I'm really intrigued to see how Kaufman does with this set of actors. The performances in Synecdoche were great because Philip Seymore Hoffman and company are great. Nick Cage and Jack Black, however, don't always (often) get it right when left to their own devices.

I KNOW, RIGHT?

but first:
<big>boom</big>
boom

we can delete these.

<size 7="">G</size>

<7>dammit.

<font size="7">Boom, got it</font>

How the hell did you do that.

By the end of the first paragraph, I was wondering if sneeze meant what I thought it did and if I was pronouncing it properly in my head.

“Yeah, did Jar Jar Binks make $10 million of merchandise sales?”
… That was kind of the point, Dan, Jar Jar was a cynical marketing ploy with a funny voice, just like Larry the Cable Guy. And Jar Jar's always been defended by his creators as "just silly," the character's gags are delightful for children but…

"Mess." I first heard it as a freshman in college, and it perfectly resonated with the ugly combination of my built-in Catholic guilt and then-scary flirtation with atheism. You fucked up, and there's no magical love to save you, irreversible consequences keep marching on and you have to own that—the "untested virtue"…

man. that's just, like, your opinion MAN.
you're out of your element.

Oh yeah. And now you've been replied to.

Wololo
How I miss that sound.

The script wanted to be a "sober snapshot," the film itself is a deliberate joke. Fun stuff, but it doesn't exactly have that art out of tragedy feel to it.

@Snidely
That's a great reading of the scene that's probably right in line with Mallick's intentions, but it still doesn't connect the childhood drama to the grieving of a grown man. This was an adult who served in the military, not an eight-year-old. I don't feel like I ever knew the guy who died, I therefore had…

@Transcental,
I agree that calling the last scene "heaven" is a pretty lazy way to describe it, but what the hell is the "I give you my son" line. In fact, the entire premise that the meat of this film somehow had anything to do with grieving a grown man we never met seems crazy to me, and the memory/history/poetically…

Eh, I'm kind of enjoying the discussion. I personally thought that staging the whispered crises of faith against the formation of the cosmos was very effective, and then Mallick completely undermined it with the hyper-spiritual "I give you my son" finale. Also, all that grief was for an character who we really never…

TooLazy is right. Drugs can be an awesome inspiration, but if the end result only makes sense on drugs then it is benefiting from lowered standards. Hell, I've listened to Roxette's "The Look" on acid and thought it was amazing.

Yeah, everyone knows film is about profit and aesthetic beauty.