“The Tree of Life” is a purely cinematic experience. Terrence Malick has made a film that speaks life lessons and evokes fundamental human emotions through visuals and style above all else. In doing so, his film worships the gift of life itself.
The purpose of existence, as seen through Malick’s eyes, is to simply love life, and every part of it. Beauty, pain, sadness, joy and all else that encompasses our being are necessary to live and reach the afterlife, which Malick envisions as a place to cherish the life we came from.
Such a view may seem overly optimistic and unpractical to some, if not most, but this is Malick’s film first before anyone else’s, and its message appears utterly sincere to the environmental and natural themes evoked throughout the four other films in his nearly four decade career.
With messages as life fulfilling as these and a film as operatic and grand in scope as this, “The Tree of Life” preaches lessons that one could live by and has aspirations to be one of the greatest films ever made. It’s a bit far from that benchmark, but the intentions are sure and true, and the experience is still wholly enriching.
The film focuses all of its ambitious ideas down on one small family from Waco, Texas in the 1950s. Malick himself grew up here, and although little is actually known about the man (he didn’t appear at Cannes to speak about his Palme D’Or winning film), there is a strong sense that this story is largely autobiographical. Regardless, this particular family, the O’Briens, has a loving stay-at-home mom (Jessica Chastain) and the tough-love father (Brad Pitt) parenting three young boys.
We meet the family as their middle child has passed away for reasons unknown to the audience, and the remainder of the film flashes back on some of the critical moments in their life. But Malick goes back even farther than the birth of their first son Jack (Hunter McCracken). He takes us to the birth of the universe itself, following with the construction of Earth and through the reign of the dinosaurs.
His reasons for doing so are not exactly clear, but they are not aimless, nor are they pretentious. I disagree that these images are a direct allegory for the human life we focus on. Instead, Malick allows us to experience in his nearly 20-minute sequence the great amount of time, effort and detail that went into creating a world so plentiful.
And in this extended period, here is a film that grants us a moment to think and ponder life’s questions and then equate them with the life we see in this Waco town. The thoughts I had are not all that different from what I imagine others may think of when considering existential circumstances, regardless of religious preference. Why put this all out here only to remove us from it later? And as we see the life of the O’Briens, how now do we think about life when presented with the birth of life itself? “The Tree of Life’s” otherwise standard family drama attains an insightful new meaning when seen in this broad context.
But we would not even be given cause to think about all this were it not for the visionary images and special effects put forth by Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Production Designer Jack Fisk and Art Director David Crank. Malick’s films have long been known for their stunning visuals (“Days of Heaven” is one of the best looking films of the 1970s), all three have worked with him before, and now they’ve outdone themselves.
The intergalactic and geologic wonders depicted here are of a remarkably ethereal, natural beauty unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And the rest of the film, with it’s shimmering light, slow growth and a dreamlike procession of images and sounds (Alexandre Desplat composed the gargantuan sounding score), attains a wonderfully entrancing sensation.
The only other film I’ve spoken like this about is “2001: A Space Odyssey.” That film too contains deliberately slow pacing, unconventional narrative, epic scale, monumental themes on the meaning of life and polarized just as many people when it was first released. Both films fall into the category of pure cinema, films that are memorable not for their performances, dialogue or story but exclusively because of the director’s touch.
So we know it is Malick who in this film appears to be reaching out to God and heaven, only to fall so close. And it is he who remains optimistic and hopeful even in moments of sorrow.
“The Tree of Life” is by no means a perfect film, or even a masterpiece. Yet it evokes the art, grandeur, beauty, intelligence and ambiguity worth discussing necessary to sustain both cinema and life.
4 stars
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