Terrence Malick’s fifth feature film and the 2011 Cannes Film Festival Palm d'Or winner, "Tree of Life," is a breathtaking cinematic experience — part coming of age story, part longing for lost innocence and part spiritual contemplation.
In the biblical story of Job, Job curses the day he was born and pleads for an explanation. An epigraph opens "Tree of Life" with God's response, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? ... When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38: 4, 7.
From those words looming large on the screen a partially comprehensible sea of murmurs and pleads arise, and the voice of Mrs. O'Brian (Jessica Chastain) saying, “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.” The voices lithely float over images of what appears to be the big bang and end with images of Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) and their three children: a young Jack (Hunter McCracken), R.L. (Laramie Eppler) and Steve (Tye Sheridan) in a nostalgically beautiful 1950s Texas town.
The core of "Tree of Life" reveals Jack's childhood through short vignettes with very little dialog. The O'Brien's three children and Jack in particular, initially see the world through their mother's eyes, who is the personification of unwavering love and devotion. Mrs. O'Brien has clearly chosen the way of grace. Mr. O'Brien however has chosen the way of nature. He struggles to exert power over his family, but when that fails he relies on coercion. Mr. O'Brien is volatile where Mrs. O'Brian is serene; he is stoic where she is sensitive. The parallel with the Job story reemerges with the death of one of the brothers.
Extreme innocence and barely controllable violence make up the shards of an older Jack's (Sean Penn) childhood memories. The film flashes to an older Jack surrounded by the trappings of success, on the anniversary of his brother's death. Haunted by his childhood memories, he contemplates the meaning of life. As Jack meditates how it is the grace can be accompanied by mercilessness, love by hate, delight by unhappiness; the past, present and future merge and he comes face to face with the mystical. "Tree of Life" ends with the family united, as if to say that one has the ability to save oneself and to love means to feel the full spectrum of emotion — both good and bad.
"Tree of Life" unfolds like philosophical study of the nature of being and man's relationship to the mystical. Whether the mystical constitutes an external being or something within is for each individual to decide. The ambiguity will make the film seem pretentious, profane, or profound depending on one's perspective. But the true beauty of the film lay in the art of Malick's person. He is not a Hollywood insider. He shuns the spotlight. He is a philosopher and scholar. This frees audiences and critics alike to look deeper into his films. And because Malick stands silent as the public debates the merit of his film, we cannot know his purpose, we can only judge the film based on our own life experience.
DIRECTOR: Terrence Malick SCREENWRITER: Terrence Malick PRODUCERS: Donald Rosenfeld, Paula Mae Schwartz, Steve Schwartz CAST: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken RUN TIME: 138 Minutes MPAA RATING: PG-13
