Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is quite possibly worse than Audition. This movie is terrible from beginning to end. I don't remember another time I felt so assaulted by the inane and banal. Quite frankly, I don't know what the plot is, or even what the movie is "about." It plays a lot like David Gordon Green's George Washington, detailing a youth's summer(s) and attempting to evoke some sort of nostalgia in the audience without actually having any story. In The Tree of Life, there seems to be no real dialogue. Nobody says anything to other people. And when people do mutter something, they always whisper in raspy voices (because apparently that makes it more profound). There is an unannounced 30-minute segment detailing the origin of life, starting from the Big Bang and advancing from single-celled organisms to preposterous imaginary dinosaurs. There are random shots of the most disturbing painted clowns I have ever seen. There is no coherency and no meaning. Unfortunately, I don't think Terrence Malick is aware of that; instead he feels he needs two and a half hours to show precisely that. Ugh.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/