Kirsten Dunst got the award for Best Actress, with her performance in Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. She thanked the Festival for keeping the film in competition. And she also thanked Lars von Trier for “letting her to play the role with such freedom”.

Jean Dujardin got the award for Best Actor in The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius.

Maïwenn for her Polisse (Poliss) got the Jury Prize.

This year’s festival was quite sensational due to Danish director Lars Von Trier’s nazi comments at the press conference of his film Melancholia. In the offical press release, Festival declared that they were disturbed because of Lars von Trier’s comments and acknowleged and passed his apology. His film Melancholia remained in competition.

The trailers of the films in competition are available on Festival de Cannes’ webpage:

http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/trailers.html

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Terrence Malick’s latest and long awaited film, The Tree of Life, had its premiere at 64th Cannes Film Festival, on 17th of May and has been nominated for Palme D’or, among other absorbing films like Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time In Anatolia. The story focuses on an American family during 1950’s. The cast is quite impressive, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain. This is Malick’s 5th movie as a writer and director.

Malick’s biography is quite interesting, he studied philosophy at Harvard University, and was influenced by philosophers like Martin Heidegger, who has been considered as one of the greatest thinkers of 20th century. Heidegger’s  emphasize on Dasein’s (which could be translated as Being-there, since Heidegger avoids using metaphysical concepts such as human) situation with regard to its relation between Being, Dasein’s existential analyze with the concepts such as care (Sorge) and fear (Angst), especially in his masterpiece Being and Time, and his critique of technology are significant aspects of his philosophy.  Malick  translated Heidegger’s “Vom Wesen des Grundes” as “The Essence of Reasons”  and it was published in 1969. His philosophy background effected his film career, and many critics consider his films as cult, especially his Golden Bear awarded film The Thin Red Line (1998).

Malick did not show himself at the premiere of  The Tree of Life, while his film made a tremendous impact, and divided the audience into two. Protests and applauses heard at the same time. At the press conference of the film, the abscence of Terrence Malick made people even more curious, and the reason for Malick’s nonattendance given as his being a shy person. Brad Pitt answered the question of “does he eat and talk?” as “yes, he even goes to the bathroom”. The religious and theological aspects in his movie related to his own perspectives were also brought up  and his interest in philosophy was emphasized once again at the press conference.

The trailer of The Tree of Life is quite mysterious like Malick himself, but definitely draws attention. Here is the synopsis at Festival de Cannes’ official page:

“The Tree of Life is the impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950′s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.”

Award Ceremony of Cannes Film Festival is on 22nd of May. We will see how Malick’s The Tree of Life impressed the jury.

Watch : The Tree of Life Trailer

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