tree of life

Like Tarkovsky, Terrence Malick is another film mystic and favourite director of mine. His work is deep, mysterious and, whereas Tarkovky's tends to be dour, joyful. He eschews making worldly entertainment in favour of meditating on life's big questions like "what is love?" and "what happens when we die?"  In his relatively small body of work as director (only six films in 42 years, of which Days of Heaven is still the best in my opinion) he has managed to give us a clear and unique worldview in which nature and grace are the dominant forces. You don't just watch a Malick film, you experience it; you have to enter with an open mind and check your habitual film viewing expectations at the door--never more so than with his latest, Tree of Life.

The "story" (I use quotation marks because the film is less of a narrative and more of an experience) is about a boy growing up in a straight-laced small town in the 1950's; his mother teaches him and his brothers to love and be joyful, while his father trains them to be manly and cruel (he is not portrayed as a heartless villain, but rather a product of his environment and the times, and is redeemed in the end). The younger brother dies in Vietnam, and each family member prays, in eloquent voice-over, to be reunited. Here's where the cosmic montages come in: from the big bang to the dinosaurs, to the glass-towered cities of today, they long for each other until the end of time when their prayers are finally answered.

Malick truly goes out on a limb here, both stylistically and thematically. In our jaded times, educated people often look down on religious faith as the domain of naive fundamentalists, while in this film it is restored to what it once was: humanity's most sublime pursuit. We saturated, savvy viewers may interpret cosmic montages as the language of advertising and the image of a man in a business suit wandering in the desert as a well-worn cliché. Such is the dilemma of releasing a modernist oeuvre in a postmodern world.

Were it not for his hermetic isolation, Malick would perhaps have been more wise to some of the pitfalls he ventured into. But would he have had the insight to capture so compellingly the perspective of a new-born child, to linger so lovingly on all the small lessons given to the baby by its parents? Would he have had the patience to film the secret life of boys in their backyards and alleys in such detailed and life-like complexity?  His monk-like approach to his work makes it an honest expression from the bottom of his soul and I for one would never encourage him to "get with the times". Kudos to the producers (Brad Pitt among them), who didn't either, for simply trusting his unique vision and standing behind him in getting this elusive film made.