Watching Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is an “event” – the cinematic equivalent of going to a U2 concert or watching in person the NBA finals. Not all will want to do it, but for the devotees, it is magical, perhaps even sublime. Malick, who is 67, is iconic – an auteur with a distinctive cinematic style and vision who has made only 5 movies in 40 years. Painfully shy in public but personable on the set; gentle, yet highly focused; mystical, but grounded in the everyday and the ordinary; obsessive with regard to detail, while open to wonder and the spontaneous, Malick has become a cinematic legend in his own time. Known for his breathtaking images, his whispered voiceovers that reveal a character’s inner thoughts, and his meticulously crafted sets, Malick has returned time and again to explore the place of humankind within a sacred universe. His has been a spiritual gaze.
Surely the most personal of his movies to date, The Tree of Life won the Palm d’Or prize for best film at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Finding inspiration for the movie in his own autobiography, Malick actively worked on the script for over a decade. And even when the shooting was over, it was another three years before editing was completed. Such is the care with which Malick brought his understanding of Life to the screen.
The movie opens with a quotation from Job 38: 4, 7: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? [… while] the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” This is God’s response to Job who has questioned the divine as to why he, a righteous man with a caring and good family, should suffer such grievous loss. Job is never given an “answer” to life’s pain and seeming capriciousness, but within nature, he does encounter the “Answerer,” the Creator of life. And that is enough. Life remains mysterious; evil continues to be present. But life is also wonder-filled, for it is graced by its Creator. Job will trust his God.
Here, in the Book of Job, Malick found an archetypal pattern around which to build his story; here would be the trajectory of Jack O’Brian’s life story. Now a successful, middle-aged architect working in a sleek, urban skyscraper and living in a beautiful tree-lined suburb, Jack (Sean Penn) is unable to come to terms with the tragic death of his younger brother at nineteen. It is his struggle which gives shape and “thickness” to the film. In particular, it is his perception of his parents’ agony that colors all else, even Jack’s present existence.
Some who have seen the movie criticize it for not having a typical narrative arch. But Malick’s interest is elsewhere. He is not trying to tell a story. As with Job, he is trying to understand the sometimes senselessness of life. The “slaughter of an innocent” has threatened to destroy a family. It has even put the universe’s meaning in doubt. “Where were you God?” “Did you know?” “I believed in you?” “I want to see what you see?” “What was it that you were showing me?” The Tree of Life becomes an extended meditation on loss. And like Job, it ends with a hard won, but real, epiphany of the God who holds it all in his hands. Grief transmutes into surrender, and nature into grace. Many will leave the theater in awe at experiencing divine mystery.
The magnitude of the O’Brien’s grief, as measured by the scale of Jack’s longing, invites, perhaps even demands, a cosmic response. And it is given. Having provided viewers an experience of the O’Brien’s loss, Malick abruptly takes viewers to the beginning of creation itself. With spectacular images of nebula, lava, water, starry nights, emerging life, a tree taking root, we are shown the origins of the universe, the development of life on earth (there is even a sequence showing a fierce dinosaur offering a defenseless young a surprising moment of grace). Most of this twenty minute sequence is without words. Instead, sacred and classical music ( Bach, Berlioz, Smetana, Tavener, Gorecki, Mahler) give texture and meaning to the foreground. If we are going to contemplate the meaning of human existence, like Job, it must begin with life’s beginning.
When bad things happen to good people, we all know that there are no words capable of answering our grief. Or if there are words, they are most often primal questions and childlike observations. So it is for Jack. From his encounter with creation and its Creator, we are then given a flood of Jack’s recollections – helping his dad plant a tree, his mom playing in the sprinklers, setting off sparklers, eating dinner, being attracted to a girl for the first time, swimming in the river, being engulfed by a cloud of DDT as it is sprayed by a truck. This is not an idealized portrayal; sin is present, too. Waco, Texas in the 50’s is segregated. A neighbor child drowns while swimming at the river. The boys get in trouble when their dad leaves for an extended business trip. Jack lashes out at his stern father. A mother is overcome by grief. Malick’s portrayal of Jack’s life is particular, and yet universal. In Jack we see ourselves and our own childhood. Re-imagining his roots by observing them carefully and lovingly, Jack (and all of us as viewers) is hoping against hope that something greater might shine through.
