While recommending the film, the actor said that Malick's Palme D'Or-winner could have used a more conventional narrative

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, the director's first flick for six years, garnered ecstatic reviews from most critics and carried off the Palme D'Or at Cannes earlier this year.

Yet not everyone thought it was a masterpiece: star Sean Penn has revealed in a French interview that the experience of working on the flick left him confused and disappointed.

Speaking to Le Figaro, Penn, himself an award-winning director, criticised the film's offbeat structure and admitted that he was unsure why he had been asked to join the cast.

"The screenplay is the most magnificent one that I've ever read but I couldn't find that same emotion on screen," he said. "A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the flick without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact.

Frankly, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What's more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly."

Penn did add: "Nevertheless it's a flick that I recommend provided one goes in without preconceptions."

The Tree of Life attracted boos as well as cheers at its Cannes premiere, and Penn is not the only one to have left screenings feeling perplexed.

One cinema in Stamford, Connecticut took the rare step of displaying a poster warning filmgoers not to expect a refund if they paid to see Malick's flick and later walked out.

"We would like to remind patrons that The Tree of Life is a uniquely visionary and deeply philosophical flick from an auteur director," wrote the management of the Avon Theatre.

"It does not follow a traditional linear narrative approach to storytelling.

We encourage patrons to read up on the flick before choosing to see it, and for those electing to attend, please go in with an opened mind and know that the Avon has a NO-REFUND policy once you have purchased a ticket to see one of our films."

Theatre programmer Adam Birnham later told indiewire.com that most people had in fact enjoyed the flick but said the poster had been displayed following the actions of "a few individuals who were fairly nasty and belligerent towards the management staff, demanding their money back".

It's unlikely that audiences will ever get to gauge Malick's own views on The Tree of Life, or Penn's opinion of his film, since the film-maker never gives interviews.

"When he started making flicks in the 1970s, you just made films," the film's star Brad Pitt told The Guardian earlier this year.

"Today there are two parts to the job: you get to make something, but it's also become incumbent on us to suddenly sell our flicks and that's just not his nature.

Terry's more the painter, or even the guy that's plastering the walls or laying the stone.

He's just a very humble, sweet man."

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