The Tree of Life

Decades in the making, the gestation period of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011) is as epic as the film itself. After Days of Heaven (1978) was released to critical acclaim and nominated for four Academy Awards, Paramount, the studio that backed it, offered the director a million dollars for his next project regardless of its subject matter. Despite being burnt out from making and editing Days, he agreed. Malick had been contemplating his most ambitious film yet: the creation of our galaxy and the Earth as well as the beginnings of life on our planet. It was originally called Qasida (a reference to an ancient Arabian form of rhythmic lyric poetry) and eventually shortened to Q. In 1979, Malick and a small crew began shooting footage in exotic locales all over the world. The footage they were getting looked great but Paramount was nervous about the absence of a screenplay (Malick would write 40-page poetic descriptions of the imagery) and a structured shooting schedule. Eventually, the studio lost patience with the director’s methods and he not only quit the project but the movie business for 20 years.


The first signs that Malick was returning to his Q project came during pre-production on The New World (2005) when producer Sarah Green received a revised treatment for what would become The Tree of Life. By July 2007, there was a script that fused the cosmic nature of Q with a semi-autobiographical story that focused on a Texas family in the 1950’s as seen through the eyes of the oldest child Jack (Hunter McCracken as a child and Sean Penn as an adult). As early as Days of Heaven, Malick had been moving away from linear narratives to a more philosophical tone poem approach. With The Thin Red Line (1998), he began to explore in greater detail man’s relationship with his environment and with the Earth. This continued with The New World, which embraced a non-linear narrative more than anything he had done before. The Tree of Life is the culmination of Malick’s body of work so far.

The film begins with the death of one of the O’Brien children. The mother (Jessica Chastain) is understandably devastated while the father (Brad Pitt) is stoic but eventually the cracks begin to show and he also grieves in his own way. Cut to the present day and Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) is an architect, unhappy and adrift in the world, still haunted by the death of his brother. The film flashes back to his reminisces of his childhood in the ‘50s. In this first section, Malick cuts back and forth between the impersonal concrete and glass jungle of the big city in which Jack works and the idyllic suburban neighborhood of his youth.

Early on in the film, the mother says in a disembodied voiceover, “There are two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.” I believe that this passage is integral to understanding Malick’s film and it becomes apparent that the mother represents Grace, accepting insults and injuries, while the father represents nature, lording over his family.

Right from the get-go, Malick dispenses with the traditional notion of how a scene is structured and linked to another in favor of an impressionistic approach. This is no more apparent then when the narrative segues to an extraordinary sequence depicting the creation of our galaxy and the Earth with absolutely breathtaking imagery – a stunning mix of unusual practical effects (created by Dan Glass and the legendary Douglas Trumbull) and actual footage courtesy of NASA. With this sequence we are entering Stanley Kubrick territory. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Malick mixes science with spirituality, the cosmic and the ethereal, occasionally commented on via existential voiceover musings about God by the mother. He actually shows the Earth forming and early life being created on the most basic cellular level on up to the dinosaurs. This sequence and its placement so early on in the film is just one of the audacious choices Malick makes.

The film then goes back to early stages of the O’Brien family, to the creation of their children, the painful and glorious experience of childbirth, much like that of the Earth itself. Malick presents two approaches to parenting: the mother is a nurturing figure while the father is a stern disciplinarian. She is in tune with nature while he represents structure. It is this part of the film that is the most engaging as we are presented with familiar, relatable imagery: a very young boy gazes in wonderment and then jealousy at his baby sibling; the shadows of tree branches playing across a wall; the family playing with sparklers at night; kids playing in tall grass; and a tree-lined suburb at dusk with the sky the most amazing shade of purple-blue. These are the innocent, carefree days when you had no worries and would spend hours playing with other children until called in by your mother for the night. Malick has come full circle by returning to the same tranquil Texas suburbs first glimpsed at the beginning of Badlands (1973), his debut feature. These scenes will be instantly familiar to anyone who grew up in the suburbs or a rural environment.

As he did with Linda Manz in Days of Heaven, Malick demonstrates an incredible affinity for working with children and pulling naturalistic performances out of them. All of the kids, especially newcomer Hunter McCracken, act very comfortable in front of the camera, almost as if Malick caught them unaware that they were being filmed. McCracken has a very expressive face, which he utilizes well over the course of the film as Jack becomes increasingly rebellious, testing the rules imposed by his father. Malick documents the children’s behavior and all of their idiosyncrasies, like how they interact with each other and how this differs with their interaction with adults, especially in the ‘50s when they were much more respectful. Much of the film is seen from a child’s point-of-view with low angle shots that look up at adults, trees, and so on. It’s only in the scenes with other children that the camera takes a more level position.

