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114-2578: No Country for Old Men Joel Coen and Ethan Coen – No Country for Old Men George Clooney – Michael Clayton as Michael Clayton Elliot Page – Juno as Juno MacGuff Javier Bardem – No Country for Old Men as Anton Chigurh Tilda Swinton – Michael Clayton as Karen Crowder Juno Diablo Cody – Juno Slumdog Millionaire Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler as Randy "The Ram" Robinson Kate Winslet – Revolutionary Road as April Wheeler Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight as The Joker Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler as Pam / Cassidy Frost/Nixon Martin McDonagh – In Bruges Up Pete Docter – Up Colin Firth – A Single Man George Falconer Gabourey Sidibe – Precious as Claireece "Precious" Jones Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds as Col. Hans Landa Mo'Nique – Precious as Mary Lee Johnston The Hangover Gabourey Sidibe – Precious as Claireece "Precious" Jones Danny Boyle – 127 Hours Colin Firth – The King's Speech as George VI Jennifer Lawrence – Winter's Bone as Ree Dolly Christian Bale – The Fighter as Dickie Eklund Amy Adams – The Fighter as Charlene Fleming Winter's Bone Jennifer Lawrence – Winter's Bone as Ree Dolly The Artist Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist Michael Fassbender – Shame as Brandon Sullivan Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn as Marilyn Monroe Christopher Plummer – Beginners as Hal Fields Carey Mulligan – Shame as Sissy Sullivan Carnage Jessica Chastain – The Help , Take Shelter and The Tree of Life as Celia Foote, Samantha LaForche, and Mrs. O’Brien Moneyball – Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin Tabloid Silver Linings Playbook David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln as Abraham Lincoln Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook as Tiffany Maxwell Robert De Niro – Silver Linings Playbook as Patrizio "Pat" Solitano, Sr. Anne Hathaway – Les Misérables as Fantine Lincoln Zoe Kazan – Ruby Sparks No Country for Old Men (film) This

228-626: A US distributor. In August 2009, it was announced that the film would be released in the US through Apparition , a new distributor founded by River Road Entertainment head Bill Pohlad and former Picturehouse chief Bob Berney. A tentative date of December 25, 2009 was announced, but the film was not completed in time. Organisers of the Cannes Film Festival made negotiations to secure a premiere at Cannes 2010 , resulting in Malick sending an early version of

342-498: A bounty hunter seeking Moss and the return of the money, $ 2 million. No Country for Old Men premiered in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on May 19. The film became a commercial success, grossing $ 171 million worldwide against a budget of $ 25 million. Critics praised the Coens' direction and screenplay and Bardem's performance, and the film won 76 awards from 109 nominations from multiple organizations; it won four awards at

456-557: A campfire ahead. The role of Llewelyn Moss was originally offered to Heath Ledger , but he turned it down to spend time with his newborn daughter Matilda. Garret Dillahunt was also in the running for the role of Llewelyn Moss, auditioning five times for the role, but instead was offered the part of Wendell, Ed Tom Bell's deputy. Josh Brolin, who was not the Coens' first choice, enlisted the help of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to make an audition reel. His agent eventually secured

570-417: A consultant on its release. A tentative plan was made to release it in late 2010, in time for awards consideration. Ultimately, Pohlad decided to close Apparition and sell rights to the film. Private screenings of the film to interested parties Fox Searchlight Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics took place at the 2010 Telluride Film Festival . On September 9, Fox Searchlight announced their acquisition of

684-463: A couple of times, so I took that as a seal of approval, I don't know, maybe presumptuously." The title is taken from the opening line of the 20th-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats ' poem " Sailing to Byzantium ": That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever

798-412: A dozen shots that are not in the final film. It's that order of planning. And we only shot 250,000 feet, whereas most productions of that size might shoot 700,000 or a million feet of film. It's quite precise, the way they approach everything. ... We never use a zoom," he said. "I don't even carry a zoom lens with me, unless it's for something very specific." The famous coin-tossing scene between Chigurh and

912-623: A group of Mexicans tailing them. Bell reaches the motel in El Paso, only to find that the Mexicans have killed Moss. Carla Jean arrives later and bursts into tears when Bell somberly removes his hat. That night, Bell returns to the crime scene and observes the lock blown out. Bell thinks that Chigurh is hiding, but when Bell hesitantly enters, he finds the room empty. Later, Bell visits his cousin Ellis and tells him he plans to retire because he feels overmatched by

1026-490: A hotel in the border town of Eagle Pass , Moss discovers the tracking device, but Chigurh has already found him. Their firefight spills onto the streets, badly wounding both and killing a truck driver. Moss flees to Mexico, hiding the case along the Rio Grande. A norteño band takes Moss to a hospital. Chigurh cleans and stitches his wounds with stolen supplies. Carson Wells, a bounty hunter, offers Moss protection in exchange for

1140-414: A level of kitschy drama as the tension rises from the mere sense of quiet and doom that prevails." Jeffrey Overstreet adds that "the scenes in which Chigurh stalks Moss are as suspenseful as anything the Coens have ever staged. And that has as much to do with what we hear as what we see . No Country for Old Men lacks a traditional soundtrack, but don't say it doesn't have music. The blip-blip-blip of

1254-470: A long-lost son. Accompanied by two girls in white, Mrs. O'Brien gracefully whispers, " I give him to you . I give you my son." Jack's vision ends and he leaves his office, smiling contentedly. The mysterious light continues flickering in the darkness. Malick released an extended version of the film in September 2018, which incorporates unused footage from the original film shoot. Although Malick maintains that

