Unless you were one of the chosen people Fox Searchlight invited to their lot two weeks ago for a special "screening" of the trailer for Terrence Malick's Tree of Life -- or, you know, unless you spotted it pirated on YouTube; or in the theater when you saw Black Swan -- this is the first time you're seeing anything resembling moving images from the much-delayed film. Try not to hyperventilate, folks! Let's hold hands and take a look together.
The first thing you'll notice about The Tree of Life trailer is a total lack of dinosaurs. Boo! (Alas, Fox Searchlight must be saving those for the second trailer.) After that though, things are perfectly beautiful and stilted. The film features the same lively-but-hermetically sealed imagery that has become Malick's calling card -- out of context, any of these shots could be confused for a car commercial.
As the story goes, The Tree of Life follows Jack, a "disillusioned adult" who remembers life with his domineering father (Brad Pitt). The trailer spends a lot of time with Pitt, the type of bastard who says things like, "Someday we'll fall down and weep, and we'll understand it all; all things" when he isn't glowering angrily. Sean Penn shows up, too -- he plays the adult Jack -- affecting a look that can only be described as "constipated."
Malick's obviously going for big themes here -- life, death, birth, rebirth -- but the trailer mostly just gets across that this is going to be a really, really pretty film. That's good enough...for now.
VERDICT: Sold.
When this gets yanked off of YouTube, head over to Apple to watch.