Brad Pitt Talks Ever So Briefly About Terrence Malick's TREE OF LIFE!

Beaks here...

Terrence Malick's TREE OF LIFE may be a little more than a month away from making its Cannes Film Festival premiere (provided it makes the "In Competition" cut, as is expected), but we still know very little about the film. It's been over a year since we learned that visual f/x maestro Douglas Trumbull worked on the film is some capacity (this will be his first feature credit since BRAINSTORM), and that there will potentially be a complementary IMAX release "depicting the birth and death of the universe". I don't know if the latter is still in play (no one close to Malick talks, ever), or if the NASA-shot footage I heard about will be a part of it (or what that NASA-shot is exactly), but the lack of solid information combined with the assurance that TREE OF LIFE will be "massive" has inspired no shortage of speculation amongst cinephiles. For instance, there seems to be some confusion as to whether TREE OF LIFE is, in fact, a work of science-fiction. According to Brad Pitt, who stars in the film, it is. "In a way." Here's how he explained the film to the good folks at Empire...

"It's this little tiny story of a kid growing up in the 50s with a mother who's grace incarnate and a father who's oppressive in nature. So he is negotiating his way through it, defining who he's gonna be when he grows up. And that is juxtaposed with a little, tiny micro-story of the cosmos, from the beginning of the cosmos to the death of the cosmos. So that's where the sci-fi – or the sci-fact – comes in."

That's not ambitious at all. We'll find out tomorrow if TREE OF LIFE will be showing at Cannes next month. Until then, click over to Empire's story, where Pitt also addresses Heath Ledger's near-involvement with the film. It is expected that Summit Entertainment will release TREE OF LIFE later this year. This will not be an easy wait.