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1368-414: A longer alternate version of The Tree of Life which Malick would like to create. In an unprecedented move, Criterion decided to finance the alternate version for its eventual inclusion on both Blu-ray and DVD. In creating the alternate version, the original negatives' palettes were located for Malick to use, the entire film scanned in 4K resolution , cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki brought in to help grade

1482-452: A meeting with the Coens and he was given the part. Javier Bardem nearly withdrew from the role of Anton Chigurh due to issues with scheduling. English actor Mark Strong was put on standby to take over, but the scheduling issues were resolved and Bardem took on the role. Producer Scott Rudin bought the film rights to McCarthy's novel and suggested an adaptation to the Coen brothers , who at

1596-451: A musical soundtrack, creating a mood conducive to thoughtful and unornamented speculation in what is otherwise a fierce and destructive landscape." Jay Ellis, however, disagrees. "[McFarland] missed the extremely quiet but audible fade in a few tones from a keyboard beginning when Chigurh flips the coin for the gas station man", he said. "This ambient music (by long-time Coens collaborator Carter Burwell) grows imperceptibly in volume so that it

1710-486: A new 4K digital restoration of the original version. Both editions also include the film's trailer, the making-of documentary Exploring "The Tree of Life" , a 2011 interview with composer Alexandre Desplat, new interviews with actress Jessica Chastain, visual-effects supervisor Dan Glass, and music critic Alex Ross, and a 2011 video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz , as well as a booklet containing essays by film critics Kent Jones and Roger Ebert . The cover used for both editions

1824-402: A nightgown from his crush's house. Mr. O'Brien's plant shuts down, forcing the family to relocate. Before leaving the house for the last time, Mr. O'Brien has a moment of self-reflection. He asks Jack to forgive him for his harshness, and tries to conciliate Jack by telling him that he takes after his mother. However, Jack insists that he better resembles his father. Returning to 2010, Jack has

1938-439: A part in the editing process. Some of them stayed on the film the whole time. In an unused ending for the film, Jack arrives as a boarding student at St. Stephen's Episcopal School , which Malick attended in the 1950s. After nearly thirty years away from Hollywood, famed special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull contributed to the visual effects work on The Tree of Life . Malick, a friend of Trumbull, approached him about

2052-403: A place of wonder. Jack sees his father as the embodiment of nature: hot-tempered, tough, and stern. He teaches his sons to fight and to not trust people easily. As Jack grows older, he learns that his parents are frustrated with their lives. Mr. O'Brien finds his career unfulfilling, as his true passion is music. He spends his free time inventing gadgets and hopes to start his own business. One of

2166-427: A quotation from Job. That quotation holds the key to the film and in some sense, the key to our attitude toward life." He added that "The agony of the parents, the periodic cruelty of the father — all are the powerful but passing dramas that for the moment entirely preoccupy us as we watch the movie. But then we are drawn back to a world so much bigger than our hour upon the stage that we know again how essentially small

2280-410: A seemingly empty existence and has a difficult relationship with his elderly father, who still has not gotten over R.L.'s death. In voiceover, Mrs. O'Brien asks God why R.L. had to die. Then, a series of dreamlike visuals depict the birth of the universe , the creation , of Earth and the beginning of life . At one point, a dinosaur spares another, badly wounded, dinosaur. Finally, an asteroid strikes

2394-401: A sustained tone when rubbed." The movie contains a "mere" 16 minutes of music, with several of those in the end credits. The music in the trailer was called "Diabolic Clockwork" by Two Steps from Hell . Sound editing and effects were provided by another longtime Coens collaborator, Skip Lievsay , who used a mixture of emphatic sounds (gun shots) and ambient noise (engine noise, prairie winds) in

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2508-446: A teenager he sent to the chair explain that, although the newspapers described the boy's murder of his 14-year-old girlfriend as a crime of passion, "he told me there weren't nothin' passionate about it. Said he'd been fixin' to kill someone for as long as he could remember. Said if I let him out of there, he'd kill somebody again. Said he was goin' to hell. "Be there in about 15 minutes."" Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert praised

2622-467: A transponder becomes as frightening as the famous theme from Jaws . The sound of footsteps on the hardwood floors of a hotel hallway are as ominous as the drums of war. When the leather of a briefcase squeaks against the metal of a ventilation shaft, you'll cringe, and the distant echo of a telephone ringing in a hotel lobby will jangle your nerves." While No Country for Old Men is a "doggedly faithful" adaptation of McCarthy's 2005 novel and its themes,

2736-524: A vision of a young girl, accompanied by himself as a child, walking across desolate terrain. He walks through a wooden door frame and sees a view of the far distant future in which the Sun expands into a red giant , engulfing Earth and then shrinking into a white dwarf . The dead return to life and gather at the seaside, where Jack is reunited with his family and all those who populate his memory. Jack meets his brothers and brings R.L. to his parents, who embrace him as

2850-533: A winner, but The Tree of Life "ultimately fit the bill". De Niro explained, "It had the size, the importance, the intention, whatever you want to call it, that seemed to fit the prize." The Tree of Life has since garnered critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes , 85% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 298 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The site's critics consensus reads "Terrence Malick's singularly deliberate style may prove unrewarding for some, but for patient viewers, Tree of Life

