The Tree of Life (2011)

anoher visual masterpiece by Terrence Malick

Director: Terrence Malick

 

The movie won the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film festival. The opinions of the audience there were very mixed. As usual, considering the creator of the film, one would expect it to be visually striking, which it is.

 

This film is not a narrative piece of cinema in the standard sense.  It harkens back to the early days of cinema, when images were projected on the screen and were designed to captivate the viewer.  The overall subject is the meaning of life as perceived through the childhood memories of Jack (Sean Penn), who lives in Texas. At the opening, we see the parents of Jack, Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain). Suddenly, a letter is delivered by the postman. Mrs. O’Brien opens it and breaks down crying. We assume it has informed her of the death of a child. She and her husband are distraught. Then we see Jack walking through glass skyscrapers, apparently at work.

 

Suddenly we are thrust back in time to the beginning of the universe where we see images that resemble those scene at the conclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick. A number of subtle dinosaurs are shown in pastoral  environments, and we are eventually back in the early childhoods of the children of the O’Brien family.

 

Jack is the son who is in conflict, because his mother is nurturing, but his father is strict and demanding. Mr. O’Brien is a man who wanted to be an organist and musician, but he ultimately gave it up and became an inventor who had secured a number of patents. Being a self-made man, he expects his offspring to do the same.  One of the sons drowns in a pool. Jack is left with his brother and he tries to reconcile his ambivalence toward his father. At one point, frustrated with both his parents, he accuses his father of wanting to kill him. At the same time, he accuses his mother of being weak. He commits acts of vandalism and at one point walks into a neighbor’s house and steals a personal item.

 

As the film concludes, the world ends, but we see all the characters rejoined on a vast beach. The three brothers young and old meet again. The end result is a massive expression on humanity seen through the eyes of a few.  It has certain visual similarities to the director’s previous two films, The Thin Red Line and The New World.

 

All in all, it’s a meditative movie that one needs to get lost in. Malick has done it again!