Jack’s remembrance of his life begins not only with his brother’s death, but with his mother reflecting that there are “two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace.” It is his father who represents “nature,” which in this rendition means the survival of the fittest. Mr. O’Brien teaches his three boys to box, for life will be tough. He believes that everyone needs to control his own destiny, and success is how one should be judged. But eventually, after he is laid off from his work, Jack’s father can only tell his son, “I wanted to be loved because I was great.” In the process, he confesses, “I missed life’s glory.”
Better for Jack is the way of grace, represented by his mother. Mrs. O’Brien is a nurturer. In one scene (that serendipitously happened during filming), she is dancing in the street and a butterfly lands on her. She is able to help her boys breathe fresh air and imagine life’s beauty. As she is remembered by Jack, images and music are central, though voiceovers and minimal dialogue also reveal something of the musings and longings of her heart. But though Jack’s mother is graced, how can this now be maintained, given her son’s death? As Jack seeks to take hold of The Tree of Life, the grief of his mother becomes a barrier beyond which he seemingly cannot go.
Throughout these memories from Jack’s childhood, Malick is not interested in simply telling a story, surely not in providing a show. Instead, as A.O. Scott writes, his purpose is “to shine the light of the sacred in secular reality.” Or better, to help us as viewers comprehend that nothing is secular; all is sacred. Malick ends his movie as Jack’s elevator ride up his skyscraper morphs into his reverie about heaven which is to come. As his dead brother leads him to the seashore, he is reunited with his family and all the people from his home town. Viewers are provided with what one critic has labeled “a dramatic curtain call.” Pain and sorrow are vanished. We see the reconciliation of his father and mother, and young Jack is again on his father’s shoulders. As Berlioz’s Agnus Dei is played, we hear of “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Incredibly, Jack’s mother is freed to forgive, to release her son into God’s hands. As her boy walks away into the beyond, she is granted Grace. In a final act of celebration, the movie ends with the beauty of a field of sunflowers. This is God’s world.
At both screenings of the movie which I saw, the audience remained after it was over in quiet, stunned reverie. Life has a goal it is moving toward – the re-creation of heaven and earth. All who choose the way of Grace will find their reconciliation in God. Mystery remains for now. No “answer” is given to life’s tragedies; but the “Answerer” is present. For Malick, as for Job, it is enough. In the sacredness of the Cineplex, viewers are offered a moment of peace and reconciliation.
Questions on The Tree of Life.
1. Did the movie ring true for you? Was the O’Brien family believable? What did you feel toward the mother? The father? Jack?
2. Why does the movie include a twenty minute long sequence on the creation of the world? And what do you make of the dinosaurs?
3. Who is telling the Story? What insight does he achieve, if any?
4. How does the opening quotation from Job 38: 4, 7 and the sermon on Job during the film provide an interpretive clue to the movie’s meaning?
5. Did the ending work for you? Were you surprised? Does it bring resolution? If so, what is resolved? What other movie depictions of heaven can you remember? What are the problems for a filmmaker in depicting “heaven”?
6. Most movies have three acts (a problem emerges, struggle, resolution). Is this true for The Tree of Life?
7. Do Jack’s remembrances of childhood seem true to your own childhood, even if you did not grow up in rural Texas? In what sense is Jack meant to be “everyman” and “everywoman”?
8. How would you describe the movie’s distinction between grace and nature? Is it the same way Christians have often distinguished between the two?
9. Music affects listeners in ways that image and words can’t. What did the music do for you? Did it add any sense of mystery or even sacredness?
10. Was there anything transcendent in your experience of the movie? How might you describe this experience, if there was?
Scripture that might be put into dialogue with The Tree of Life.
Job 38; Genesis 1-2; Psalm 19; Revelation 22; Ecclesiastes 1-2, 9.