2964-512: Is "a new career peak for the Coen brothers" and "as entertaining as hell". In 1980, hitman Anton Chigurh is arrested in Texas. He escapes by strangling the sheriff's deputy and steals a car by killing the driver with a captive bolt pistol . Later, he spares the life of a gas station owner for correctly calling a coin toss . Meanwhile, Llewelyn Moss is hunting pronghorns in the desert. He comes across

3078-426: Is a better version. This is another version. The extended version runs to 188 minutes; in addition to entirely new footage with new characters and scenes, it also extends existing scenes and features minor changes to the film's score, musical arrangements, and color grading. After premiering at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on September 7, 2018, the extended cut was released on September 11, along with

3192-430: Is an accepted version of this page No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American neo-Western crime thriller film written, directed, produced and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen , based on Cormac McCarthy 's 2005 novel . Starring Tommy Lee Jones , Javier Bardem , and Josh Brolin , the film is set in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas . The film revisits the themes of fate, conscience, and circumstance that

3306-435: Is an emotional as well as visual treat." On Metacritic , which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, the film has a rating score of 85 out of 100 based on 50 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Roger Ebert gave the film four stars of four and wrote: The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through

3420-477: Is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. Richard Gillmore relates the Yeats poem to the Coens' film, saying: The lament that can be heard in these lines is for no longer belonging to the country of the young. It is also a lament for the way the young neglect the wisdom of the past and, presumably, of the old ... Yeats chooses Byzantium because it

3534-515: Is darker, as it were, in the cave of this man's ignorance than it is outside in the bright light of truth." The project was a co-production between Miramax Films and Paramount 's classics-based division in a 50/50 partnership, and production was scheduled for May 2006 in New Mexico and Texas . With a total budget of $ 25 million (at least half spent in New Mexico ), production was slated for

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3648-537: Is designed by Neil Kellerhouse. The Tree of Life Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat was released in 2011 by Lakeshore Records . "The Tree of Life" features selections and snippets from more than 30 individual pieces—including works by Brahms, Mahler, Bach, Couperin, Górecki and Holst. They are all woven together seamlessly with the help of some original music by Alexandre Desplat. Early reviews for The Tree of Life were polarized. After being met with both boos and applause at its premiere at

3762-440: Is each human story." According to Bob Mondello , the film is showing that "to understand the death of a young man, we need to understand everything that led to his creation, starting with creation itself." Kristen Scharold compared the film to Augustine's Confessions , and noted how one voiceover is nearly identical to a quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky 's The Brothers Karamazov . Many have said that Mr. O'Brien represents

3876-420: Is easily missed as an element of the mis-en-scene. But it is there, telling our unconscious that something different is occurring with the toss; this becomes certain when it ends as Chigurh uncovers the coin on the counter. The deepest danger has passed as soon as Chigurh finds (and Javier Bardem's acting confirms this) and reveals to the man that he has won." In order to achieve such a sound effect, Burwell "tuned

3990-524: Is go shoot new material". Malick was careful to note that the extended cut of the film is an alternative version, not the definitive one. In an interview with Indiewire , Criterion technical director Lee Kline said: Unlike with [ The New World ], [the version of The Tree of Life ] that premiered in 2011 at Cannes [was] definitely the definitive version of the film he wanted to make. What's interesting talking to Terry about this [new version of Tree of Life ], I think he still doesn't want people to think this

4104-494: The 2011 Cannes Film Festival , the film received mixed early reviews. It went on to be awarded the Palme d'Or . Two of its producers, Bill Pohlad and Sarah Green, accepted the prize on behalf of the reclusive Malick. The Tree of Life is the first American film to win the Palme d'Or since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004. The head of the jury, Robert De Niro , said it was difficult to choose

4218-634: The 80th Academy Awards (including Best Picture ), three British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), and two Golden Globes . The American Film Institute listed it as an AFI Movie of the Year, and the National Board of Review selected it as the best of 2007. It is one of only four Western films ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (the others being Cimarron in 1931, Dances with Wolves in 1990, and Unforgiven in 1992). No Country for Old Men

4332-445: The Palme d'Or . It ranked number one on review aggregator Metacritic 's "Film Critic Top Ten List of 2011", and made more critics' year-end lists for 2011 than any other film. It has since been ranked by some publications as one of the greatest films of the 2010s, of the 21st century, and of all time . The Tree of Life received three Oscar nominations: Best Picture , Best Director and Best Cinematography . The film follows

4446-510: The Coen brothers had explored in the films Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), and Fargo (1996). The film follows three main characters: Llewelyn Moss (Brolin), a Vietnam War veteran and welder who stumbles upon a large sum of money in the desert; Anton Chigurh (Bardem), a hitman who is sent to recover the money; and Ed Tom Bell (Jones), a sheriff investigating the crime. The film also stars Kelly Macdonald as Moss's wife, Carla Jean, and Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells,

4560-434: The Coens finally growing up?" He adds: "If [the film] feels pessimistic, Joel insists that's not the Coens' responsibility: 'I don't think the movie is more or less so than the novel. We tried to give it the same feeling.' The brothers do concede, however, that it's a dark piece of storytelling. 'It's refreshing for us to do different kinds of things,' says Ethan, 'and we'd just done a couple of comedies.'" The Coens minimized

4674-501: The Earth . In the 1940s, Mrs. and Mr. O'Brien start a family in the Waco suburbs. They have very different personalities. Jack's mother teaches him that mankind is divided into the "way of nature" and the "way of grace "—a view analogous to, but not precisely, complementarianism . Jack sees his mother as the embodiment of grace: kind, forgiving, and nurturing. She presents the world to her sons as