At one point, the father tells Jack that his mother is naïve and that “It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world.” Brad Pitt doesn’t play the stereotypical strict father figure but one with layers that are gradually revealed through the course of the film. He works in a factory, a labrinythian maze of metal machinery but we learn that he wanted to originally be a musician but it didn’t work out. He had to become responsible and lead a more traditional life in order to provide for his family. He still plays piano and passes this ability on to his children. Pitt delivers an excellent performance that grounds the film. The actor has aged well and grown into his looks, relying less and less on them as he gets older. There is a nice scene where he accompanies one of his sons playing an acoustic guitar with the piano that is brief but does a lot to humanize his character. The mother, in comparison, is a more elusive character, more of an ethereal figure as played by Jessica Chastain.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of The Tree of Life is how it may be Malick’s most personal film to date. The parallels between him and Jack are quite striking. Malick also grew up in Texas during the ‘50s and was the eldest of three sons. Like Jack, Malick was known for his “precocious” behavior growing up. Most strikingly, the director had a younger brother who died. Larry was an accomplished guitarist studying in Spain. At one point he had an accident that damaged his hands and became quite upset over his studies. Their father asked Malick to go to Spain to be with his brother but Malick refused. Larry committed suicide and Malick has felt guilty about it ever since. Is this film a way of the director dealing with the loss of his brother after all these years?

You simply cannot engage The Tree of Life in a traditional way. The first section is a little impenetrable at first as one has to leave the concept of traditional narrative behind and get acclimatized to Malick’s approach. One has to let the film wash over you and let his poetic imagery work its magic. Like all of his films, this is one that people will either passionately love or hate because of its ambitious, unusual approach. It will be seen as pretentious by some but any film that strives to tackle big themes like life and death and what it means to be human on such an epic (and also intimate) scale runs that risk. What prevents it from collapsing under its own thematic weight is Malick’s sincerity. He really believes in what he is showing us and treats it with the solemnity and weight it deserves. The Tree of Life has the kind of lofty ambitions most films only dream of reaching and it is easy to see why it is being compared to 2001. Like that film, Malick’s will undoubtedly reveal more upon repeated viewings. There is just so much to absorb that one viewing is not enough because you are too busy trying to make sense of what all this breathtaking imagery means. It will take repeated viewings to fully appreciate what Malick is trying to do and say. This is an important film by a master filmmaker.


Further reading:

New York magazine takes a fantastic look at the decades in the making history of the film.

So does the Los Angeles Times.

A fascinating interview with the film's cinematographer.

A decent primer on Malick's life and career.

Salon.com has a posted a fantastic guide to understanding (comprehending?) this film. A must-read for anyone who admires or was confounded by it.

The Indian Runner

“My name is Joe Roberts, I work for the state
I'm a sergeant out of Perrineville, barracks number 8
I always done an honest job, as honest as I could
I got a brother named Franky, and Franky ain't no good”
- “Highway Patrolman” by Bruce Springsteen

The Indian Runner marked Sean Penn’s directorial debut in 1991 and was based on the Bruce Springsteen song “Highway Patrolman” from his 1982 album Nebraska. Like the song, the film is a character study that focuses on the turbulent relationship between two brothers – one a police officer, the other a troubled Vietnam War veteran. Penn proceeds to take Springsteen’s song and flesh it out to create an engrossing film that evokes some of the best American films from the 1970’s. It also gave substantial roles to then up-and-coming character actors David Morse and Viggo Mortensen while also giving juicy supporting parts to veterans like Charles Bronson and Dennis Hopper. While The Indian Runner was a critical darling, playing the film festival circuit, it failed to catch on with a mainstream audience due to its dark subject matter.

The film begins with a car chase through snow-swept countryside and the first thing that one notices is the shots of the desolate farmland – a close-up of barbed wire, a No Hunting sign written on a spare tire – that Penn inserts throughout the chase. With this sequence he not only establishes Joe Roberts (David Morse), a highway patrolman and one of the main characters, but the setting – America’s heartland. Joe’s estranged brother Frank (Viggo Mortensen) is due to return from Vietnam in a week but he arrives unexpectedly early in the middle of the night. Joe is determined to put Frank on the straight and narrow path and repair their fractured relationship. At first, things go smoothly as Frank attempts to emulate his brother by getting involved with a woman (Patricia Arquette) who ends up pregnant with his child but he can’t change who he is and Joe is forced to choose between his duty as a cop and his love for Frank.

