I’ve been talking for a while about my trepidation about seeing this film. It’s one of those films that’s almost impossible to explain to someone who’s not familiar with art films, and I’d never recommend it blind to someone. Tree of Life was not completely confusing or boring like I had feared, but it surprised me, though I’m not sure in a good way.
Tree of Life is sort of about life on earth, with a smattering of ponderings about God that show up every once in a while. Malick switches between the big picture of nature and the universe and the small picture of an older son growing up in 50s suburbia. To be honest, I think the film does better with the cosmic picture of life than the human coming of age story; the sequences of the creation of the universe and Earth as we know it are stunning, and it makes life look like a miracle. The cinematography is unsurprisingly awe-inspiring and the most successful part of the film. The other side, the human story, tries to mix the stylization of the larger picture with a story about family, but the connection doesn’t quite work. I was very surprised to find that the cinematography in this portion seemed very sterile; beautiful to look at, but in an detached sort of way, like each shot was on the wall of an art gallery. The shots fit together technically but there’s something missing that I can’t really explain. (This is the problem with discussing films like this; they’re so open to interpretation that it can be hard to parse subjective experience into something concrete enough to express.)
The human part of the story is also hurt by the stylization; the actors play something closer to archetypes than actual characters. They may have names, but it doesn’t really matter. The worst offender is Jessica Chastain, who plays an ethereal all-mother-pure-goddess “character” supposedly named Mrs. O’Brien. Almost always bathed in white light, she begins the film whispering about nature and grace, and is almost nothing but the embodiment of both. She seems perpetually warm, graceful, loving, dutiful, every single nonthreatening female ideal you can think of. It’s disappointing, especially since her first scene as the adult Mrs. O’Brien is so crushingly emotional as she learns her child has died. Brad Pitt’s archetype, 50s Authoritarian Dad, is more fleshed out; he has lost goals and success and failure and rages and apologies, all portrayed with nuance. He almost but not quite fits into the character Mr. O’Brien, but not quite. He also provides the purest connection I saw in the entire film; there a shot directly after the shot in the poster shown above, where we see Mr. O’Brien examining his firstborn son, looking at this creature that he helped create in awe. It’s a truly moving shot, which contrasts with the birth sequence right before it where everything is bathed in sterile whiteness; the walls, the nurses, All-Mother-Pure-Goddess as she give birth.
The first son, Jack is the closest to a main character the film has. He goes through no specific arc other than growing up and becoming more distant from his family. He feels like he’s the unfavorite compared to his brother, and he struggles with his feelings of isolation rubbing up against his affection for his family. We also see him grown up in something closer to present times; Sean Penn plays him stuck in a maze of uniform architecture that is filled with suits and coldness. His feelings of isolation seem unresolved as he contemplates and….contemplates. To be frank, his entire section could have been removed with little change to the film.
And then we get to the hardest part: what is this film about? What is Terrence Malick trying to say? I had assumed before seeing the film that this was a celebration of life, and the beginning of the film and the pre-human sections seem to go towards that, but I actually considered the rest of the film to a bit nihilistic. Here are these people that are isolated, trying to figure out life and why things happen, why a child would be allowed to die if there is a plan for everything and everyone, and the film gives no answer. There is no sense that there is a plan, or that the nature that All-Mother-Pure-Goddess speaks of is sentient, watching, or organized in any fashion. Jack’s isolation continuing throughout his life seems to imply that human isolation never ends; the person closest to being a character cannot find peace in his steel and glass environment. He simply floats in this world that has nature and grace, but no connection. We see the birth of the universe and earth and life that is so precious, but the specifics of life for us are sterile and cold or based in archetypes. Who are these people but placeholders? Are we all placeholders? We see that life as a concept is beautiful and meaningful, but in practice, is there any hope for us sentient beings?
The last scene shows older Jack along with the other O’Briens and other people on a beautiful beach with once again, that pure white light. All-Mother-Pure-Goddess, dressed in white, bathes in pureness with two equally pure looking women before leading her family into the horizon. This seems to be some sort of afterlife, reminding me of the dance of death at the end of The Seventh Seal, and it is the only time where older Jack looks happy. Has he only found peace in death? I couldn’t think of another interpretation, and that seems very depressing to me. I am not a religious or spiritual person, and so the idea of heaven being the closest thing to peace really does not sit well with me. Is life full of uncertainty and pain until we die? Or do the intricacies of life not matter, just that we are alive until we are not? Those were what I got from the film, and somehow i think that’s not what Malick wanted to say.
Perhaps I just can’t relate in the way Malick intended? As I said, I’m not and never was religious, and maybe that’s why the smatterings of religious doubt seemed half-baked to me. I had 90s Authoritative Parents (born 1989), and with that a different set of emotions to work through. I’ve grown up in a city all my life, so I almost resent the portrayal of adult Jack’s environment as rigid and isolating. With subject matter so subjective, perhaps I reacted more to the universal awe over galaxies and stars and planets and dinosaurs than the human story? Or does that say something about how I look at the world.
While watching this film, I was reminded of Melancholia, another movie released this year that combines the cosmos with human life. Melancholia at least is clear in its statement that life is unimportant in the greater picture, and it succeeds at connecting the larger point to the emotions of people, creating characters to observe, if not pity. The cosmos is explicitly random, uncaring about Earth’s capacity for life, and there is real isolation and anxiety and dread bearing down on the characters. The Tree of Life seems like it was meant to say the opposite, that life is beautiful and special and there is natural connection, but it rings false. The end of the world in Melancholia is more satisfying and somehow more triumphant than the bright afterlife of The Tree of Life. I don’t know if The Tree of Life is an inferior film to Melancholia, but I personally found it much more meaningful.
[originally posted 12/20/11]
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