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4788-589: The May 4 release. On March 31, Jeff Wells was told by Jill Jones, Summit's senior VP of international marketing and publicity, that Icon has lost the right to distribute The Tree of Life in the UK, due to defaulting on its agreement, with the matter pending arbitration at a tribunal in Los Angeles. On June 9, it was announced that The Tree of Life would be released in the UK on July 8, 2011, after Fox Searchlight Pictures picked up

4902-518: The McCarthy novel. "There's something about it – there were echoes of it in No Country for Old Men that were quite interesting for us", he said, "because it was the idea of the physical work that somebody does that helps reveal who they are and is part of the fiber of the story. Because you only saw this person in this movie making things and doing things in order to survive and to make this journey, and

5016-524: The New Mexico cities of Santa Fe , Albuquerque , and Las Vegas (which doubled as the border towns of Eagle Pass and Del Rio, Texas ), with other scenes shot around the West Texas towns of Sanderson and Marfa . Coincidentally, Paul Thomas Anderson's film There Will Be Blood – another partnership between Miramax and Paramount which competed with No Country For Old Men at the Academy Awards –

5130-569: The UK rights from Icon. The Tree of Life was released on Blu-ray Disc in the United States and Canada on October 11, 2011; on January 24, 2012, there was a separate release of the DVD. During the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, Peter Becker, president of the home media company The Criterion Collection , and Fox Searchlight discussed a potential Criterion home video release that would include

5244-458: The adaptation. "It really is just compression," he said. "We didn't create new situations." He further assured that he and his brother Ethan had never met McCarthy when they were writing the script, but first met him during the shooting of the film. He believed that the author liked the film, while his brother Ethan said, "he didn't yell at us. We were actually sitting in a movie theater/screening room with him when he saw it ... and I heard him chuckle

5358-449: The aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. He finds several dead men, a wounded Mexican man begging for water, and cache of drugs in a truck. Following the blood trail of "the last man standing" he finds him, now dead from his wounds under a tree beside a briefcase containing $ 2.4 million in cash. He takes the briefcase and returns home. Feeling guilty, he returns with water that night, but finds the man dead of new gunshot wounds. He looks up to

5472-484: The bad guys never really meet the good guys, that McCarthy did not follow through on formula expectations." Ethan Coen explained that the "pitiless quality" was a "hallmark of the book, which has an unforgiving landscape and characters but is also about finding some kind of beauty without being sentimental." The adaptation was the second of McCarthy's work, following All the Pretty Horses in 2000. The Coens' script

5586-407: The camera was all hand-held so it was a very free-form, low-key experience." Malick would change different aspects of a scene between takes in order to create "moments of truth". Similar to many of Malick's films, the film had "teams of editors to put together different cuts, and finding and discarding entire story lines during the post-production process." Malick used "unorthodox methods to edit

5700-565: The cosmos up through the formation of the Earth and the beginnings of life." The film was known as Q and included elements not in The Tree of Life such as a section set in the Middle East during World War I , and an underwater minotaur dreaming about the evolution of the universe. One day, Malick "just stopped" working on the film. Decades later, Malick pitched the concept of The Tree of Life to River Road Entertainment head Bill Pohlad while

5814-625: The difficulties it was having getting made. It was "much later on" that the decision was made for Pitt to be part of the cast. The Tree of Life was announced in late 2005, with Indian production company Percept Picture Company set to finance it and Donald Rosenfeld on board as executive producer. The film was set to be shot partially in India , with pre-production scheduled to begin in January 2006. Colin Farrell and Mel Gibson were at one stage attached to

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5928-454: The director was attempting something radical. He also implied that details of the film were a close secret. In March 2009, visual effects artist Mike Fink revealed to Empire magazine that he was working on scenes of prehistoric Earth for the film. The similarity of the scenes Fink describes to descriptions of a hugely ambiguous project entitled Q that Malick worked on soon after Days of Heaven led to speculation that The Tree of Life

6042-451: The door lock. Moss takes a taxi to a motel in Del Rio , where he hides the briefcase in his room's air duct. Following a tracking device hidden in the case, Chigurh goes to Moss' motel and kills three Mexican mobsters. Moss has rented a second room adjacent to the Mexicans' room with access to the duct where the money is hidden. He retrieves the briefcase before Chigurh opens the duct. Moving to

6156-515: The effects work and mentioned that he did not like the look of computer-generated imagery . Trumbull asked Malick, "Why not do it the old way? The way we did it in 2001 ?" Working with visual effects supervisor Dan Glass, Trumbull used a variety of materials for the creation of the universe sequence. "We worked with chemicals, paint, fluorescent dyes, smoke, liquids, CO 2 , flares, spin dishes, fluid dynamics, lighting and high speed photography to see how effective they might be," said Trumbull. "It

6270-479: The entire film." In The Village Voice , Scott Foundas writes that "Like McCarthy, the Coens are markedly less interested in who (if anyone) gets away with the loot than in the primal forces that urge the characters forward ... In the end, everyone in No Country for Old Men is both hunter and hunted, members of some endangered species trying to forestall their extinction ." Roger Ebert writes that "the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are in

6384-606: The face of implacable injustice." New York Times critic A. O. Scott observes that Chigurh, Moss, and Bell each "occupy the screen one at a time, almost never appearing in the frame together, even as their fates become ever more intimately entwined." The Tree of Life (film) The Tree of Life is a 2011 American epic experimental coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick . Its main cast includes Brad Pitt , Sean Penn , Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Jessica Chastain , and Tye Sheridan in his debut feature film role. The film chronicles