As you would expect from an actor turned director, The Indian Runner is an excellent showcase for the actors. Penn gets solid performances out of every one with David Morse and Viggo Mortensen delivering career defining performances. Mortensen is something of a minor revelation here as he effortlessly disappears into the troubled Frank and one can see a simmering rage behind his eyes. He is the unpredictable bad boy who, if he hadn’t gone to Vietnam, probably would’ve gone to prison (which is what happens when he gets back). This is in sharp contrast to Morse’s Joe, an upstanding officer of the law who took on the profession after his farm went out of business. He’s now married and has a kid – all the hallmarks of a “good man” as his mother (Sandy Dennis) puts it, which is the polar opposite of Frank who is “a very restless boy” as his father (Charles Bronson) puts it. Morse and Mortensen are the kind of actors that would have thrived in the ‘70s and one could easily see them in films like Five Easy Pieces (1970) or Scarecrow (1973). Penn’s film is obviously attempting to evoke films from that era, like The Deer Hunter (1978), which weren’t afraid to present flawed characters and stories that were driven by them with attention to their behavior. It makes sense, then, that Penn dedicates his film to the memory of Hal Ashby and John Cassavetes – two maverick filmmakers who helped define the kind of challenging films Penn admires and emulates from that decade. Yet, he isn’t merely evoking that era of filmmaking to be hip. He incorporates it into his film and makes it his own.

Morse has the tougher job of playing the responsible brother, which tends to be the less showy role in films like this but the actor brings a quiet dignity to the part. Joe is a decent man who loves his family but feels guilt about his inability to reform his brother. Morse has an easygoing charm, which he infuses in Joe who in turn uses it to disarm tension in certain scenes. The actor does get his moments, like when he surveys the bloody mess of a crime scene where the victim has committed suicide. Morse doesn’t say anything as his eyes do all the talking as he stares at his fingers covered in the victim’s blood. Morse conveys his feelings through his kind, expressive eyes while Mortensen internalizes everything behind his cold and distant ones.

It has been said by film critics like Roger Ebert that Frank and Joe reflect the duality that exists in Sean Penn. There is the respectable, socially-conscious family man that was married with kids, and the rebellious hellraiser that punches out paparazzi. Mortensen even adopts a drawl coupled with a sly grin as he smokes a cigarette in several scenes that, at times, evokes Penn. This may explain why Frank and Joe seem so authentic as Penn knows these people so well. It also helps that his casting is spot on. He rescued Charles Bronson from generic thriller hell and cast him in this film. It is great to see the veteran actor in a substantial role as he brings an impressive complexity to a bitter father figure proud of one son and disappointed in another. In his small amount of screen-time he manages to convey the conflicting qualities that both his sons possess.

When Sean Penn first heard Bruce Springsteen’s song “Highway Patrolman” in 1982 it gave “flashes of pictures” in his head and began applying characters and a story to these images. He was inspired to write a screenplay in a month while filming We’re No Angels (1989). He had actually been writing scripts since 1980 and knew exactly what he wanted the film to look like but didn’t know if he could get the financing or the rights to the song. The first title Penn came up with for his script was A Slow Coming Dark, then Greetings from the Wasteland, and finally The Indian Runner. This last one came from a book about Native American Indian running, which he had read.

He called Springsteen and got his blessing. He then approached producer Don Phillips (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) with several of his scripts, one of them being The Indian Runner. That was the one Phillips picked. Penn told him that it had been written by a prison inmate named J. Claude McBee and did this because he wanted an honest opinion, not one based on pre-conceived ideas people had about him. Penn wanted the script to speak for itself. Phillips gave the script to two producers who liked it but felt that the ending wasn’t commercial enough to get the film funded. Penn shelved his project until Phillips’ friend and fellow producer Thom Mount had set up a deal with Japanese funding to bankroll a slate of films. Mount was a fan of Penn’s work and agreed to back his film.

Early on, Penn thought of playing Frank himself and discussed the project with his We’re No Angels co-star Robert De Niro. One day, Penn had a television on with the sound off and saw Viggo Mortensen in Fresh Horses (1988). He only had a cameo but Penn was struck by how closely he resembled the image of Frank he had in his mind while writing the script. He was also struck by Mortensen’s “angularity, a severity to his handsomeness that I perceived as being like Frank.” Penn and Phillips flew to Tucson, Arizona to meet Mortensen on the set of Young Guns II (1990) and he agreed to do the film.

For the role of Joe, Penn wanted David Morse who he had seen in a film called Inside Moves (1980). He was impressed by the actor’s “kind of soulful dignity.” The two men met and Penn decided to cast him. However, Phillips didn’t want to cast Morse because he couldn’t see the actor and Mortensen as brothers. Penn paid for a screen test for Morse and wrote a scene specifically for the actor to perform that was not in the film. Morse nailed it and Phillips was convinced.

For the role of Frank and Joe’s father, Penn had originally cast Gene Hackman and then Jon Voight was considered. Penn finally cast Charles Bronson based on what he knew about the difficult times in the actor’s private life, chief among them standing by his wife Jill Ireland’s battle with cancer. Penn wanted Sandy Dennis to play the mother but he learned that she was dying of cancer. He flew to New York City and met with her. She agreed to do the film.

