With Terrence Malick’s long-awaited The Tree of Life set to debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May it only makes sense the latest piece of marketing for the film is a French trailer. Now I didn’t watch the first domestic trailer and I didn’t watch this trailer, so I can’t tell you whether this international version adds a little the first didn’t. I do know it is a minute shorter, so the chance of additional footage is slim.
In case you want to watch both, I have included both of them below. Have at it and bask in the brilliance.
Following the film’s debut at Cannes, Fox Searchlight will release it stateside on May 27 (Summit will release internationally on May 17) as it appears studios are catching on to the fact the films that played at Cannes last year, particularly Mike Leigh’s Another Year, didn’t benefit from waiting until the end of the year to be released. So this year films such as The Tree of Life and Woody Allen’s fest opener Midnight in Paris are moving from the Croisette straight to domestic theaters. Of course, both these films have been in studio hands for some time now, but this may portend a change in how the Oscar race is run.
If you’re unfamiliar with the story for The Tree of Life, I have added the synopsis just below the trailers. Enjoy, and for more on the film, including 27 images, click here.
From Terrence Malick, the acclaimed director of such classic films as Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, 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 (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Malick’s signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life.