6498-466: The fact that God has not entered his life." In an interview with The Guardian , Ethan said, "Hard men in the south-west shooting each other – that's definitely Sam Peckinpah's thing. We were aware of those similarities, certainly." They discuss choreographing and directing the film's violent scenes in the Sydney Morning Herald : "'That stuff is such fun to do', the brothers chime in at

6612-416: The fact that you were thrown back on that, as opposed to any dialogue, was interesting to us." Coen stated that this is the brothers' "first adaptation". He further explained why they chose the novel: "Why not start with Cormac? Why not start with the best?" He further described this McCarthy book in particular as "unlike his other novels ... it is much pulpier." Coen stated that they have not changed much in

6726-424: The feeling that, out there on the road from nowhere to nowhere, they are rooting for it rather than against it." Josh Brolin discussed the Coens' directing style in an interview, saying that the brothers "only really say what needs to be said. They don't sit there as directors and manipulate you and go into page after page to try to get you to a certain place. They may come in and say one word or two words, so that

6840-505: The film also revisits themes which the Coens had explored in their earlier movies Blood Simple and Fargo . The three films share common themes, such as pessimism and nihilism . The novel's motifs of chance, free-will, and predestination are familiar territory for the Coen brothers, who presented similar threads and tapestries of "fate [and] circumstance" in earlier works including Raising Arizona , which featured another hitman, albeit less serious in tone. Numerous critics cited

6954-467: The film credited Thomas Wilfred 's lumia composition Opus 161 , and that this was the source of the "shifting flame of red-yellow light" at the beginning and the end. Many reviewers have noted the philosophical and theological themes of the film. Catholic author and now bishop of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester Fr. Robert Barron , reviewing The Tree of Life for a Chicago Tribune blog, noted that "in

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7068-428: The film from Pohlad's River Road Entertainment. The film opened in limited release in the United States on May 27, 2011. On March 28, 2011, UK magazine Empire reported that UK distributor Icon Entertainment was planning to release the film on May 4, 2011. This would make the UK the first region in the world to see the film, preempting the expected Cannes Film Festival premiere on May 11. This would disqualify

7182-418: The film from inclusion at Cannes. As a result, a surge of interest in the story developed on international film news sites. After film blogger Jeff Wells was told by a Fox Searchlight representative that this was "unlikely", and Anne Thompson received similar word from Searchlight and outright denial from Summit, Helen O'Hara from Empire received a confirmation from Icon that they intended to stick with

7296-516: The film is a large live oak tree that was excavated from a property five miles outside Smithville . The 65,000-pound tree and root ball were trucked into Smithville and replanted. The sets for The Tree of Life were unusual for a large scale film. According to Brad Pitt, "A movie set is very chaotic. There [are] hundreds of people; there [are] generators and trucks. And this was a completely different experience — we had none of that." "There were no [camera] lights ... there were no generators and

7410-467: The film reveals deep cracks behind the facade, which leave Jack traumatized for decades. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?   ... When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" In the 1960s, Mrs. and Mr. O'Brien are devastated to learn that their son R.L., aged 19, has died. In 2010, Jack is a successful but world-weary architect in Dallas . He leads

7524-541: The film to Thierry Fremaux and the Cannes selection committee. Though Fremaux warmly received the cut and was eager to screen the film at his festival, Malick ultimately told him that he felt the film was not ready. On the eve of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival , Berney suddenly announced his departure from Apparition, leaving the company's future uncertain. Pohlad decided to keep The Tree of Life at Apparition, and after significant restructuring , hired Tom Ortenberg to act as

7638-494: The film". One of the film's editors, Billy Weber said "Terry is willing to try anything. Absolutely anything. Sometimes we'd cut a character out of a scene, or cut all the dialogue out of a scene, just to see if it worked. And when you've worked with him for any length of time, you can even try that without asking him about it first. He's very open to looking at anything that you try." This includes allowing film students from USC and University of Texas , as well as interns, to play

7752-411: The film. The result is a movie that is more simplified thematically, but one that gives more of the characters an opportunity to shine." Jay Ellis elaborates on Chigurh's encounter with the man behind the counter at the gas station. "Where McCarthy gives us Chigurh's question as, 'What's the most you ever saw lost on a coin toss?', he says, 'the film elides the word 'saw', but the Coens of course tend to

7866-400: The footage, and a full sound mix created for the additional material, with Malick even dedicating "the better part of a year" to this project. Becker stated that the company has "never undertaken anything this extensive or this challenging, or anything that has taken this long to achieve or required so much effort on the part of pretty much every post-production craft. The only thing we didn't do

7980-469: The goodness of God. He resents his father, who harshly disciplines him but cuts R.L. slack because of their shared love of music. He criticizes his mother for failing to stand up to his father. When Mr. O'Brien goes on a business trip, a weight is lifted from the family's shoulders. The boys happily play with their mother. However, without his father's discipline, Jack's rebellious streak emerges. Peer-pressured, Jack commits vandalism and animal abuse, and steals

8094-441: The importance of chance to both the novel and the film, focusing on Chigurh's fate-deciding coin flipping , but noted that the nature of the film medium made it difficult to include the "self-reflective qualities of McCarthy's novel." Still, the Coens open the film with a voice-over narration by Tommy Lee Jones (who plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell) set against the barren Texas country landscape where he makes his home. His ruminations on

