- 10
...this as an exceptional and major film.
—Todd McCarthy Hollywood Reporter
- 10
Better than a masterpiece -- whatever that is -- The Tree of Life is an eruption of a movie, something to live with, think, and talk about afterward.
—Nick Pinkerton Village Voice
- 10
Few American filmmakers are as alive to the splendor of the natural world as Terrence Malick, but even by his standards, The Tree of Life represents something extraordinary.
—Justin Chang Variety
- 10
With disarming sincerity and daunting formal sophistication The Tree of Life ponders some of the hardest and most persistent questions, the kind that leave adults speechless when children ask them.
—A. O. Scott New York Times
- 10
...recalls the mammoth ambition of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it's also more intimate and personal than Malick�s previous films, rooted in vivid memories of growing up in �50s Texas.
—Scott Tobias Onion AV Club
- 10
Better than a masterpiece -- whatever that is -- The Tree of Life is an eruption of a movie, something to live with, think, and talk about afterward.
—Nick Pinkerton LA Weekly
- 9
The Tree of Life is pretty much nuts overall, a manic hybrid folly with flashes of brilliance. But even if that's true it's a noble crazy, a miraculous William Butler Yeats kind of crazy, alive with passion for art and the world, for all that is lost and not lost and still to come.
—Andrew O'Hehir Salon
- 9
Some will dismiss its overarching themes and elliptical visuals as pretentious. Others might question its quasi-biblical images. But the artistry in every frame is undeniable.
—Claudia Puig USA Today
- 9
There's room for interpretation, but if you can let yourself go with the flow it's pretty awe-inspiring at times, and sure to be Oscar-nominated.
—L. Thompson E!
- 9
...a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives.
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 8
...the film is structured as an intense, hallucinatory immersion that plugs us into the mind of its characters, and in turn into its maker's own.
—Ed Gonzalez Slant Magazine
- 8
The Tree of Life is both luminously precise... and maddeningly without form and void.
—Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly
- 8
...delivers truths that don't go down easy. No one with a genuine interest in the potential of film would think of missing it.
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 8
As much as Tree of Life may be an essential piece of cinema, its true meaning impossible to pinpoint and its mysteries doubling over on themselves within a single shot, it is also a minefield of dichotomies, not the least of which is Berkey's ocean of percolating, nuanced noise, topped off by Alexandre Desplat's towering score, and Malick's astounding collaborative work with the great cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who worked on The New World as well.
—Chris Cabin filmcritic.com
- 8
Based on my own two viewings, The Tree of Life is likely to inspire more after-screening debate over its meaning than all of the summer's other movies combined. It's overflowing with powerful images that will stay with me a long time, even if I still can't explain some of them.
—Lou Lumenick New York Post
- 8
"Tell us a story from before we can remember," one character says. The Tree of Life is that story.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 7
...despite its many sorrowful passages, The Tree of Life never really grabbed hold of me as a work of emotional intelligence. It's a phenomenal artwork but, for all its solar flares, it's cold to the touch.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 6
The Tree of Life, its enormous advantages notwithstanding, ends up a film that demands to be admired but cannot be easily embraced.
—Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times