Clip It: Each day, Jon Davis looks at the world of trailers, featurettes, and clips and puts it all in perspective.
Space! Dinosaurs! Black holes! How did director Terrence Malick even get the footage for Voyage of Time? He's really challenged himself this time. He's not just settling for natural light and only shooting during magic hour (the short period of time after sunset and before sunset when sunlight is softer). He's gone deep into the cosmos.
If you ever saw Malick's Tree of Life, one of the best movies of the 21st century, first of all, congratulations. It was a long movie. I saw it twice, so you know I'm crazy. After the first time, I was amazed at how well Malick weaved the history of the world with the history of humanity and each individual and how it's all connected. I enthusiastically showed Tree of Life to my fiancee (now wife) thinking she'd be blown away. She was not. “I could have done without the space and the dinosaurs.” She had a point. Perhaps a Brad Pitt-is-a-mean-dad movie and a National Geographic travelogue should be two different films, instead of one, long crazy cinematic experience. Your mileage may vary.
If you want to see the IMAX version of this movie, it's only 40 minutes and Brad Pitt is your narrator. The regular 35mm theatrical release is 90 minutes and Cate Blanchett assumes the narrator role. It's like Clue, you get to choose the experience you want. It's not really like Clue at all, actually. You don't get to choose who lives and who dies. This movie is all about the end of the universe. We all die.
I'm sure it's amazing. It's Terence Malick. He's one of the very few filmmakers who does exactly what he wants. My only advice is to not watch it while inebriated and don't think too hard about who we are and why we're all here or you'll drive yourself nuts.