movies

Sean Penn Didn’t Really Get Tree of Life Either

Photo: Jemal Countess/2011 Getty Images
Sean Penn. Photo: Jemal Countess/2011 Getty Images

Sean Penn thinks that the script for Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is “the most magnificent one” he’s ever read, but that the final film is still sort of puzzling. “I didn’t at all find on the screen the emotion of the script,” he told France’s Le Figaro. “A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context,” he says. Penn says Malick himself couldn’t really explain the role, either, but that the filmmaker is a “real artist.” Penn still recommends Tree and says it can be very moving, as long as audiences watch it without specific expectations. Expect dinosaurs, though, because there is that dinosaur scene. [Le Figaro via NYer]

Sean Penn Didn’t Really Get Tree of Life Either