The better half and I (all about us) finally got around to seeing “The Tree of Life.” I (all about me) sat down to watch with ambivalence. Some people I know (and even respect) loved it, and others thought it was tedious. I now place myself in the latter category, while admitting that the cinematography was breathtaking. I wish I could have done the movie justice by seeing it on the big screen. Even so, I don’t think even an Imax experience could salvage a smidgeon of coherence from this bloated film.
Take, for instance, the plot. What exactly is it? Not to give the story (such as it is) away, but a tragic outcome awaits one of the members of the featured family. And we needed 140 minutes to learn that this development deeply moved parents and siblings? Meanwhile, after all that time we have no more of a clue about the circumstances surrounding this tragedy than we do about the vastness of the universe. What we do learn — news flash — is that the family suffered as a result.
Oh, wait. Maybe this tragedy was the consequence of the Big Bang theory. If so, that might explain the inclusion of a half-hour sequence of shortish takes that seem to show the evolution of the physical universe. Again, visually bedazzling but what is the connection to the family?
As for character development or dialogue, “The Artist” goes well beyond “The Tree of Life” even though the former is about a silent-film era movie star. Even so, “The Artist” has virtually more dialogue than “The Tree of Life.” The DVD we watched instructed viewers to turn the volume way up. That helped us to figure out a few of the words that sounded more like grunts and accompany various visual sequences. But cranking the volume up to 80 wasn’t enough to come anywhere near figuring out the mother of the family. I sure hope feminists were upset by the film because this woman – who was not as visually stunning as the Milky Way – had no excuse for a presence in the movie other than to observe or weep.
But for all of its defects, “The Tree of Life” was successful in one very important way. It confirmed what most viewers suspect about Sean Penn. The experience of the boy who grows into the adult played by Penn must have been exactly what the actor was like when an eleven-year old – willful, devious, and rebellious against a disciplinarian father. Still, I didn’t need 140 minutes to have that hunch confirmed.
Old Life 
I was surprised to see Roger Ebert place the film on his top 10 of all time. I felt it was bloated myself, but I think that feeling is inevitable given the scope of Malick’s vision. His efforts to instantiate Thomistic nature/grace dualism in Jessica Chastain’s and Brad Pitt’s characters were interesting. However, I suspect I need to watch the film several more times to grasp everything Malick attempted to convey—and blocks of 140 minutes don’t come as often as I’d like.
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Maybe the key to the puzzling “creation sequence” is found in Job 38?
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“Again, visually bedazzling but what is the connection to the family? ”
as an aside, I think George O’brien answers this well in his review:
“The extreme variations of scale are no afterthought in Malick’s scheme. To show the world in a grain of sand he must first establish what the world is. So he will walk us through the stages and conditions and outer boundaries of human existence, provide a basic introduction to annihilating and fecundating cosmic forces, move freely back and forth in time for lingering glances at birth and death and family and memory as if they were only marginally familiar phenomena, as if no one had ever done any of this before, in a movie at least—and indeed who ever did in quite this head-on fashion? He manages to make childhood (and The Tree of Life is beyond anything else a movie descriptive of childhood) seem a somewhat neglected condition, deserving of reexamination. He is continually trying out different ways of representing acts of perception: the perspective of a child looking up at the adult world, or looking down from some hidden perch, the abrupt rhythm of a child looking quickly at some terrifying outburst of adult anger and then looking away, the sheared-off gaps in editing that can mark a moment as a fresh eternity disconnected from what preceded it.”
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Can’t seem to post a comment with links, oh well.
The film also tracks very well with Augustine’s Confessions. It’s very much like an extended prayer filled with embedded ponderances and fragmented remembrances, where a man obviously broken is trying to weave together the signfigicance of everything from the grace manifested through his mother to the experientially unknowns of creation’s magnifigance; funneled down into the adult’s sphere of faith and doubt, wrestling with the variety of influences, the very confluence of cosmic divine acts and discrete childhood experiences.
For a *film* to try and do something like this is unexpected, and probably why many people tuned out or lashed out because it does defy narrative expectations.
