Review: The Tree of Life

     Terrence Malick is considered by many as one of the all-time great auteurs. Even with his sparse work rate (he's made five films in 38 years, which includes a twenty year break in between his second and third features), he has still managed to craft a reputation for himself as a master of the craft.  Many profess their profound love for his work, citing each of his films as influential masterpieces that deserve to be put up among the pantheon of the greatest works in the history of cinema. Unfortunately though, I've never been able to get on the Malick bandwagon. While I admire and enjoy most of his films (read everything but 2005's "The New World"), there is always something about them that keeps me back a bit, something strangely distant about them. It's hard to pin down exactly what it is about his films that keep me from embracing them as much as I would like, but if I had to hazard a guess, I think I would say the problem with his films is a lack of humanity. With endless shots of nature and the environment surrounding his characters, the lives of the protagonists have always seemed secondary to his interest in the world barring down on them, giving them a cold, almost austere feeling.

     To cure this, I would have thought the answer would be to go the traditional route and focus more on the narrative, making the stories more character driven, like the films of some of my all-time favorite auteurs such as Tarantino and Kurosawa. Apparently I would have been wrong though, because the thing Malick needed was not to go more into the traditional narrative, but less. For this is exactly what he does with "The Tree of Life", only retaining the slightest semblance of narrative but paradoxically creating the most human film of his career , one of the most human films in the history of cinema. I wouldn't have thought it going into the film, but Malick's almost experimental "The Tree of Life" gives him a film I can embrace with total sincerity, whole-heartedly. Finally, a true masterpiece that belongs with the greatest films in the history of the moving image.
    
     The film's "story" (using quotations because it is a story only in the a very loose sense of the word, it's more like a collection a related images) focuses on a family growing up in suburban Texas during the 1950's. It starts with death of Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien's (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain respectively) middle child some years in the future (either in the late 1960's and early 1970's) and uses this tragic event as a jumping off point to ponder the creation of world and the nature of existence. What follows is an extended sequence of some of the most beautiful images of nature and the cosmos you'll ever see. I'm not one of these people that finds divine inspiration at everything natural as I am equally awed by the creations of man as I am by nature (is man not apart nature anyway), which in the past is part of the reason why I find Malick's unquestioning devotion the natural world off-putting, but in this case it is truly a site to behold. For this is not a love letter simply to Mother Earth, but existence in and of itself. The sequence is the most beautiful rendering of evolution (including a scene with dinosaurs) you'll ever likely to see in your life. There are few images that have said as much as the sequence of images in this "creation" montage.

     After pondering the creation of the universe, the film settles down a bit narratively, getting as close to a "story" as Malick wants to get, but giving us a window into the life of the O'Briens. We watch the birth of their three sons, Jack (Hunter McCracken), R.L. (Laramie Eppler), and Steve (Tye Sheridan), and we witness their growth from curious toddlers to questioning children. At the point where the three boys are all school-age (Jack probably a middle-schooler), the film really slows down to give us a glimpse into the lives of the family members at a certain point and time in their life. Particularly, the film deals with the eldest son's, Jack, disillusion with the world around him. His father, Mr. O'Brien, is a very strict man and puts the whole family on pins and needles of what he might do. Emotionally and sometimes even physically abusive, Mr. O'Brien is very much an inhabitant of the fiercely competitive world of nature, where only the strong survive, and he to instill survival instincts among his three boys, he gives them very heavy doses of tough love. Meanwhile, their mother, Mrs. O'Brien, is the exact opposite, seeing the world as a place to embrace, not fight. She tries to teach the children to love existence, and relish the magic in life. Jack ends up disenchanted with both parents, and even his siblings, as he starts to walk down the dark path of nihilism, wishing to see the world set a fire to put it in it's proper place. After some misfortune  in Mr. O'Brien's job, he begins to soften, and open lines communication bring Jack back from the darker reaches of his mind. The sequence is one of the best portrayals of the prison of joy and sorrow that is family. Whether they like it or not, each family member is forever connected to one, each person irrevocably influential on the lives of the others. In the end we're alone, but family is closest thing we have to guidance in the vast existence engulfing us, and for better or worse, the film brutally portrays this helpless alliance.

     The film ends with a sequence intercutting Jack in the future (played by Sean Penn), with images of Jack and his family reuniting on a white, sunny, salt-flat beach. With many other people reuniting with each other too, the easiest interpretation of the ending is that it is heaven, but this isn't necessarily the case. Maybe we are simply in Jack's memory, were he unites all the things that meant something in his life and made him who he is (kind of like the huge dancing circle Guido joins at the end of Fellini's masterpiece "8 1/2"). It's up for interpretation so I won't discuss it any further and let you decide for yourself.