Based on his admiration of ‘70s cinema, Penn sought out crew members that had worked during that era. He hired Hal Ashby’s long-time production designer Michael Haller and Anthony Richmond as his director of photography. The latter had worked on several key Nicholas Roeg films during ‘70s and that was the look Penn wanted to capture with his own film.

During rehearsals, Penn encouraged Morse, Mortensen and cast members Valeria Golina and Patricia Arquette to spend as much together as possible. This involved hanging out on location in Omaha. For the final confrontation between Frank and Joe in a bar, Penn had Morse and Mortensen rehearse for two weeks. The bar set was built in a gymnasium which allowed the two actors to shoot baskets when they needed to blow off steam. Morse felt that Mortensen was holding back during rehearsals. When it came to filming the scene, Penn recalled stimulating Mortensen’s temper by getting “a little bit personal. But I think he was professionally responsive. He knew where to go for what I was looking for.”

The Indian Runner was shot entirely on location in Nebraska in 50 days on a budget of $9 million. It had its world premiere at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. The film received generally positive reviews from critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “It's impressive, how thoughtfully Penn handles this material. The good brother isn't a straight arrow, and the bad brother isn't romanticized as a rebel without a cause, and there are no easy solutions or neat little happy endings for this story. It's as intractable as life itself.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Mortensen as “a magnetic actor capable of both scary outbursts and eerie, reptilian calm.” The Globe and Mail’s Jay Scott wrote, “The film is mesmerizing in part because the drama between the two brothers is predictable; it is thoughtful and funny because it seldom goes out of its way to be either, and it emerges as one of the best movies yet made about the sixties because it is not actually about the sixties – it's about people in the sixties.”

In his review for Newsweek magazine, David Ansen said of Penn’s direction, “You can sense that he's grappling with his own demons in this anguished story of a collision between brutishness and responsibility. Whatever its flaws, this one comes from the gut.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “And though the movie is sometimes too mannered (during one unaccountable stretch, Penn suddenly turns into Diane Arbus and peppers the screen with small-town grotesques), it has an accomplished rhythmic flow, a sense of people's destinies unfolding step by step.” However, USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and Susan Wloszczyna wrote, “To pump up the entertainment level, Penn tosses in a few freaks: a bearded lady, a demonic bartender (the aptly cast Dennis Hopper), a cross-eyed town crazy. But the sideshow can't leaven the unrelentingly heavy mood.”

In many of his roles, Penn often wrestles with notions of masculinity – what makes a man? You see it in films like At Close Range (1986), Dead Man Walking (1995) and Mystic River (2003). He continues this examination with The Indian Runner about two very different men – one who can express his emotions and one who cannot. Or, rather, when he does it comes out in rage and violence. How does someone like that exist in normal society? Frank is a free spirit that refuses to be tied down by the conventions of a normal family life and a 9 to 5 job. Joe knows this but thinks he can change his brother and is forced to realize that no one can domesticate him. The only solution is to allow Frank to be free to live his own life. Frank puts it this way, “There’s only two kinds of men in this hell: that’s heroes and outlaws. Which one are you?” Penn ends his film on an enigmatic note – one in which I think the end of Springsteen’s song addresses:

“Me and Franky laughin' and drinkin', nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"
I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family, he just ain't no good”

One of the tantalizing questions The Indian Runner poses is, did being in the Vietnam War screw up Frank even more or was he already like that to begin with? Joe refers to his brother being a troublemaker in his youth. Where did he go wrong? Was he always that way? The film never answers these questions definitively but it is interesting to speculate every time I watch it. The only problem I have with this film is that Penn tends to lay the Indian runner analogy on a little too thick, especially in the scene where Frank and Joe chase each other through a cornfield late at night, but it’s a minor quibble in an otherwise fantastic directorial debut. While I enjoyed his subsequent efforts, The Crossing Guard (1995) and especially The Pledge (2001), I still regard The Indian Runner as his best film behind the camera. So many of Bruce Springsteen’s songs are mini-movies that tell a compelling story that it’s amazing no one has turned one into a film before. He is a master at depicting the struggles of the blue collar American in his songs; Penn gets that and successfully translated it into a film.

DVD of the Week: The Thin Red Line: Criterion Collection

After Terrence Malick made Days of Heaven in the late 1970s, he didn’t make another film for two decades. Because he shunned the press like the cinematic equivalent of Thomas Pynchon, speculation was rampant as to the reasons why. It was rumored that the ordeal of making Days and its subsequent commercial failure soured him on filmmaking but as it turned out he was working on various screenplays over the years. And then, in 1998, he resurfaced with an adaptation of James Jones’ 1962 novel The Thin Red Line about the World War II battle for Guadalcanal. The end result was an unconventional epic that eschewed traditional storytelling for a philosophical meditation on war, nature and death. It also featured a star-studded cast with most of the marquee names (John Travolta and George Clooney) relegated to cameos while relative unknowns (Jim Caviezel and Ben Chaplin) were given significant screen time. Not surprisingly, critics gave it rave reviews while mainstream audiences were put off by its artsy approach, preferring instead Steven Spielberg’s much more visceral and convention WWII epic, Saving Private Ryan (1998). The folks at the Criterion Collection have rewarded fans of Malick’s film by giving it the deluxe treatment.