8208-579: The imposing figure of Chigurh. As explained by Kelly Macdonald, "the ending of the book is different. She reacts more in the way I react. She kind of falls apart. In the film she's been through so much and she can't lose any more. It's just she's got this quiet acceptance of it." In the book, some attention is paid to the daughter, Deborah, whom the Bells lost and who haunts the protagonist in his thoughts. Richard Corliss of Time stated that "the Coen brothers have adapted literary works before. Miller's Crossing

8322-451: The inventions looks promising, but after Mr. O'Brien loses a patent suit, nothing changes. Mrs. O'Brien lives under the thumb of her domineering husband, who screams at her and blames her for not disciplining the boys enough. He worries that her kindness, which contrasts with his discipline, has caused his sons to hate him. As a teenager, Jack begins to question his parents' philosophy of life. The death of his friend Taylor shakes his faith in

8436-428: The land and from the people. Craig Kennedy adds that "one key difference is that of focus. The novel belongs to Sheriff Bell. Each chapter begins with Bell's narration, which dovetails and counterpoints the action of the main story. Though the film opens with Bell speaking, much of what he says in the book is condensed and it turns up in other forms. Also, Bell has an entire backstory in the book that doesn't make it into

8550-477: The members of the O'Brien family in the 1940s-1960s and 2010. Most of the film takes place in the 1950s, but the film jumps between different narratives. The O'Briens appear to be a standard American middle-class suburban family. Mr. O'Brien is a successful engineer for an energy company, but has enough free time to indulge his love of music. Mrs. O'Brien is a housewife with many friends in the neighborhood. They have three healthy boys, Jack, R.L., and Stevie. However,

8664-447: The mention of their penchant for blood-letting. 'Even Javier would come in by the end of the movie, rub his hands together and say, 'OK, who am I killing today?' adds Joel. 'It's fun to figure out', says Ethan. 'It's fun working out how to choreograph it, how to shoot it, how to engage audiences watching it.'" Director Joel Coen described the process of film making: "I can almost set my watch by how I'm going to feel at different stages of

8778-403: The mix. The foley for the captive bolt pistol used by Chigurh was created using a pneumatic nail gun. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker states that "there is barely any music, sensual or otherwise, and Carter Burwell's score is little more than a fitful murmur", and Douglas McFarland states that "perhaps [the film's] salient formal characteristic is the absence, with one telling exception, of

8892-495: The money, but he refuses. Chigurh ambushes Wells at his hotel. The phone rings as Wells is bartering for his life. Chigurh shoots him and takes the call from Moss, vowing to kill Carla Jean unless Moss gives up the money. Moss retrieves the case from the Rio Grande and arranges to meet Carla Jean at a motel in El Paso , where he plans to give her the money and hide her from danger. Carla Jean's mother unknowingly reveals Moss' location to

9006-452: The multitude and the few alike." The idea of a balance and a coherence in a society's religious, aesthetic, and practical life is Yeats's ideal ... It is an ideal rarely realized in this world and maybe not even in ancient Byzantium. Certainly within the context of the movie No Country for Old Men , one has the sense, especially from Bell as the chronicler of the times, that things are out of alignment, that balance and harmony are gone from

9120-588: The music's swelling hum to the 60-hertz frequency of a refrigerator." Dennis Lim of The New York Times stressed that "there is virtually no music on the soundtrack of this tense, methodical thriller. Long passages are entirely wordless. In some of the most gripping sequences what you hear mostly is a suffocating silence." Skip Lievsay, the film's sound editor called this approach "quite a remarkable experiment," and added that "suspense thrillers in Hollywood are traditionally done almost entirely with music. The idea here

9234-404: The narration. "These words sounded verbatim to me from No Country for Old Men , the novel by Cormac McCarthy ", he said. "But I find they are not quite. And their impact has been improved upon in the delivery. When I get the DVD of this film, I will listen to that stretch of narration several times; Jones delivers it with a vocal precision and contained emotion that is extraordinary, and it sets up

9348-400: The old gas station clerk is a good example; the camera tracks in so slowly that the audience isn't even aware of the move. "When the camera itself moves forward, the audience is moving, too. You're actually getting closer to somebody or something. It has, to me, a much more powerful effect, because it's a three-dimensional move. A zoom is more like a focusing of attention. You're just standing in

9462-402: The origins and meaning of life by way of a middle-aged man's childhood memories of his family living in 1950s Texas, interspersed with imagery of the origins of the universe and the inception of life on Earth. After several years in development and missing its planned 2009 and 2010 release dates, The Tree of Life premiered in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival , where it was awarded

9576-560: The play of good and evil, in the tension between nature and grace, God is up to something beautiful, though we are unable to grasp it totally..."Tree of Life" is communicating this same difficult but vital lesson." The Catholic magazine America called the film "a philosophical exploration of grief , theodicy and the duality of grace and human nature". They described the final beach scene as "the greatest film depiction of eschatological bodily resurrection". Rabbi David Wolpe says "that Terrence Malick's new film "Tree of Life" opens with

9690-558: The prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I've seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick 's 2001: A Space Odyssey and it lacked Malick's fierce evocation of human feeling. There were once several directors who yearned to make no less than a masterpiece, but now there are only a few. Malick has stayed true to that hope ever since his first feature in 1973. The following year, Ebert gave The Tree of Life one of his ten votes in Sight & Sound ' s 2012 critics' poll of

