The Tree of Life (2011)

Sons and Suns

To set the record straight, I’m not a white, Christian boy who grew up in a white, Christian family in mid-twentieth century Waco, Texas. I’m a second-generation Indian immigrant born in Norman, Oklahoma, and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve never been to church, doors are always locked in the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, and I’ve never been forced to call my father “sir.” Why is it, then, that I feel such a strong connection to The Tree of Life’s Jack O’Brien, such a peculiar proximity to his feelings and experiences?

The answer is a mystery to me, much like the answers to the questions raised by Terrence Malick in his latest feature, only his fifth in a career spanning nearly four decades. The answer is almost as mysterious as Malick himself, whose glacial work pace, unorthodox methods, reclusive lifestyle, and small yet startlingly influential filmography have earned him a legendary reputation in world cinema. I’m convinced, however, that Malick is not looking for answers. Throughout The Tree of Life, his characters speak in hushed, prayer-like voiceovers (the director’s trademark narrative element), pondering the validity of God, love, and death. But the O’Brien family asks these questions with no outright expectation of answers; they are rhetorical, open-ended queries that infect the viewer with similar feelings of curiosity and wonder. Essentially, The Tree of Life is meditative rather than didactic.

Malick’s education in philosophy at Harvard and Oxford was followed by a brief teaching stint at MIT, freelance journalism for Life magazine and The New Yorker, and an MFA degree from the American Film Institute, where his classmates included David Lynch and Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader. In 1973, Malick exploded into the world of independent cinema with Badlands, a near-transcendent depiction of American crime. Hailed by film scholar David Thompson as “the most assured [debut] film by an American since Citizen Kane,” Badlands closed the 1973 New York Film Festival, reportedly overshadowing its other famous debut film, Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. Thirty-eight years later, Malick has made only four more movies: Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005), and of course, 2011’s The Tree of Life. With each successive film, Malick has further cemented himself as a distinctive artistic voice, constantly honing his unique and spontaneous approach to filmmaking.

Interestingly enough, Malick began work on what would eventually become The Tree of Life soon after completing Badlands. In the late 1970s, the emerging auteur intended to make an impossibly ambitious, 2001-esque epic involving the birth of the cosmos, prehistoric love, Adam, Eve, jellyfish, minotaurs and World War I, to be titled Q. The playwright and actor Sam Shepard, who starred in Days of Heaven, called Malick’s 250-page screenplay for Q “brilliant, but virtually unfilmable.” After failing to secure financing and a production deal, Malick called it quits and Q fell through. He then fled to Paris—the beginning of his famous twenty-year disappearing act—where he pumped out screenplay after screenplay from a small studio apartment. Among these was an early draft of The Tree of Life, which shared DNA with Q but featured a semi-autobiographical period family drama in place of that strange and colorful melting pot of time and mythology. The project continued to gestate through the release of Malick’s next two films, The Thin Red Line and The New World, eventually shooting in the summer of 2008. In short, The Tree of Life is the movie that Terrence Malick always wanted to make—the one he’s been building towards his entire career.

Malick’s previous work closely resembles The Tree of Life in nature, but not in ambition. Badlands studies the danger of uneducated, empty youth. Martin Sheen’s fugitive and Sissy Spacek’s clueless girlfriend have aged well, but Badlands remains an exclusively American movie. Days of Heaven invites viewers to ponder the relationship between humans, nature, and love. Atmospheric and elliptical, Malick’s sophomore effort has a greater sense of worldliness about it, and its philosophical implications are far-reaching. But what Days of Heaven achieves in depth it lacks in gravity and heft; it’s deep, but light. Starting with The Thin Red Line, however, Malick began infusing his work with an unprecedented weight. Presenting war and conflict as fundamental elements of all existence, this World War II epic set in the South Pacific is among cinema’s most powerful antiwar messages. The film’s hefty 170-minute running time draws remarkably dense material out to epic proportions.

Going one step further, The Tree of Life leaps into cosmic territory by asking viewers why anything exists at all. Simultaneously, it poses the equally mystifying question: why do things cease to exist? Primarily the story of a Texas family in the 1950s, Malick’s latest movie examines that family’s complicated relationships, all while reflective on the nature of love, death, grief, and life itself.

