Logicians may balk at the application of this proof ahead of mathematical philosophy, but the basic principle is immutable in its genius and simplicity, and compelling when considered as the technical constant that frames Terrence Malick’s fluid emotional lexicon.

“The Tree of Life” is only the fifth film in Malick’s 40-year career. A former Rhodes Scholar and philosophy lecturer at MIT, the famously reclusive director has used each of his films as tools of philosophical expression. Existential themes, usually verbalized in rambling voice-overs and explored through the actions of deeply flawed characters, are a staple of Malick’s films. In “Badlands” (1973) it was a pair of murderous lovers set against the glory of the natural world. In “Days of Heaven” (1978) the impediment of love in the face of death emphasized the roles of both in giving meaning to life. In “The Thin Red Line” (1998) it was the warring impulses of creation and destruction, as experienced through the eyes of the innocent. In “The New World” (2005) it was the question of human exceptionalism and the accompanying problem of moral relativism. In “The Tree of Life” it is the darkness of the unknown, the affliction of perpetual ignorance.

“The Tree of Life” is an attempt to reconcile the deepest intrinsic yearnings of our species with the fundamental, arbitrary harshness of the reality in which we exist. We tend to separate ourselves from that reality. Our intellect allows us to think ourselves different from animals, disconnected from the world that spawned us and sustains us. It is that arrogance, coupled with the insurmountable ignorance implied by Gödel that gives rise to the notion of God, a concept which, despite the film’s Biblical undertones, seems almost secondary, as if one of many hypotheses unable to offer any more insight into the nature of existence than any other. Because if God is the answer for life, then what is the answer for God?

The brilliance of the film isn’t that it ponders the heavens or asks impossible questions. It is in the director’s method. After a relatively brief introduction to the human story, the film gives a spectacular visual history of the universe, chronicling what we know so far, more or less, from the Big Bang to abiogenesis. We even get a small glimpse of what “Jurassic Park” may have looked like if Terrence Malick had directed it. It is with that cosmological context that we return to the O’Brien family in sleepy 1950s Waco, Texas (Malick’s hometown). Now we are prepared to properly consider Mr. O’Brien’s (Brad Pitt) pressing feelings of inadequacy, Mrs. O’Brien’s (Jessica Chastain) split loyalties between her husband and children, and young Jack’s (Hunter McCracken) welling frustration and rage as he struggles to makes sense of his lot in life. Instead of diminishing the otherwise infinitesimal human story, the film’s cosmic mid-section amplifies it. Because for all the astonishing beauty of this sequence, it lacks the greatest development in the universe’s long history — consciousness. In this way we come to see the trivial problems of the O’Brien family — of our own families — as significant, even in the vastness and majesty of eternity.

“The Tree of Life” is the fruit of a lifelong internal struggle. It is imperfect, bewildering, beautiful, maddening, confounding, astounding and sublime. It is wholly without answers. Poetically incomplete. My gut tells me it is a masterpiece. An extension of Stanley Kubrick’s equally ambitious “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It represents the rarest of events in modern cinema, that is, naked ambition on the grandest scale met with the talent, funds, philosophical maturity and keenness of mind to realize that ambition. Whether history deems it an unabashed success or an abysmal failure, “The Tree of Life” is a risk few filmmakers would ever dare. And that, at least, deserves our applause.

Brad Pitt stars in the Palme d'Or-winning "The Tree of Life"

Writer-director Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the year’s most anticipated and buzzed about film, won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or Sunday night. The award is the festival’s highest honor.

“He remains infamously and notoriously shy and humble,” said producer William Pohlad, who accepted in Malick’s stead with producer DeDe Gardner. “But he is very happy to get this.”

Led by president Robert De Niro the jury also included Uma Thurman and Jude Law.

Fellow American Kirsten Dunst won best actress for her performance in Lars von Trier’s apocalyptic drama “Melancholia.”

Other big winners included Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn for “Drive,” Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar, who won best screenplay for “Footnote,” and Jean Dujardin who won best actor for his role in “The Artist,” set in 1920s Hollywood.

A new clip has been released from the most anticipated movie of this young decade, Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life.” Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt), an overbearing, strict father is out of the house while Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) and their sons let themselves have fun for a little while. The film debuted at Cannes this week.

Points of contention revolve around release dates and the UK distribution agreement.

Icon had initially scheduled a May 4 debut for the film in the UK but spokespeople said those plans have changed.

According insiders Icon believes its agreement to roll the film out at the beginning of May is voided because of the film’s highly anticipated debut at Cannes later that month.

THR reports that Icon has “no release plans” for the title and directed all enquiries to international sales at Summit.

That collective stink-eye may have just turned into a collective sigh of relief.

Guillermo Arriaga, screenwriter of “Babel” and “Amores Perros,” revealed in an interview with Quien that his previously announced adaptation of John Vaillant’s non-fiction book “The Tiger” will begin location scouting later this year.  Aronofsky and Brad Pitt are both apparently attached.

