Malick's Voyage of Time Criticized as Pretentious at Venice Film Festival

At the 2016 Venice Film Festival, Terrence Malick premiered Voyage of Time: Life's Journey, a 90-minute film attempting to chronicle the universe's history and evolution. The project uses leftover footage from The Tree of Life (2011), which required seven years of shooting and thousands of hours of material. Malick, known for attracting Hollywood stars like Brad Pitt—who praised his method at Cannes in 2011—is accused of overreaching by blending art, science, and philosophy clumsily. The film features Cate Blanchett's narration, which the critic describes as didactic, with lines like "Life" coinciding with cell multiplication. Scenes include a CGI dinosaur, early humans roasting a rabbit, and women in poses reminiscent of Titian's Venus of Urbino. The reviewer compares it unfavorably to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which depicted human evolution more effectively in seconds. Low-definition contemporary footage contrasts with high-definition cosmic imagery, underscoring humanity's inadequacy before the universe's grandeur. The critic warns against artists becoming philosophers, citing Marina Abramović and Bill Viola as prior examples.