Because I know many people, myself included, who would disagree with this statement:

>Love is only present because they keep saying
>love in the narration. We never see it.

The love is palpable in the Paris scenes, and a friend of mine who saw this with me called first scenes in Texas when they're playing with the lampshades over their heads "domestic bliss personified."

After that, though (almost all of the movie) the love is absent, so of course you're not going to see much of it.

I personally think this can be disputed:

>All other Malick films are far superior in terms of character
>development.

>People compare this one to Tree of Life, but
>Pitt, Chastain, and most certainly the kids had interactions,
>emotional complexity, and a series of tangible life events we
>could root their growth and development in.

I think I'd argue that the "series of life events" in this movie is AT LEAST as tangible as those in Tree of Life. SPOILERS: They fall in love. They move to America. The relationship begins to fracture. The daughter moves back home. Olga travels to France and Ben has an brief affair with a former flame. Olga comes back and they get married. The relationship continues to decay, and they get divorced.

Stylistically it might be a little more abstract than TOL, but in terms of the actually stuff that happens, it's more "plot based" (or at least more linear) than TOL.

>This one, I nearly walked out.

I guess I'm just really surprised that you disliked this enough to nearly walk out, because that's a REALLY STRONG amount of dislike. Maybe I'll end up being the only defender of this in PTP, but I do know a few other people who really liked it in real life.

I definitely thought there was plenty you could take away from the movie if you wanted to. It probably feels rather small and maybe even slight in the shadow of Tree of Life, but that's fine with me.

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