Movie Review of “The Tree of Life”

“The Tree of Life”  (2hrs & 19 min)

Any assemblage of devout people could not help but be drawn into a round of lengthy discussion after a shared viewing of this expansive production.  Within minutes after it gets underway we are told, in the voice-over of a mother playfully attentive to her small children, that we have two ways to go on our human journey:  the way of grace or the way of nature.  Grace is loving, giving and forgiving.  Nature is self-serving, indifferent, uncaring.  Thence we set out on a quest to see this much heralded universal truth worked out in the lives of her family, which I surmise is meant to serve as a microcosm for the whole race of humanity.  Agony and ecstasy for the following two-hours-plus do a dance across a wide expanse of territory both palpable and ethereal.   

A powerful tale shimmers beneath the surface of this production – from the gifted hand of writer/director Terence Malick, for whom I have great regard. (His “Days of Heaven” is one of my all-time favorites.)  If only this tale had managed to come fully to the surface and play out without undue distraction.  His work here is sensitive and inspired, but his reflections about self-discovery, divine/human encounter, wonderment and the loss of innocence do not come forth with quite the sharpness or boldness that I would have liked.  A flawed attempt at a masterpiece, surely!  Malick evidently thought that the drama itself was not substantial enough, that it needed to be submerged in a vast deep blue sea of cosmic explosions, volcanic eruptions, windblown landscapes, busy ocean waves, and natural wonders.  Even some prehistoric animals put in brief appearances. 

         

The acting is the most inspired feature.  Jessica Chastain plays the mother, and she is luminous in her portrayal of a 1950s stay-at-home wife in conflict with the domineering husband/father upon whom she is economically dependent, exuding a quiet understanding of her three preadolescent boys that her husband learns almost too late that he does not possess.  And she does it all with a very scanty use of dialogue.  Brad Pitt is completely plausible and potent as the husband.  And not the least in the casting is Hunter McCracken as the oldest and preadolescent son Jack, whose odyssey of body and spirit is the pivotal one in the film.  He is nothing short of marvelous. 

The film actually has four parts.  The first one, out of sequence, takes us into the later life of the household, when an untimely death is visited upon them.  It lasts about twenty slow minutes, before we are hurled into the second part, when most of the previously mentioned cosmic phenomena take place, suggestive of Creation in the making and the dawn of life on earth.  Almost forty minutes of the footage has passed when the third and longest part gets underway – the flashback to Jack’s earlier struggle leading to his eventual rebellion.  This is by far the most immediately affective of the four parts, as out of focus and disrupted as some of it is.  I thought the scenes in which the boys interact in the absence of the grownups were the most moving in the entire picture.  The fourth is a quite confusing glimpse into the soul wrestling of the grown-up Jack (Sean Penn).  In this last phase of the tale things gets quite blurry, especially with regard to the sense of time and place.  The strange family reunion we witness (Is Jack daydreaming it or is it for real on some level?  Not clear!) does make for a feel-good ending.   

The major problem for me with “The Tree of Life” is the frenetic style of the editing.  The scenes shift at such a nervous pace that much of what is being said gets garbled in the ambitious, overactive cinematic process.  So much of the characters’ thoughts are voiced over, but it is not always easy to tell whose thoughts we are hearing or to whom they are being directed.  As beautiful and mysterious as the images are by themselves, I found much of them ultimately laborious and distracting to sit through.  In fact, that is exactly what the movie seems to do – endlessly belabor, pushing the running time far past the two hours that would have been adequate.  I had the feeling that the cinematographer and the film editor believed that anything they could do they should do.

I wanted very much to be carried away by this movie, before I saw it; it sounded so inviting to my mystical nature and my personal taste.  When I was not carried away, I went back for a second viewing, still hoping that something special was there that I had missed, but to no avail.  While it is not a total failure, I still think it falls short of a masterpiece.  It does stir some profound chords, which may translate into more uplifting music for some viewers than they did for me.  I do not begrudge anyone that experience.