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Maybe instead of prose, thinking of it as poetry on the screen would help.
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Mr Terrence Malick is a cinematic superman, our generations Kubrick. The Thin Red Line was stunning too, but was neglected for the more mainstream Saving Private Ryan. What Malick did with The Tree of Life is try to realise what Kubrick always wanted too, create a new movie narrative. Like Zrim said, poetry rather than narrative prose (split into acts). Did Malick succeed? I saw Tree of Life on the big screen, dinner laid out for you, and I loved it … And remember, one of my favourite movies is Raiders of The Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back … I loved the French New Wave and popcorn movies … When it’s all said and done, I think Malick more so than Kubrick was able too add a new dramatic/visual narrative to film, simply because Kubrick never realised—or really tried—to accomplish this idea of a new dramatic template. Some say Eyes Wide Shut was a try, I’m not so sure.
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Maybe instead of prose, thinking of it as poetry on the screen would help.
Which is exactly how I view Mighty Ducks 3 – poetry in motion. Few actors have mastered their craft like Emilio Estevez – maybe only Pauley Shore, and Keanu Reeves (in his Bill & Ted days).
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You know, maybe someone could help me figure out how to post an avatar to my comment box. I know, I know, I will be accused of the all-about-me turn of phrase made popular on here.
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David,
Avatar’s aren’t made, they’re earned… do you want one bad enough? Do you?
Drop and give me 50!
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Kidding, all you need to do is have a blog account (don’t even need to blog). Use WordPress or Blogger (I think wordpress is better). These blogger accounts will have you enter a profile pic that becomes your avatar – just don’t choose one that make’s you look like a cigar-chomping professional gambler like DGH, it’ll confuse folks into thinking your avatar is actually a mug-shot. What few people know about DGH’s avatar is that the arrest number has been conveniently edited out, but we all know he is wanted for international crimes against Kuyper.
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Darryl, you don’t read much poetry, do you?
And, wow, Zrim, I did not read your comment before I wrote the above. Seriously.
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Chris, but I do watch a lot of movies and I know the difference between poetry and cinema. If you want to see a movie that is poetic but still a movie, try The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
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I’m in the former category, but enjoyed your take on it. Perhaps Malick could take some lessons from the brothers Coen on incorporating poetry and plot? If you haven’t yet, check out Malick’s first film BADLANDS.
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The movie made more sense after I read Mike Horton’s review:
http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2011/06/20/review-of-the-tree-of-life/
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I like poetry — though I confess I don’t enjoy it enough …
… but who said it had to be so BORING!
Oops, sorry for lashing out against “The Lava Lamp Movie.”
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Brian, my wife’s thoughts about that “stuff” were not so elevated or 1970s.
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I jest, Daryl. Reading your post, I thought immediately that the reasons you were giving sounded a lot like the reasons people don’t like poetry.
Le scaphandre et le papillon was great, indeed. If we’re comparing, Tree can’t compare. Cinema isn’t poetry, and so your criticisms are valid. For my part, I left Tree convicted: in a man’s (apparent) ernest drive in both life and, not least, religious matters, he best be wary lest he push his sons in the wrong direction (I have two).
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Sorry, Chris. P(Larry)M has me on edge.
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I saw the film and was touched by some of the family interactions. Otherwise it was incoherent, boring and pretentious. Still, it’s nowhere near as incoherent as Mulholland Drive.
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Dr. Hart, curious if you have seen LVT’s Melancholia yet (last time this topic came up, I think you had not). If you hated Tree of Life, you may feel the same way about Melancholia, but it’s doing the same thing in an arguably more “narrative” form (since this is your primary complain about ToL). Both films use nature in a compelling way to express the way of nature/way of grace tension. Naturally, I think Tree of Life is wonderful, but I think Melancholia is a better made film, partially due my infinite love for LVT and also because it is a bit less caught up in its own visual genius than ToL. Of course, since I love the film you will probably hate it.
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Samantha, still haven’t seen Melancholia. I will have to see if Netflix makes it available since I doubt it will be coming to Hillsdale.
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