The first shot of the film is of a crocodile sinking rather ominously into the water, followed by a stunning shot of sunlight streaming through the leaves of a tree as a voiceover narration says, “what’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself?” These ruminations about the nature of war and the environment play over a montage of absolutely beautiful scenery and we meet Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) living among the natives in an Eden-esque paradise but this is soon shattered when he spots a Navy patrol boat nearby. The AWOL soldier is brought back and made a stretcher bearer in C Company by First Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn) who sees the war in a very different way than Witt. He is more of a realist to Witt’s philosopher. They’re all shipped off to Guadalcanal where they’re ordered to invade and take the island from the Japanese forces because of its strategic importance.

Malick spends the rest of the film dwelling on the aspirations and fears of a handful of soldiers. There’s Lieutenant Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), a career officer desperate to take the island so that he can be promoted to general. Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) is dealing with the news that his wife is leaving him and tries to find a reason to still care about this war. However, it is the relationship between Witt and Welsh that lies at the heart of The Thin Red Line as their two opposing ideologies clash – Welsh is the jaded cynic and Witt the idealistic dreamer. The scenes they share are some of the strongest in the film. That being said, the combat scenes are well-choreographed kinetic set pieces where men are arbitrarily killed. We see the fear and confusion on their faces and how some of them mask it with bravado or grim determination. These sequences are noisy and jarring and contrast nicely with the calmer, more contemplative moments.

The Thin Red Line is filled with all kinds of breathtaking imagery that stays with you long after it ends, like a line of soldiers that walk through tall grass and casually pass by a short, old aboriginal man who doesn’t even acknowledge their presence as if he’s out for an afternoon stroll. There’s the numerous shots of the lush rainforest and the animals that inhabit it as if Malick seems to be saying war means nothing to them or to nature – they will be here long after we’re gone. Another sublime moment occurs when C Company is climbing a grassy hill and the light changes before our eyes and the sun goes in behind a cloud and out again.

The film is anchored by strong performances from the likes of Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas with others like Woody Harrelson and John Cusack in minor but notable roles, and then there’s the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them bit parts by then up-and-comers like Adrien Brody, Nick Stahl and Thomas Jane. One gets the feeling that they are all in the service of one man’s vision and that would be Malick.

He immerses us in this world so that at times it seems like we are right there with these soldiers and at other times he pulls back and reflects on the nature of war and its effect on man and the environment. The Thin Red Line is one of the most beautifully shot, poetic war films ever made. It wrestles with some pretty weighty themes and is unafraid to take the time and ponder them. Malick assumes that his audience is intelligent and not just interested in the visceral kicks of soldiers shooting each other and getting blown up. He is aiming for something more profound and using James Jones’ book as a jumping off point. Whether Malick is successful or not is up to the viewer to decide but it is readily apparent that he has created something special with this film.

Special Features:

The Thin Red Line was previously released twice by 20th Century Fox in fairly bare bones versions that included several of the Melanesian songs featured in the film and an impressive DTS soundtrack. The Criterion Collection has worked with Malick to give his film a very impressive facelift both visually and aurally while also including an impressive collection of supplemental material.

The first disc features an audio commentary with long-time Malick collaborator, production designer Jack Fisk, producer Grant Hill and cinematographer John Toll. They talk about how the opening scenes with the natives were shot very documentary-like with a small crew at the end of principal photography. They also point out the various locations they shot in and how it affected them and the film. Hill touches upon the casting process and how they got some of the marquee names to appear in the film. Naturally, they talk about working with Malick but not as much as I’d like. With these crew members, this is a more technically-oriented track short on anecdotal material.

Also included is the theatrical trailer.

The second disc starts off with a more than 30-minute featurette that showcases cast members Kirk Acevedo, Jim Caviezel, Thomas Jane, Elias Koteas, Dash Mihok, and Sean Penn talking about how they were cast and their experiences making the film. They all give fascinating impressions of what Malick is like and what it was like to work with him. The actors did a lot of research and preparation, living and training like soldiers and, as a result, they really bonded with one another. Penn describes how a typical day of shooting might involve Malick shooting a scene with dialogue for a half day and then spending the second doing it again but without any dialogue. This is fantastic extra loaded with tons of anecdotes.

