Tree of Life

Terrence Malick has only made five films in 38 years. Most of them have been viewed by cinephiles and film geeks as important, iconoclastic and influential movies. Only The New World, his last film, struggled to find the accolades heaped on his other efforts. It's therefore understandable that so many critics are singing the praises of The Tree of Life. The thinking goes something like this: Malick is a filmmaking genius, therefore we must view his work through the filter of reverence, even when we're not quite sure what we're looking at.

At Cannes, where the movie was first screened (and won the Palm D'Or), audiences were split. A cascade of boos greeted the credits only to be overwhelmed by cheers and applause. Both responses are valid.

The Tree of Life is a highly flawed film. It is needlessly elliptical, thematically redundant and, at times, unapologetically pretentious and indulgent. It is also, unequivocally, a work of art. And I am profoundly glad Malick was able to make it. Like David Lynch's epic mindfuck Inland Empire, Malick's ode to creation is an uncompromised and highly personal project that insists that audiences engage it on his terms, not theirs.

For those who know the director's work, it's no secret that he has been experimenting with the idea of cinematic poetry. I don't mean the word in the way other critics compliment poetic or lyrical moments. I mean, Malick has, with each film, started to shed the familiar elements of drama and classic storytelling in favor of creating visual and narrative poems, movies that embrace the aesthetics and evocations of cinema as their sole vehicle for meaning. In The Thin Red Line, it meant stylized voiceovers that attempted to capture the internal landscape of its characters. In Days of Heaven and The New World it meant lingering shots that juxtaposed the natural world with the encroaching constructs of man. More and more, exposition and traditional forms of character development took a back seat to film art. The Tree of Life is the culmination of that movement.

The central story orbits around Waco, Texas, in the '50s, where the O'Brien family's three sons live under the demanding rules of their bullying father (an excellent Brad Pitt) and angelic mother (Jessica Chastain). Jack (newcomer Hunter McCracken), the eldest son, struggles the most, living in that place where fear and love become one emotion. We also follow Jack as an adult (Sean Penn), wrestling with his memories of childhood, the lessons of his dad, and the death of one of his brothers. Malick infuses the O'Brien's world with intimacy and insight, engaging us in their daily, and sometimes harrowing, struggles. But to say he's presenting a narrative direction would be generous. Malick has created a dramatic memory space, one filled with all the conventions of storytelling but without an actual story to tell.

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