'The Tree of Life' Movie Review

Several months back I saw The Tree of Life, written and directed by Terrance Malick with a friend. I know a few of you have seen it, but I think it’s a confusing film for anyone that watches it.

It’s more impressionist painting than film, but I was personally completely taken with it. As I was walking out of the theater, the usher could tell I was stunned. He told me people walk out of that movie either saying “it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen” or “I couldn’t stand it” and they leave early. I was definitely in the first category.

I think more than anything, the opening line best captures the heartbeat of the film:

“The nuns taught us there were two ways through life—the way of nature, and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining all around it. And love is smiling through all things.”

As we’ve discussed in class, the meaning of Grace is hard to explain, and often (and easily) misunderstood. I happen to think that quote to be the best articulation I have ever heard to describe the indescribable.

I’ve seen several of Malick’s films, but I’ve never been taken with a film the way I was taken with The Tree of Life. In short, it contemplates human existence from the standpoint of eternity—all in 2 ½ hours. For me, the most provocative sequences were the origin of the universe, the development of life on Earth, and the end of time. At the beginning and end (alpha and omega) there is a flickering flame that can only represent the creator. And at the beginning, there is a boy who whispers to God, asking questions like “Where are you?” and “What am I doing here?”

Again, because many of you have not seen the film—“here” is Waco, Texas sometime in the 1950’s.  The main family is Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien and their three sons and is highly stereotypical of America in the 50’s, very “Leave it to Beaver” like. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find that the world of neatly trimmed lawns and decorous houses set back from shaded streets is a world you think you know, just as you’d recognize right away the family whose life takes up somewhere around an hour and a half of the film. I get a sense that Mr. Malick is very fond of the world of his childhood. He depicts it as an idealized glimpse of a lost Eden. I also get the idea from the film that Malick believes that the loss of innocence is not a single, particular event in history but rather something that happens in every generation to every individual. However, oddly enough this is a universal pattern that repeats itself in circumstances that are unique every time. I think if I were to try to classify the film into a genre, I would call it a “Coming-of-age/childhood perception/fall into knowledge that signals childhood’s end” type of story.

I found the most confusing thing about the story (besides the plot in general) to be keeping the various family scenes straight. The film sort of revolves around a guy named Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn)—someone first introduced as a middle-aged architect who is very much haunted by death because of his younger brother who died many years before. And the opening scenes are of Jack’s youth, introducing his parents (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain), and the grief from the loss of their son casts a major shadow of sadness over everything that follows. After that, there is a scene of an underwater house and a young boy (Jack, I presume) swimming toward the sunlight at the top, and then he is an infant in his mother’s arms. And then a brother arrives, and then another, and the world makes room for them.

If you’re confused by my review, that is totally understandable. The film is incredibly complicated but stunningly beautiful, in my honest opinion. Perhaps part of Malick’s point is that not everything has to make sense, or can make sense. But I can't think of a single other film that is able to convey the development of a child’s mind with such beauty. I related really strongly to the film based partially on my own story. I could feel the tension and tenderness within the O’Brien marriage, about the frustrations that dent their happiness, and the volatility of bonds between siblings.

The Tree of Life definitely stands alone in the film world. I can’t think of any other movie to compare it to. And, I cannot honestly say that all parts of the film are coherent, or that it all makes sense. I do, however, have faith that sometime between now and the end of time it most certainly will.