The first thing that strikes me about the response to The Tree of Life is that the film is suffering a bit from Eyes Wide Shut syndrome… which is to say, it’s a very simple, clear idea that people are getting distracted from by the light show.
Well, the idea is simple. The ideas are not.
The Tree of Life is the story of Jack, a boy, whose tale is remembered as a man by his adult self. (That’s Sean Penn.) But the movie rests on Jack in a way that gives a Malick film its clearest protagonist since Days of Heaven.
The theme is also stated pretty clearly up front… Nature vs a human idea of Grace. Malick stacks the deck a bit by offering the non-biblical creation of earth, using images that bring all steps back to a visual of cellular reproduction. However, inside of Jack’s family, things are more complex, as the mother attempts to live with grace, but is drawn to the wildness of nature and the father lives by his natural instinct, but fights to live the grace that does not fit him throughout.
Some have already simplified the father, the Brad Pitt character, into “the abusive father,” but I would argue that point. I think he is a raw man who wants the grace for his children that he’ll never have. I believe his offers of love.
The mother (Jessica Chastain) is a pinball in this pre-feminist world. She doesn’t want her husband to be harsh, yet she wants the discipline he offers and can’t offer herself.
Jack is not only stuck between the two, but is also the only son to come of age during the telling of this tale. It is time for him to take some power for himself, but how?
Grown-Up Jack lives, literally, in glass houses and offices, as his parents do. It’s a prison of glass, where you can see nature, but never touch it, never feel it. Is his adult ability to rein in nature, leaving his life rather chilly, a good thing? Did he give up on nature when his brother died, decades earlier, living in a grace coffin?
Of course, all of that is the subtext. What the text reminds me of is the found footage films of recent years. Obviously, this footage is as beautiful as a television commercial. This ain’t in Super 8. But it’s the feel… even more so than previous Malick, which has that unsettled feeling (even though the filmmaker cuts longer than any major filmmaker).
It’s almost a silent movie. Malick’s trademark of spoken word over images that don’t match exactly fits better than ever before, as The Story isn’t screaming for your focus. It is a reverie with moments of detail. It’s how people think, I think, as we slow down to consider our lives.
Malick delivers as intimate a portrait of a fairly normal childhood-coming-into-manhood as any filmmaker ever has. And Malick being Malick, it is the tiniest of things that makes it work. The way boys jostle each other for no reason as they walk pretty much anywhere. The way they approach nature. The way they stare and make noise and brood and leap and break and heal and think so hard that they can hardly stand it anymore.
Malick takes the time to let us consider our own feelings about this young man’s pov. How did we see our parents at that age. How did we think they treated each other… and now that we are adults, what was really going on?
It is one of the master strokes of Tree of Life that Malick offers very few answers… even as these characters go through big events. And in most films, this would be disastrous. Most films in this dramatic arena are about exploring how things bounce through the mind and heart. This film is about the soul… the universal soul.
I have no connection to the family in this movie, by faith, geography, class, ethnicity, history, etc. But I am Jack. His parents are my parents. His siblings are my siblings. Because they embody the challenges of life, not because of who they are on paper.
Even the spirituality of the film, which could be argued to be anti-organized religion, if you wanted to, speaks to the universal. You can’t get much more universal than the origins of the planet (and species).
I look forward to seeing this film again… like sitting in Malick’s church… silent and solemn and challenging and reflective.
