20 Opening Movie Scenes That Are Totally Flawless

10. Love Is Smiling Through All Things - The Tree Of Life (2011)

28 Weeks Later
Fox Searchlight Pictures

The Tree of Life is Terrence Malick's masterwork; a grand, poetic drama that's equally concerned with time and history as it is with childhood memories, love, the universe, tragedy and trauma. It's an awe-inspiring film filled with beauty and unforgettable images, and it opens with haunting mystery.

Before he follows the creation the universe and its repetitive existence, Malick takes a more micro approach to his tale, by focussing on the O'Brien family's life in 1950s American suburbia.

Featuring a staggering voice over from Jessica Chastain, the opening shows the family as they play in the garden, eat dinner, pray and steadily grow up. Chastain, meanwhile, gives a speech about the complexities of nature and grace, which acts as a mysterious foreshadowing of the things to come and the very personalities of the film's core characters.

It's a confounding, hypnotic beginning to a confounding, hypnotic film, one which creates more questions that it answers but begs you to stick around and figure them out.

Contributor

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