9804-543: The process. It's always identical, whether the movie ends up working or not. I think when you watch the dailies, the film that you shoot every day, you're very excited by it and very optimistic about how it's going to work. And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before." David Denby of The New Yorker criticized

9918-660: The producers decided to focus on releasing at a later date so as not to cannibalize its release. It was released in IMAX in the United States on October 7, 2016 by Broad Green Pictures . By May 2009, The Tree of Life had been sold to a number of international distributors, including EuropaCorp in France , TriPictures in Spain , and Icon in the United Kingdom and Australia , but lacked

10032-437: The project. Heath Ledger was set to play the role of Mr. O'Brien, but dropped out (due to recurring sicknesses) a month before his death in early 2008. For the roles of the three brothers, the production team spent over a year, seeing over 10,000 Texas students for the roles. About 95% of the entire cast had no prior acting experience. In an October 2008 interview Jack Fisk , a longtime Malick collaborator, suggested that

10146-415: The recent violence. Ellis tells Bell of a story in which a lawman, Ellis' uncle, was killed on his porch and says that the region has always been violent. Carla Jean returns from her mother's funeral to find Chigurh waiting in the bedroom. Chigurh says he must fulfill his vow, but offers a coin toss as a compromise. Carla Jean refuses to call it, saying that he will be responsible for her fate. Chigurh checks

10260-430: The ridge and sees two men with guns who pursue him in a truck. He escapes into a river, shooting the men's dog as it chases him. After making his way back home, Moss sends his wife, Carla Jean, to stay with her mother. Chigurh is hired to recover the missing money; meanwhile, Terrell County Sheriff Ed Tom Bell begins investigating the failed drug deal. Chigurh searches Moss' trailer home, using his bolt pistol to blow out

10374-433: The sadness in this situation [is] it's on his sons." Many reviewers have noted the similarities between Jack's life and Terrence Malick's life. Jim Lynch, a close friend of Malick, told Malick that he thought The Tree of Life, Knight of Cups , and Song to Song , formed an "autobiographical trilogy". Lynch said Malick disliked the labeling and "didn't want people thinking that he was just making movies about himself. He

10488-407: The same place and concentrating on one smaller element in the frame. Emotionally, that's a very different effect." In a later interview, he mentioned the "awkward dilemma [that] No Country certainly contains scenes of some very realistically staged fictional violence, but ... without this violent depiction of evil there would not be the emotional 'pay off' at the end of the film when Ed Tom bemoans

10602-517: The score used in the film, leaving large sections devoid of music. The concept was Ethan's, who persuaded a skeptical Joel to go with the idea. There is some music in the movie, scored by the Coens' longtime composer, Carter Burwell , but after finding that "most musical instruments didn't fit with the minimalist sound sculpture he had in mind ... he used singing bowls , standing metal bells traditionally employed in Buddhist meditation practice that produce

10716-408: The soles of his boots as he leaves the house. As he drives through the neighborhood, another car crashes into him, breaking his arm. He asks a passing boy for a shirt to use as a sling and flees on foot. Now retired, Bell shares two dreams with his wife. In the first, he lost some money his father had given him. In the other, as he rode through a snowy mountain pass, his father rode past him to prepare

10830-454: The subtle images richly nuanced by sound. As the scene opens in a long shot, the screen is filled with the remote location of the rest stop with the sound of the Texaco sign mildly squeaking in a light breeze. The sound and image of a crinkled cashew wrapper tossed on the counter adds to the tension as the paper twists and turns. The intimacy and potential horror that it suggests is never elevated to

10944-404: The theatrical edition is the official director's cut, the extended version expands on the character of Mr. O'Brien and broadly questions Mrs. O'Brien's either-or distinction between nature and grace. Additional plot elements include: In the late 1970s, Terrence Malick was offered $ 1 million for his project after Days of Heaven . Malick had an idea for a film that would be "a history of

11058-457: The time were attempting to adapt the novel To the White Sea by James Dickey . By August 2005, the Coens agreed to write and direct the film, having identified with how it provided a sense of place and also how it played with genre conventions. Joel Coen said that the book's unconventional approach "was familiar, congenial to us; we're naturally attracted to subverting genre. We liked the fact that

11172-502: The two were collaborating on an early version of Che . Pohlad recalled initially thinking the idea was "crazy", but as the film concept evolved, he came to feel strongly about the idea; he ended up financing the film. Producer Grant Hill was also involved with the film at an early stage. During a meeting on a different subject involving Malick, his producer Sarah Green , Brad Pitt , and Pitt's Plan B Entertainment production partner Dede Gardner , Malick brought up Tree of Life and

11286-460: The visual. Where the book describes the setting as 'almost dark', the film clearly depicts high noon: no shadows are notable in the establishing shot of the gas station, and the sunlight is bright even if behind cloud cover. The light through two windows and a door comes evenly through three walls in the interior shots. But this difference increases our sense of the man's desperation later, when he claims he needs to close and he closes at 'near dark'; it

11400-439: The way of nature, while Mrs. O'Brien represents the way of grace. Brad Pitt said Mr. O'Brien "represents nature — but nature as that oppressive force that will choke another plant out for its own survival." "The American dream didn't work out as he believed it would. [He's] quite envious and bitter that people are ahead of him. Naturally, when someone feels oppressed, they find someone weaker to pass that oppression on[to], and

