"The Tree of Life" is one of the , if not the, most pretentious,
boring movies I have ever seen and doesn't really qualify as a movie. I
have no idea why Brad Pitt, who hasn't had a hit film in awhile, made
this film unless he and his wife need money to raise their 6 children.
What possessed Sean Penn to do this film, unless he wanted to work with the director Terrence Malick is beyond my understanding.  Considering that he doesn't have any, what
an actor would call, scenes, and probably only has 15 minutes on screen
basically just walking I don't know what his payoff was for doing this.

The story takes only about 15-20 minutes to tell with 'acting' only required from Hunter McCrackin as Sean Penn as a boy and Jessica Chastain as his mother, Brad Pitt's wife. The rest of the 2 hour and 20 minutes
are scenes showing earth, the surrounding sky, the seas, Stanly
Kubrick's images of the start of life, Mother nature in her fury and
calm and, oh, yes, let's throw in a dinosaur or two! Add a lot of classical music in the background, and as I have heard, 5 editors in addition to Mr. Malick.
From multiplying cells to floating jelly fish the camera is never at
rest.  One has to wonder if this is a picture by the director of
photography, Emmanuel Lubezki, and just what Malick directed as where they are 'movie scenes' the actors, including the child actors don't seem to have been directed by anyone.

It is incomprehensible to me what Terrence Malick intended here as he takes a story of a man, who may be a wife abuser,
his wife, his 4 sons, one who dies, and how the man fails as a father.
He tells the story in 15 minutes and the 123 minutes before and after
are 'artistic' shots.

The ads for the film are like the film in that they are just there, not telling you anything.