“THE TREE OF LIFE”
Written and Directed by Terrence Malick
**** (four stars)
Although it is only the middle of June, I think I may have just witnessed the finest film of 2011.
Dear readers, I realize that statement may seem to some of you to be more than a bit premature. While we still have half of the cinematic year remaining, and I am more than certain that I will continue to see great films within all sorts, styles and genres, I highly doubt that I will see any other film that will demonstrate greater creative ambition or reach further and probe deeper than this astonishment.
Legendary Writer/Director Terrence Malick’s “The Tree Of Life,” only his 5th film in a career that spans nearly 40 years, is a work that left me in a silent and awestruck meditative state long after the end credit scroll, throughout the remainder of my day afterwards and long into late night hours as I sit here and write. I have continuously wondered to myself just how does anyone conceive of a project such as this one and how on earth would you even begin to construct it, to organize it, to make it pulsate and resonate to such a supremely emotional degree.
Every once in a lengthy while, I will see a film that feels to be a bit ahead of the curve. Something that feels to be out of time with everything else being released alongside of it, especially in our increasingly homogenized times as cinematic risks are fewer and fewer. Every once in a great while I will see the very type of film that forces you and me to alter our perceptions of what exactly a motion picture can actually be. In very recent years, I had this feeling when I saw Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There” (2007), Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (2007) and Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” (2008). “The Tree Of Life” is a masterpiece that defies classification in much of what we already know and understand about movies. And yet, this is not a self-indulgent exercise in grand style, as Malick has created a stirring film that speaks directly and emphatically to the soul. “The Tree Of Life” is a film proudly announcing itself of its arrival at your movie theaters and whether you love it or hate it or just find yourself utterly confused by the entire proceedings, it is a film that demands to be experienced.
Attempting to provide something of a plot description to you would be more than futile as “The Tree Of Life” defiantly carries a fractured non-linear structure, not terribly much dialogue and Malick’s poetically hushed interior narrations at that. The film feels to be more like a majestic cinematic symphony in four distinct movements which follow and explores themes of mourning, creation, destruction, love, birth, death, jealousy, retribution, choices, consequences, dreams, and the unending tension between nature and grace as witnessed as internally as the most minute cells or as externally as the furthest reaches of the universe.
Sitting at the core of “The Tree Of Life” is an intensely personal family drama set in 1950s Waco, Texas starring Brad Pitt as a man known to us only as Mr. O’Brien, and who serves as the film’s archetypal and relentless force of nature. Mr. O’Brien is a failed musician and inventor, frustrated with the wealth and prosperousness of others in relation to his individual station in life, and often finds himself demanding reverence, appreciation and acknowledgments of love from his family. As Father to three sons, he is supremely loving yet intensely stern and borderline abusive (at least to our 21st century eyes). His taciturn status as a fierce disciplinarian creates the strongest friction and conflict with his first-born son Jack (brilliantly played by newcomer Hunter McCracken), a relationship that haunts Jack deep into his middle-aged life (played as an adult by Sean Penn) as a melancholic architect in San Francisco.
Jessica Chastain stars in her nearly wordless role as Mrs. O’Brien, a loving, permissive, somewhat childlike embodiment of the archetypal semblance of eternal grace. Adored by her three sons, she is a source of resentment from her husband as her enablement of childish wonderment and feels counter-productive to his wishes of raising three strong men and preparing them for the harsh realities of life in the adult world.
In between these pillars of nature and grace sits the conflicted Jack, who growth from childhood into early adolescence becomes a landscape of severe existential crisis as he begins to question his original views of his parents, how they relate to each other and how he relates to them. This struggle even extends itself into a riveting struggle with his own sense of morality and truth. Jack also finds himself at a crossroads of love and jealousy towards his middle brother R.L. (played by Laramie Eppler, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Brad Pitt), who shares a musical connection with their Father, a bond Jack desires to near futility and eventually consumes him with repressed rage.
Surrounding and filtered through the prism of this family drama are elements that encompass the science and divinity with awesome power. Nearly 25 minutes into the film, Malick takes us on a quantum leap back to what may be the beginning of the universe with footage that feels like the greatest episode of “Nova” ever produced. Merged with imagery that depicts the vastness of stars and planets, the fury of volcanoes, the microscopic imagery of cells and even a short section featuring dinosaurs (!), “The Tree Of Life” somehow performs the simultaneous act of becoming a overwhelming film that is also emotionally primal and piercingly intimate.