11514-530: The way the Coens "disposed of" Llewelyn Moss. "The Coens, however faithful to the book", he said, "cannot be forgiven for disposing of Llewelyn so casually. After watching this foolhardy but physically gifted and decent guy escape so many traps, we have a great deal invested in him emotionally, and yet he's eliminated, off-camera, by some unknown Mexicans. He doesn't get the dignity of a death scene. The Coens have suppressed their natural jauntiness. They have become orderly, disciplined masters of chaos, but one still has

11628-450: Was a fear, for sure, because dialogue, that's what you kind of rest upon as an actor, you know? ... Drama and all the stuff is all dialogue motivated. You have to figure out different ways to convey ideas. You don't want to overcompensate because the fear is that you're going to be boring if nothing's going on. You start doing this and this and taking off your hat and putting it on again or some bullshit that doesn't need to be there. So yeah, I

11742-794: Was a free-wheeling opportunity to explore, something that I have found extraordinarily hard to get in the movie business. Terry didn't have any preconceived ideas of what something should look like. We did things like pour milk through a funnel into a narrow trough and shoot it with a high-speed camera and folded lens, lighting it carefully and using a frame rate that would give the right kind of flow characteristics to look cosmic, galactic, huge and epic." The team also included Double Negative in London . Fluid-based effects were developed by Peter and Chris Parks, who had previously worked on similar effects for The Fountain . A column in The New Yorker noted that

11856-442: Was a great early Christian city in which Plato's Academy , for a time, was still allowed to function. The historical period of Byzantium was a time of culmination that was also a time of transition. In his book of mystical writings, A Vision , Yeats says, "I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one, that architect and artificers ... spoke to

11970-474: Was a little afraid of that in the beginning. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised the novel adaptation. "Not since Robert Altman merged with the short stories of Raymond Carver in Short Cuts have filmmakers and author fused with such devastating impact as the Coens and McCarthy. Good and evil are tackled with a rigorous fix on the complexity involved." Director Joel Coen articulated his interest in

12084-509: Was a resurrection of that abandoned project. Principal photography began in Texas in 2008. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki returned to work with Malick after collaborating with him on The New World . The film was shot in 1.85:1 and often used natural light. The film used 35mm, 65mm, and IMAX formats. Locations included Smithville , Houston , Matagorda , Bastrop , Austin , Dallas , and Malick's hometown of Waco . The eponym of

12198-580: Was a sly, unacknowledged blend of two Dashiell Hammett tales, Red Harvest and The Glass Key ; and O Brother Where Art Thou? transferred the Odyssey to the American south in the 1930s. But No Country for Old Men is their first film taken, pretty straightforwardly, from a prime American novel." The writing is also notable for its minimal use of dialogue. Josh Brolin discussed his initial nervousness with having so little dialogue to work with: I mean it

12312-652: Was being shot in Marfa simultaneously. The Coen brothers were actually forced to scrap an entire day of filming for No Country For Old Men when preparations for the oil derrick scene in There Will Be Blood nearby produced enough smoke to ruin all potential scenes. The U.S.-Mexico border crossing bridge was actually a freeway overpass in Las Vegas, with a border checkpoint set built at the intersection of Interstate 25 and New Mexico State Road 65 . The Mexican town square

12426-538: Was considered one of the best films of 2007, and many regard it as the Coen brothers' best film. As of December 2021 , various sources had recognized it as one of the best films of the 2000s, and as one of the best films of the 21st century. The Guardian ' s John Patterson wrote: "the Coens' technical abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based Western classicism reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah , are matched by few living directors", and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said that it

12540-565: Was filmed in Piedras Negras, Coahuila . In advance of shooting, cinematographer Roger Deakins saw that "the big challenge" of his ninth collaboration with the Coen brothers was "making it very realistic, to match the story ... I'm imagining doing it very edgy and dark, and quite sparse. Not so stylized." "Everything's storyboarded before we start shooting," Deakins said in Entertainment Weekly . "In No Country , there's maybe only

12654-405: Was making movies about broader issues." In March 2009, Empire magazine's website quoted visual effects supervisor Mike Fink as saying that a version of the film will be released for IMAX cinemas along with two versions for traditional cinemas. The IMAX film has been revealed to be Voyage of Time , a documentary expanding on the "history of the universe" scenes in The Tree of Life , which

12768-399: Was mostly faithful to the source material. On their writing process, Ethan said, "One of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat." Still, they pruned where necessary. A teenage runaway who appeared late in the book and some backstory related to Bell were both removed. Also changed from the original was Carla Jean Moss's reaction when finally faced with

12882-688: Was nice to be around in order to feed the other thing. 'What should I do right now? I'll just watch Ethan go humming to himself and pacing. Maybe that's what I should do, too. ' " In an interview with Logan Hill of New York magazine, Brolin said, "We had a load of fun making it. Maybe it was because we both [Brolin and Javier Bardem ] thought we'd be fired. With the Coens, there's zero compliments, really zero anything. No 'nice work.' Nothing. And then—I'm doing this scene with Woody Harrelson . Woody can't remember his lines, he stumbles his way through it, and then both Coens are like, 'Oh my God! Fantastic!'" David Gritten of The Daily Telegraph wonders: "Are

12996-413: Was to remove the safety net that lets the audience feel like they know what's going to happen. I think it makes the movie much more suspenseful. You're not guided by the score and so you lose that comfort zone." James Roman observes the effect of sound in the scene where Chigurh pulls in for gas at the Texaco rest stop. "[The] scene evokes an eerie portrayal of innocence confronting evil," he says, "with

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