Dianne Crittenden is interviewed about the casting process and she explains what Malick was looking for in the actors that ultimately appeared in the film. We see audition footage of actors that were cast (Nick Stahl’s is quite impressive) and, more interestingly, glimpses of the ones who didn’t – Josh Hartnett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Crispin Glover. Malick wanted actors that did not look contemporary and Crittenden saw people from theatrical acting groups all over the United States.

The film’s three editors, Leslie Jones, Saar Klein and Billy Weber are interviewed. Weber says that his favorite part of the film is a section that Jones worked on because it was so representative of Malick and his worldview. Klein says that Malick wasn’t too crazy about directing the battle sequences and just wanted to work with the actors. Weber and Jones talk about the initial five hour cut of the film and how they cut it down and how it changed with the addition of music and narration.

There is an interview with the film’s composer Hans Zimmer. He talks about meeting Malick and how they simply hung out together for a year before filming started. They never talked about the script but instead had more philosophical discussions. The director encouraged Zimmer to experiment and compose music that enhanced John Toll’s cinematography.

For fans of the film that know about all the footage that was shot and the actors that were cut completely out of the film, the addition of outtakes is particularly exciting. Included are eight scenes that run a total of 13 minutes. It’s nice to see more footage of actors like John C. Reilly and Adrien Brody who were marginalized in the final cut. Reilly gets to go off on a rant in a scene with Jim Caviezel. Brody, who just looks scared throughout the film, actually gets to speak here. Best of all, we see footage of Mickey Rourke, an actor cut out of the final version, in a stirring scene as a sniper who shares a scene with Caviezel.

Also included is an interview with Kaylie Jones, the daughter of novelist James Jones. She talks about the novel and her father’s intentions in writing it. Most interestingly, Jones talks about her father’s upbringing and his experiences in World War II and how it fostered his anti-war sentiments as well as informing the novel.

There are five vintage theatrical newsreels that reported the status of the Pacific conflict in Guadalcanal to those at home. These are fascinating examples of war-time propaganda and feature valuable historical footage.

Finally, there are samples of Melanesian chants and music recorded for the film that play over behind-the-scenes stills.


Here is a link to a review of the Blu-ray edition complete with screengrabs.
 

The Game

NOTE: This post was inspired by Piper's two excellent posts on this film over at the Lazy Eye Theatre. Check 'em out here and here.

After the success of Seven (1995) expectations were high for David Fincher’s next film. He had risen from the ashes of the Alien 3 (1993) debacle and produced a critical and commercial hit when everyone least expected it. What would he do next? Never one to take the easy route, Fincher confounded critics and audiences alike with The Game (1997), a fascinating film that plays around with the conventions of the thriller genre like a feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone. Critical reaction was fairly positive and the box office returns were decent but not as good as Seven’s. Even among fans of Fincher’s films, The Game is somewhat underappreciated but worth revisiting if only to explore the shadowy alleyways and nightmarish scenarios that torment its protagonist.

Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is a wealthy investment banker who lives alone in his family’s palatial estate just outside of downtown San Francisco. He follows a daily routine that involves making business deals. Imagine an older, slightly more mellower Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (1987) who somehow escaped imprisonment and moved to the west coast. Nicholas lives in a hermetically-sealed world as evident from the meticulously decorated, museum-like mansion he inhabits. He’s divorced and his parents are both dead, his mother recently and his father committed suicide when he was just a boy. Describing Nicholas as emotionally unavailable is an understatement to say the least.

It’s his birthday and his ne’er-do-well younger brother Conrad (a refreshingly jovial Sean Penn) meets him for lunch where he gives his older sibling a present. It is a pre-paid invite for a company known as Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Conrad tells Nicholas to call them because it will make his life “fun.” He is rather enigmatic about CRS, describing them as an “entertainment service” and that what they offer is a “profound life experience.” Nicholas is turning the same age as his father when he died and it is implied, via flashbacks, that his greatest fear is ending up like him so he decides to give CRS a try.

Nicholas goes through an extensive screening process with Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn) so that whatever it is his experience is it will be tailored to his personality. Feingold describes it as a vacation, except that “you don’t go to it, it comes to you.” He goes on to drop tantalizing tidbits like, “we provide whatever’s lacking,” and “we’re like an experiential book-of-the-month club.” Among the battery of tests Nicholas undergoes, one bears a remarkable resemblance to the famous montage sequence in The Parallax View (1974).

One day, at the racquet club he frequents, Nicholas overhears two men talking about CRS. He meets them and they are intriguingly vague about their own experiences. The next day, a representative from the company calls to inform him that his application has been rejected. That night, Nicholas arrives to find a life-sized doll lying in his driveway with a key from CRS in its mouth. Later on, his television starts talking to him. His game has begun. Nicholas’ day begins as usual only now with the awareness that he’s playing the game and this causes him to look at everyone and everything differently. Strange things start to happen. He can’t open his briefcase during an important meeting. A waitress spills a tray of drinks all over him. A homeless man collapses in the street right in front of him.