Every frame of this movie contains such richness and depth that every individual shot could essentially be an entire film in and of itself. Special mention and accolades must be delivered to Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki for his astounding collaboration with Malick, as the camera remains a rapturously restless observer and chronicler. It is as if Malick is the eternal child of vision, taking notice of all events from grand and profound to the seemingly insignificant, finding equality in the grace notes within them all. I loved all of the images of splintered sunshine which seemed to be the divine spirit enveloping the earth. Also, all of the water imagery that shifts from cleansing and baptismal to engulfing and unforgiving was nothing less than incredible.
I especially loved how Malick viewed the world from what I would gather to be more of a child’s eye level. As trees, parents and the steel canyons of the big city loom largely over all of the human characters, dwarfing them and signaling how small and seemingly insignificant we and our problems are in the larger scheme of the universe. But, this is not a nihilistic approach as I think Malick is suggesting that despite our smallness, we are a part of the universal fabric and our presence is significant regardless of how large or small. And in the end, it is relative. We may not matter a whit to a star being born but how our actions affect the people closest to us matter just as much.
In my opinion, Brad Pitt has never been better in any film until now as he possesses a towering command combined with a crippling and devastating insecurity as Mr. O’Brien. Sean Penn has been somewhat dismissed in his substantially smaller and nearly wordless role as the adult Jack. He performs so much more than the act of simply brooding. He is the embodiment of a lost and lonely soul, still wrestling with the events of his childhood and the relationship with his Father, which all leads to the film’s final and hallucinatory section that contains a spiritual presence of awesome power.
I have no idea of how or where Terrence Malick found Hunter McCracken but if this young actor is not nominated for an Oscar (along with Malick, Pitt and the film itself), it would be a cinematic crime. Again, while his actual dialogue is fairly scant and his actions are non-hyperbolic and exquisitely subtle, his performance is filled with pummeling despair and anguish. Whether capturing the pheromones from a girl tossing her hair in school, to daring his middle brother to place his wet finger into a light socket, or finding himself consumed with guilt from a petty theft and even briefly contemplating a murderous impulse, McCracken completely captures an emotional fragility that goes as far as questioning the presence or absence of God.
The film opens with the following quotation from The Book Of Job: "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation...while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" The first three words of this quotation are asked repeatedly during the film and the fullness of its meaning changes each time it is asked, most notably during sections where Jack is testing acts of rebellion and violence. In regards to the character of Jack, the question could also be representative of how he views his parents and his relationship with them. If his Father shows more of a connection with his middle brother, then what is the purpose of “being good” if he is not allowed that same connection, especially when he has followed all of his Father’s rules? The contentious nature of the relationship between Mr. O’Brien and Jack elicits how much of mirrored souls each of them happen to be.
Oh, I could go on and on and I believe this is exactly what Terrence Malick wants for anyone who chooses to see his film to do...and passionately. “The Tree Of Life” is not a film that can be watched passively as our lives are not designed to be lived passively. This film wants to engage with us because it is about us and the meaning of our collective existence with each other and all other living creatures, the environment and the elements that bind us all together in cosmic and symbiotic interconnectivity.
Some of you may scoff at the material that does not feature the O’Brien family decrying it all as New Age mystical nonsense. I would urge those of you may have that reaction to not give this film that sort of knee jerk short shrift. “The Tree Of Life,” I believe is an exploration of how science and God not only co-exist but are forever intertwined. The film illustrates how the tangible and unexplained are connected as are the living and the extinct. What else is the saga of the O’Brien family from its birth, infancy, evolution, fragmentation, self-destruction, healing and transformation but the story of every family and furthermore, the story of the world and universe itself?
Yes, “The Tree Of Life” is not simply an art film with a capital “A” but with a capital “A,” “R” and “T” and it may feel to be more challenging and esoteric to some viewers. But, I deeply implore all of you, from those of you who like to view a challenging film to those of you who just want to be entertained by the movies they choose to see, that “The Tree Of Life” is a profoundly inclusive experience. Despite Terrence Malick’s famously reclusive public nature, from historically refusing all interviews and not even allowing himself to be photographed, it is fascinating as I think he wants not to talk down to us but to share.
“The Tree Of Life” is a film I believe is designed to be a communal experience of the highest order. Malick never tells us how to connect the pieces of his vast cinematic puzzle. He never holds our hand and guides us with how to feel. He meticulously lays out the pieces without judgment, inspiring a conversation with the audience, which we can then afterwards leave the theater and continue it with each other. How many movies could you say that about at all?
Whether you love this film, hate this film or find it to be a complete head spinner, it is a film that cannot be ignored or easily dismissed. “The Tree Of Life” is a rarity. It is a film of memory, of the here and now as well as the future and beyond. It is a film for the ages.
Until now and for no particular rhyme or reason, I had never seen a film by Terrence Malick. Now, I want to see them all!
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