“These days I’m traveling to New York to lend clarity to the last detail, in November would be doing a tour of Siberia to check locations,” Arriaga said.

Aronofsky, hailed by some as one of the premier directors of his generation with critical darlings like “The Wrestler,” “Requiem for a Dream” and “Black Swan” in his filmography, has been mentioned in association with a host of upcoming studio projects — Warner Bros’ “Tales Of The Gangster Squad,” and Fox’s “Wolverine 2″ chief among them.

But with this project looking like a good bet to get off the ground, coupled with the fact that it seems decidedly more up Aronofsky’s alley, those studio projects may be left looking for a director.

“The Tiger” centers on an animal activist who protect’s his small Siberian town when a ferocious tiger begins attacking it’s inhabitants.

With an opening chapter drenched in classic and spaghetti western homages, notably John Ford’s “The Searchers,” and Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West,” a mid-section riddled with tributes to Jean Luc-Godard and German Expressionists like Paul Wegener and Fritz Lang, a third act that invokes George Orwell’s “1984,” Howard Hawks’ “Sargeant York,” and Jacques Tourneur’s and Paul Schrader’s versions of “Cat People” respectively, and an entire premise based on Enzo G. Castellari’s “The Inglorious Bastards,” which itself is based on Robert Aldrich’s “The Dirty Dozen,” Tarantino not only rewrites the Second World War but encapsulates, distills, and reworks virtually the entire history of cinema into an audacious, riveting, revisionist’s fairy-tale in under 160 minutes.

Of course, references to other films or literature alone, sans context, don’t result in great cinema.  But the ingenious, intricately thrilling way that Tarantino subtly — and sometimes not so subtly — weaves hundreds of disparate narratives, eras, sensibilities, genres, and themes into a brilliantly realized, masterfully rendered work of art is an unparalleled feat.  The Basterds aren’t the heroes here, film is.  And that’s no metaphor, actual film stock itself becomes the literal hero of this movie in a thrilling climax that takes place in — you guessed it — a cinema.

But as pervasive as the idea of film’s effects on real events and political, racial, and socio-economic issues is throughout “Inglourious Basterds,” it is but one of this clever onion’s many layers.  Let’s take a look at the idea of identity, for example.  Virtually every character is hiding something.  Nothing is as it seems.  Think of the theater owner, Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) for instance, who’s been living incognito her entire life, or Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), who blows his cover as a German officer with a three-fingered gesture, or Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) whose briefs mentions of a civilian life in Tennessee combined with that telling scar around his neck reveal a dark past. Even the settings themselves have secrets. The very first scene, which may be the best thing Tarantino has ever shot,  sets the stage.  While an unbearably tense Mexican Standoff rages above, the farmhouse reveals its secret below the floorboards.  Later, the cinema itself becomes a deceptive character with secrets in both the projection room and behind the screen. And let’s not forget about the ubiquitous usage of language as an agent of deceit. Deception proves to be a powerful tool in Tarantino’s hands, employed largely to illuminate and contextualize the role of identity in the human experience.

“Inglourious Basterds” has taken a lot of heat for it’s most controversial theme: revenge.  Not only revenge, but how this particular depiction of Jewish revenge alters documented history and, in effect, can be said to deny the Holocaust.  That conclusion may be drawn by some intelligent, discerning viewers, but is ultimately the result of projecting a nefarious glare on the narrative that simply isn’t there.  The film’s deliberate construction and overarching themes suggest quite the opposite.  Tarantino, infamous for his fantastical, ultra-excessive bloodthirst, once again invites us to join the party. We happily oblige, and just at that moment when we begin to feel the primal urges of savagery, and crave vengeance, he turns on us and condemns our gleeful, violent indulgences.  Has the bad boy of cinema suddenly had a change of heart?  Has he gotten bogged down in the circular banality of moral relativism?  I don’t think so.  The difference here is the nature of the violence.  The cartoonish and excessive violence of the “Kill Bill” films isn’t representative of any conceivable reality and is employed purely as an element of aesthetics.  Here, the violence is brutal and horrific. Tarantino is reminding us of the difference between film and reality.  Sure, cheer on the hilariously gratuitous violence in film, but make no mistake, real violence has real consequences.  For if cinema becomes a place where we can no longer indulge in humanity’s greatest aspirations or its most vile of urges, it will have lost its purpose.

The movie, which won overwhelming fanboy approval at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, is based on a comicbook by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. that centers on a comic-obsessed teenager who attempts to become a real-life superhero, despite the fact that he lacks the requisite superpowers.

Stars including Nicolas Cage, Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz and “Superbad’s” Christopher Mintz-Plasse anchor the cast.

The project was produced and privately financed by Vaughn’s Marv Films shingle and Brad Pitt’s Plan B banner.

Lionsgate will give the film a wide release in 2010.