All of this is explored through a patchwork quilt of stunning cinematic imagery. A majestic twenty-minute creation sequence depicting the Big Bang, planetary formation and prehistoric life recalls the movie’s roots in the Q project, presenting The Tree of Life as something of a religious counterpoint to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ties with 2001 go deeper still; Malick hired Douglas Trumbull, the legendary special-effects guru who supervised 2001, to helm this creation sequence. For the film’s main passages—the fragmented yet painstakingly realized O’Brien family drama—Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki frame free-flowing, sun-kissed compositions that subtly capture the innocence of childhood and the texture of a troubled family life. The sun is given a starring role, peaking around human silhouettes, filtering through trees, and filling rooms with light. Liberation from tripods, Steadicams, and stabilizers was key to the movie’s unerring sense of intimacy and familiarity. At one point in the film, Malick’s camera nimbly and fluidly chases the three O’Brien boys around their Waco home as they celebrate the departure of their father on a business trip. Here, the camera shifts dynamically and spontaneously, drinking in all signs of life and meaning, resulting in a deep and thrilling nostalgia. The Tree of Life is an overwhelmingly visual film; traditional film conventions of plot, character and dialogue fade into the background, shifting Lubezki’s cinematography into the limelight (or more accurately, into the sunlight). Such is the power of this imagery that it manages to communicate the majority of the film’s ideas and themes without words. In combination with Malick’s trademark voiceovers, the effect is mesmerizing. Image, tone, and dialogue in The Tree of Life give birth to something remarkable—a film that is epic and poetic, familiar and unique.

The performances in this film carry almost as much weight as Malick’s aesthetic. Brad Pitt, as the demanding father, has never been better. His relationship with his son Jack, played to perfection by newcomer Hunter McCracken, forms the movie’s foundation: Jack is more like his father than his mother, and for this he blames both himself and his father. As the film progresses, McCracken builds tension with skill and detail, displaying a heart-rending loss of innocence. He resents his two younger brothers for being more like their mother than he is, and the purity conveyed by child actors Ty Sheridan and Laramie Eppler throws Jack’s troubled thoughts into sharp relief. Jessica Chastain gives a powerful yet nearly wordless performance as their angelic mother—most of her dialogue is in the form of voiceovers, so the majority of her screen time consists of facial expressions, gestures, and actions. Her illustration of grief early in the movie relies almost entirely on facial manipulation, adding layers of complexity without uttering a sound. Sean Penn’s performance as the grieving older version of Jack has minimal screen time and dialogue, but the great actor still finds a way of making something real out of it. No corners were cut when casting this film, and this fine company of actors gives life to the director’s vision.

But what does it all mean? The Tree of Life is a movie about life, death, love, and loss. It’s a movie that asks us why any of these things happen, without necessarily giving us answers. Mrs. O’Brien establishes The Tree of Life’s central conflict in a voiceover, almost immediately after the film begins: the “Way of Nature” versus the “Way of Grace.” Mrs. O’Brien argues that the “Way of Nature” encourages greed, selfishness, and cruelty, while the “Way of Grace” is the one true way through life, encouraging love and kindness. Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien serve less as characters and more as archetypes of Nature and Grace, respectively. The conflict is seen plainly in scenes of the O’Brien family’s day-to-day life: Mr. O’Brien teaches Jack how to punch his enemies in the face, while Mrs. O’Brien reads the boys bedtime stories; Mr. O’Brien punishes, while Mrs. O’Brien forgives. Playing as a nonlinear narrative, The Tree of Life examines this duality’s many instances in the life of the O’Briens.

The movie opens with an older O’Brien couple learning of their middle child’s death. Immediately after the creation sequence, we see Mrs. O’Brien giving birth to Jack, her first child. Towards the end of the film, we see an image of our sun as a White Dwarf, which would render Earth uninhabitable. The death of a son, and the death of our sun—which matters more? Which is more earth-shattering, more apocalyptic? Juxtaposing the cosmic and the intimate invites readers to consider not just the grand scale of the cosmic, but also the cosmic scale of the intimate. Creating someone can create your world, and losing someone can destroy it; that’s what Malick is getting at in The Tree of Life. The intimate can feel cosmic when love is a part of the picture. As Mrs. O’Brien says in a voiceover, “Unless you love, your life will flash by.”

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is abundant in beauty, rich in ideas, and steep in ambition, but not so steep that the movie fails to reach a summit. Malick’s distinctive brand of filmmaking is always discernible, but it is also his most personal film to date. Only an interview with the enigmatic director would reveal more about his personality and personal philosophy. The film isn’t for everyone; moviegoers who expect a nostalgic family drama with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn are in for a surprise. But in these days of endless comic book adaptations, remakes, and reboots, a blockbuster art film of this scope and originality will be welcomed with open arms by those who wish to embrace it.