The pre-Oscar award season kicks off with good news for Terrence Malick's ultra-imaginative "The Tree of Life," which won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
The eons-spanning opus (produced by William Pohlad) won several important honorss from The New York Film Critics Circle this morning. The group named Brad Pitt best actor for "Tree" and "Moneyball," and Jessica Chastain best supporting actress for her work in "Tree," "The Help" and "Take Shelter." "Tree" also won the best cinematography award (it's a cinch for an Academy Award nomination in that category).
"Tree" was named best feature at Monday's Gotham Independent Film Awards. In a rare tie, it shares the top honor with Mike Mills' small-scale romance "Beginners." Established in 1991, the ceremony has honored many Oscar-nominated films, including Oscar winner "The Hurt Locker."
"Tree" also easily topped the just-released Sight & Sound magazine's annual critics' poll, which samples a broad spectrum of international opinion.
Guy Lodge, one of the critics polled by the British film monthly, writes on the film website Hitfix, "It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Terrence Malick's 'The Tree of Life' would top the list: divisive it may be, but the film remains unrivalled as the critical talking point of 2011. It won the poll by a comfortable margin: editor Nick James reveals that it had half as many votes again" as the runner-up.
Lodge added, "the fact that a challenging American art film with its fair share of detractors still managed to sail to victory in a critics' survey on this scale strengthens my conviction that the film could be a force to be reckoned with" in the next round of critics' awards.