     For me, the word that repeatedly kept entering my mind was "enormity", and not only in the 20-minute creation of the cosmos sequence, but throughout every scene of the film. In fact, it is the sense of enormity that ties all the seemingly disparate elements together into one coherent film. Malick treats a mother teaching her young baby about the small joys of life, a group of kids playing kick the can, and the creation of the galaxies with the same reverential sense of majesty. No moment is presented as more crucial than the others. It as if Malick is suggesting that time itself is an illusion, that all moments, from the smallest minute events to events as big as the creation of existence itself, simultaneously cohabit the same basic space. That the past, present, and, future coexist in some bigger NOW, where temporal differentiation has no meaning. The effect of this viewpoint is to accurately capture the slow sense of time we have as children. Every day, every hour, every moment, is a potential life changing event for Jack. While most films that attempt to show things through the eyes of a child tend to be patronizing towards their young protagonist, "The Tree of Life" has nothing but total respect for the emotions going through Jack's mind, as well as a sense of true empathy. There are been good film's that have pulled off the "through a child's eye" narrative, but none have done it as accurately as "The Tree of Life".

     The film also has a very religious (or spiritual if rather) bent to it. Voiceovers, delivered in hushed whispers and spoken by multiple characters, are prayers to God, as they use the terms such as You as if in conversation with the Creator of the universe (such as when Jack says, "Where were You? You let a boy die. You let anything happen. Why should I be good? When You aren't."). Philosophically, the film states its dualistic viewpoint very early on, "There are two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one to follow." Grace, represented by Jack's mother, is the way of God, the correct way. It is a surrender to the majesty of the universe and a love for all things in it. Nature, represented by Jack's father, is the way of man, the wrong way. It is aggressive and pragmatic, a conquering of the world around us. In actuality, this is a overly-simplistic philosophical view of the world, one that looses a lot of the complexities of existence (at least from my point of view), but even if it generalizes things a bit too much, it is delivered with such utter passion and sincerity that only a hardened ideologue would fail to admire its beauty.

     "The Tree of Life" is also an amazing technical achievement. In terms of editing, this film must have been equivalent to climbing Mount Everest. Even putting aside the likely hours upon hours of footage that was likely shot (knowing Malick and considering the type of film it is), the fact that shots last a matter of a few seconds (if even that at times), to put these small puzzle pieces together to create the masterpiece of art (comparable to the works of Da Vinci and Van Gough) must have been an arduous task, but one performed by true artist. In a lot of ways, the film is one long montage sequence ("Life: The Montage"), and to create a two-and-a-half-hour sequence so flawlessly, that somehow manages to capture the very essence of existence, is quite the accomplishment.

     Much praise should also go to the cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki. One of the more interesting aspects of the film is how much the camera moves. There a few shots that last more than a few sequences, but even in these short shots, with a few exceptions in some of the more "narrative" heavy sequences, the camera is almost always in motion. It's as if the camera itself is paralleling the movement that is in the very definition of "living". It's an interesting technique (one that I don't recall seeing in any other film) that works quite well in the context of the film.

     Finally, I also must mention the great special effects work in the "creation" montage. Interestingly, Malick hired Douglas Trumbull, the man behind the special effects of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and who last work on a film was Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", to do the special effects for "The Tree of Life". The reason Malick hired a man who hadn't worked on a film in nearly thirty years to do the effects for the film is that Malick was incredibly dissatisfied with the current state of computer generated graphics (a sentiment I could not agree more with). With a few exceptions (such as the dinosaurs), the film forgoes the usual CGI in favor of old fashioned special effects. The results are truly amazing, as the film has some of the most human and real looking effects I have seen in years. The contrast with this film's special effects and the "uncanny valley" special effects of weightless 500-pound monsters in films such as say "Super 8", really make me nostalgic. Here's hoping this will start a trend of using old-fashioned special effects.

     I would also be remiss if I didn't mention some of the film's superb performances. There isn't a whole lot of dialogue in the film, so the actors don't get the chance to deliver any impressive monologues, or engage each other in Tarantino-style dialogue, but they portray all the necessary emotions with their eyes and body language. The two adult leads, Jessica Chastain playing the loving mother, and Brad Pitt as the the stern father, both do fantastic jobs. Playing the extremes of Grace and Nature, it would have been very easy for either actor to overplay their hand, trying to embody these qualities to the point of losing their humanity, but both thespians masterfully avoid these temptations. The film's best performance though belongs to Hunter McCracken as the film's protagonist, Young Jack. It's really an amazing turn, as the complexities of the relationships he has between he and his father, he and his mother, he and his brothers, he and God, he and existence, all come through with his expressions and eyes. The fate of the film rest on his performance, and he successfully translates what might be a pretentious mess into Terrence Malick's most humanistic film yet. I really hope that Academy members keep this performance in mind when it comes time to vote, whether he be considered a Supporting Actor, or more accurately, a Lead Actor.

     As much as I loved "The Tree of Life", it's not one I feel I can freely recommend to everyone. It's an extremely unorthodox, almost experimental, movie, that will not be for everyone. There have already been reports of many audiences walking out of the movie, and I'm sure its "narrative-light" structure and deeply religious and philosophical subject matter will turns millions upon millions (the same people lining up to see Johnny Depp in silly costumes yet again) off of the film. Even for people who like some weight and thought in their films may have problems with "The Tree of Life", and that's perfectly understandable, as I would understand people who feel the film overreaches. For me though, the film affected me quite a bit, and not only in a cerebral, philosophical way, but in a very personal, humanistic  way as well, which is why thus far "The Tree of Life" is easily the best film of the year. A true masterpiece.

Rating: 10/10

Christopher Lominac