“There are two ways through life. The way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you will follow.”

This quote begins and sets the tone for Terrence Malick’s philosophically ambitious film The Tree of Life, a sprawling visual poem that delves into ideas around the interconnectedness of all things through the intersection of a 1950s family in Waco, Texas (Malick’s boyhood hometown) with life, the universe and everything.

Malick studied philosophy at Harvard and taught the subject at MIT, and this film feels like the culmination of a life’s work spent immersed in philosophical ponderings; it’s a very visual dissertation expressing a world view in which all things are connected, every passing moment of weighty importance, and all of it wrapped in the idea of the meaning of life as essentially being about nature versus grace.

Imagine that you wanted to capture the essence of childhood memory, understand all the things that made you who you are right now. Think of your childhood, being mindfully aware of capturing snapshots of the myriad bubbles that float to the surface of your conscious mind when you think of words like “childhood” or “home,” “mother” or “father.” Out of the millions of moments that bubble up from the depths of memory, freeze a few and pluck them out to examine them. What would the snapshots of your own childhood look like, encased in such fragile soap bubbles, captured moments that shaped you and thus hold meaning for you: A birth. A death. A fight. A life lesson.

Malick gives us the story of oldest child Jack (Sean Penn, the adult Jack, Hunter McCracken as the child), his brothers and his parents, and one gets the sense that there’s more than a little that’s autobiographical here in in Malick’s soul-searching. But there’s a certain universality to Malick’s world view that makes the specifics of any given struggle over nature versus grace less important than the outcome.

Malick expresses these ideas mostly through images and whispers and classical music that evokes a father’s lost dream of being a musician. When we see the adult Jack, his life — like his father’s before him — is bereft of the warmth that infuses his memories of childhood. Jack’s father abandoned a dream of being a professional musician in favor of more practical pursuits. Adult Jack is an architect, a builder of things, framed in wide-angles amid steel girders and geometric patterns. Jack’s adult life is as cool and distant as his memories of his father’s elusive love. Malick contrasts the emptiness of adult Jack’s life with idealized visions of a boyhood bathed in rays of golden sunlight. The adult Jack is imprisoned, visually, by the very things he builds (and, perhaps, by life in general); the younger Jack roams his world freely with with his brothers and friends, exploring the world of light, shadow and wonder. Much of what we see of the younger Jack has to do with the boy trying desperately to not be his father; when he rails against his father, he’s fighting as much against himself as his dad. And so the younger Jack struggles against his own nature but fails, as evidenced by the adult Jack’s almost complete disconnect from the world around him.

Jack’s father mistakes “higher” as “more successful,” as evidenced by his frequent references to various degrees of material success, and Jack himself has latched onto this as an adult, surrounding himself by the trappings of materialism that have failed to make him happy. Penn has practically no lines in this film at all, but he conveys the sorrow of the ages through the lines on his face, the way he moves and carries himself, the haunted, seeking, hungry look in his eyes. Does the adult Jack evoke Malick himself, or all of us living lives in which nature has won over grace?

As befits a film we’ve waited this long for, The Tree of Life is pretty certain to be very divisive among the critical set. Can something that’s been anticipated so long ever hope to live up to the hype, the breathless air of expectation that surrounds it? This film is so personal, so philosophically specific in its ideas — much more so than any of Malick’s previous work — that how you respond to it depends as much upon your own philosophic world view as it does any mere technical ability to appreciate Malick’s renowned skill at composing frames of beauteous visuals.

“Visual poem” seems to me to be the best way to describe what Malick’s done (detractors might say “attempted to do” here). The Tree of Life is almost entirely bereft of what one might consider to be the traditional elements of cinematic storytelling: plot, structure, character arcs, even character development. Or to be more accurate, it’s not so much lacking in those elements as it views those elements through a kaleidoscope, where every time you move it or twist it, it shifts into something new. Plot and character development don’t happen with any kind of linearity or predictability, they evolve and change as each moment impacts those that follow, like a tossed pebble making infinite ripples on the surface of a pond.

From the warm glows of orange light on dark screen that bookend the film, to the non-linear, non-traditional way in which he weaves his tale of this family, to the moments where he seeks to visually connect these particular lives (and, by extension, your life, and yours, and yours) to a greater pattern that moves and defines us all — there is nothing in this film that feels there by happenstance. Every moment exists to support Malick’s thesis that life is about nature versus grace, about striving to aim for that which is higher than that to which we are born.

Spirituality weighs heavily in the film, and nearly every frame is heavy with symbolism: doorways, stairs and ladders appear frequently, as do patterns in nature — particularly spirals — and water. Over and over, Malick’s visuals reach upwards: cathedral-like shots taken upward through bowers of soaring fir trees, spiraled branches, and skyscrapers, shots of the sky peeking through intricate patterns of branches, countless shots up staircases, imagery of flying.

Jack’s mother (Jessica Chastain), resplendent in Madonna-like radiance and bathed in sunlight throughout, is all golden warmth; Jack’s father (Brad Pitt), is cool, and stern, demanding of obedience and respect, never satisfied — with his sons or himself The happiest, most carefree bit of memory captured in the story is when the father is absent on an extended business trip. Much of what we see in Jack’s development as a character has to do with his own struggle to free himself from a nature that’s more like his father than his mother, and all of it is conveyed more through lush visuals than words: Sunlight filtered through sheets hung out to dry. Experimenting with being “bad” and struggling with guilt and loss The presence (or absence) of God in all things. The death of a brother at age 19, and how that loss ties in with everything else.

The Tree of Life is gorgeously shot, with frame after carefully composed frame of beauteous imagery, augmented by a score by Alexandre Desplat and period costuming by Jacqueline West (who was Oscar-nominated for her work on another Pitt film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). The film overall, though, stunning and deeply philosophically pondering as it is, is likely to be divisive, and it’s hard to imagine a film like this finding mass commercial appeal. Can a meandering, philosophically searching, lushly visual film like The Tree of Life connect with the minds and hearts of those who see the purpose of going to the movies as nothing more than a mindless distraction from every day life?

After the screening of The Tree of Life last night, I was in the elevator with a group of middle-aged couples who’d just come from seeing Bridesmaids; they were laughing hysterically about the bridal shop-food poisoning scene and talking about how funny that film is. By contrast, when the press left the screening of The Tree of Life, people went quietly, thoughtfully, as if exiting a church after witnessing some solemn religious rite. I couldn’t help contrasting the two groups and thinking: Well, you sure wouldn’t come out of The Tree of Life laughing with your friends. You could discuss it for hours over coffee or drinks, to be sure — once you’d processed it a bit yourself — but I don’t know that you’d call seeing it “fun,” exactly.

For me, there’s a place for “the movies” to encompass both fun, entertaining fare like Bridesmaids and more challenging films like The Tree of Life, but watching the latter certainly requires you to let go your expectations of what a movie “should be” so that you can sit back and appreciate Malick’s vision for what it is. Nature versus grace. Which side weighs most heavily in your own life?

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