At first, these incidents don’t seem like much but as the film progresses they take on a more ominous tone and become more dangerous. For example, Nicholas and Christine (Deborah Kara Unger), the waitress who spilled the drinks on him, take a homeless man to an emergency room that suddenly becomes deserted and the lights go out. The game also starts to take on a much grander scale. How can so many people be in on it? Are we to take everything literally or, like Nicholas, are we supposed to accept things as they are and take the ride? A certain sense of paranoia sets in and we are constantly guessing what is real and what isn’t. The deeper Nicholas goes into the game, the more nightmarish the scenarios become and the film escalates into full-on paranoid thriller mode.

The screenplay for The Game was written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris in 1991 and was promptly put in turnaround at MGM while Fincher was making Alien 3. In 1992, director Jonathan Mostow was attached to the project with Kyle MacLachlan and Bridget Fonda cast in the lead roles. Principal photography was to start in February 1993. However, early in ’92 the project moved to Polygram and Mostow dropped out only to become an executive producer of the film. Producer Steve Golin bought the script from MGM and gave it to Fincher in the hopes that he would direct. According to the director, the film was about “loss of control. The purpose of The Game is to take your greatest fear, put it this close to your face and say ‘There, you’re still alive. It’s all right.’” He has mentioned that there are three primary influences on the film. Nicholas was a “fashionable, good-looking Scrooge, lured into a Mission: Impossible situation with a steroid shot in the thigh from The Sting.”

Fincher liked the various plot twists and turns in the script but brought in Andrew Kevin Walker, who had written Seven, to make Nicholas a more cynical character. They spent six weeks changing the tone and trying to make the story work. Fincher intended to make The Game before Seven but when Brad Pitt became available that project took priority. The success of Seven helped the producers of The Game get a larger budget than they had originally projected. They approached Michael Douglas to star in the film but he was hesitant, at first, because there were concerns about Polygram’s ability to distribute it what with the company being rather small in size. However, once he came on board, his presence helped get the film into production.

At the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, Polygram announced that Jodie Foster (playing the role of Christine) would be starring in the film along with Douglas but Fincher was uncomfortable with putting a movie star of her stature in a supporting part. After talking to Foster, Fincher considered rewriting Conrad as Nicholas’ daughter so that she could play that role. However, she had a scheduling conflict with Contact (1997) and could not appear in The Game after all. However, she would go on to star in one of Fincher’s subsequent films, Panic Room (2002). Once Foster was out of the picture, the role of Conrad was offered to Jeff Bridges but he declined and Sean Penn was cast.

More revisions were made to the script. Originally, Nicholas kills Christine and then commits suicide but Fincher felt that it didn’t make sense. In 1996, Larry Gross and Walker were brought in to make further revisions to the script. Principal photography began on location in San Francisco despite studio pressure to shoot in Los Angeles which was cheaper. Fincher also considered Chicago and Seattle but the former had no mansions that were close by and the latter city did not have an adequate financial district. The script was written with ‘Frisco in mind and the director liked the financial district’s “old money, Wall Street vibe.” However, that area was very busy and hard to move around in. So, the filmmakers shot on weekends in order to have more control. The cast and crew endured a long, tough shoot that lasted 100 days with a lot of night shoots and locations.

Fincher utilized old stone buildings, small streets and the hills to represent the city’s class system pictorially. To convey the old money world, the director set many scenes in restaurants with hardwood paneling and a lot of red leather. Some of the locations used included Golden Gate Park, the Presidio and Filoli Gardens and Mansion in Woodside, San Mateo, which stood in for the Van Orton family home. Fincher masterfully transforms San Francisco into a shadowy labyrinth that Nicholas must navigate.

With his trademark atmospheric cinematography (courtesy of Harris Savides, who would collaborate with Fincher on Zodiac), Fincher presents the city as a gradually threatening place where danger lurks at every corner so that what was once familiar has become very strange. This was the first time that Harris Savides had been the cinematographer on one of Fincher’s films. In the 1990s, they had worked together on music videos and commercials. For the visual look of Nicholas’ wealthy lifestyle, they wanted a “rich and supple” feel and took references from films like The Godfather (1972) and Being There (1979), which featured visually appealing locations with ominous intentions lurking under the surface. According to Fincher, once Nicholas leaves his protective world, he and Savides would let fluorescents, neon signs and other lights in the background be overexposed to let “things get a bit wilder out in the real world.” For The Game, the director employed a Technicolor printing process known as ENR which lent a smoother look to the night sequences. For him, the challenge was how much deception the audience could take and “will they go for 45 minutes of red herrings?” To this end, he tried to stage scenes as simply as possible, using a single camera because “with multiple cameras, you run the risk of boring people with coverage.”

Michael Douglas is no stranger to playing icy, business types and initially Nicholas is clearly a riff on his Gekko character only this one is more receptive to changing his life. After all, he has no choice. Douglas does a good job of gradually showing how Nicholas changes from a repressed individual to someone who appreciates life thanks to being thrown into several life-threatening situations. It’s only once he’s been chased by vicious dogs, dropped into a dumpster and almost drowned that he begins to appreciate life. However, as the game continues to escalate, he gradually unravels which puts his mental and physical limits to the test. Nicholas has to hit rock bottom, to be torn down completely, before he can change into a better person.

Sean Penn brings a playful vibe to his first scene in the film and it contrasts well off of Douglas’ repressed character. Penn also bring a welcome levity, like when Conrad tells Nicholas that he remembers being at the restaurant they meet at many years ago. Nicholas says that he took him and Conrad corrects him: “No, I used to buy crystal meth off the maitre’d.” The two men banter back and forth as only siblings can. Conrad is the polar opposite of his brother. He speaks his mind and has a snarky sense of humor. However, this is flipped on its head when Conrad appears for the second time while Nicholas is in the midst of the game. This time, Penn brings a frantic intensity as he rants and raves about being hounded by CRS. Conrad has been reduced to a paranoid mess and gets into messy confrontation with his brother as their dysfunctional relationship reaches the boiling point.

Deborah Kara Unger’s test reel was a two-minute sex scene from David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) and Douglas remembers that he thought it was a joke. When he and Fincher met her in person they were impressed with her abilities. Christine is a rather enigmatic character. She starts off with an antagonistic relationship with Nicholas but she appears to become his ally after being drawn into the game along with him. However, like Conrad, and pretty much everyone Nicholas meets, appears can and are deceiving. The strikingly beautiful Unger imbues her character with a sarcastic common sense that plays well off of Douglas’ privileged businessman. She is quite good in The Game and it’s a shame that she didn’t do more high profile films after this one.

Fincher does an excellent job orchestrating the various nightmare scenarios that Nicholas experiences, chief among them a white-knuckle taxi cab ride that ends up with him trapped in the car as it goes speeding into the San Francisco Bay. As the car descends into deeper water, a frantic Nicholas desperately tries to find a way out. This sequence was shot near the Embarcadero with the water tank elements for Nicholas’ near-drowning done on a soundstage at Sony Pictures studio. Douglas’s close-ups were filmed on a soundstage that contained a large tank of water. The actor was in a small compartment designed to resemble the backseat of a taxi with three cameras capturing the action.

The Game was released on September 12, 1997 in 2,403 theaters, grossing $14.3 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $48.3 million in North America and $61.1 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $109.4 million. The film received mostly positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four and praised Douglas as "the right actor for the role. He can play smart, he can play cold, and he can play angry. He is also subtle enough that he never arrives at an emotional plateau before the film does, and never overplays the process of his inner change.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Fincher, like Michael Douglas in the film's leading role, does show real finesse in playing to the paranoia of these times.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, "Fincher's style is so handsomely oppressive, and Douglas' befuddlement is so cagey, that for a while the film recalls smarter excursions into heroic paranoia (The Parallax View, Total Recall).”

The Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, "It’s formulaic, yet edgy. It’s predictable, yet full of surprises. How far you get through this tall tale of a thriller before you give up and howl is a matter of personal taste. But there’s much pleasure in Fincher’s intricate color schemes, his rich sense of decor, his ability to sustain suspense over long periods of time and his sense of humor.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Emotionally, there's not much at stake in The Game — can Nicholas Van Orton be saved?! — but Douglas is the perfect actor to occupy the center of a crazed Rube Goldberg thriller. The movie has the wit to be playful about its own manipulations, even as it exploits them for maximum pulp impact.” However, Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers felt that “Fincher's effort to cover up the plot holes is all the more noticeable for being strained ... The Game has a sunny, redemptive side that ill suits Fincher and ill serves audiences that share his former affinity for loose ends hauntingly left untied.” Fincher defended his film’s apparent jumps in logic by saying, “you have to embrace the movie for what it is, and what it is is a really strange trip.”

The Game is more than a cinematic jigsaw puzzle. It is also about a man coming to grips with his past, a son finally dealing with the death of his father – something that has haunted him his whole life. It has been said that the film is a modern re-telling of the Scrooge story – a mean, rich man learns the value of life by being shown how precious it is. The Game is ultimately a tale of redemption with a surprisingly satisfying emotional payoff at the film’s conclusion.

There is also an excellent look at this film over at This Distracted Globe.

Also, I would be remiss without give credit to James Swallow's book, The Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher, which was the source for most of the production info contained in this article. If you're a fan of Fincher's films, this book is an invaluable resource.