Movie Review: The Tree of Life

Once upon a time, in one of those odd jokes of which history is so fond, thousands of Celts left the soggy, mist-shrouded islands where they had lived since time began, and settled in the hot and sticky American South. After about 200 years of dealing with heat, tornadoes, their fellow North Americans, modern technology, large-scale capitalism, and (of course) heat -- these folk had created one of the strangest cultures in the world, a culture so unusual that almost no one else could live in it, but so suited to them that they found it difficult to live anywhere else.

They were a sensual people, fond of gambling, music, and flirtation. But they were also a religious people, obsessed with sin and redemption. They loved technology, and eagerly embraced almost any new invention that made their lives more comfortable. But they also retained their old sensitivity to nature, and they would spend hours poking around in tiny gardens to get the best tomatoes and lettuce. They believed in very strong men and very feminine women -- but some of their strongest violent men could be moved to tears by thinking about their "mamma's." They were a striving people who wanted desperately to better themselves, but with great tendencies toward lethargy. They were a kind and affectionate people when cheerful, but they could fall into black rages that led to violence.

Of course, these stereotypes are all well-known to the denizens of Hollywood -- they have been staples in movies about the South since the movies began. But Terrence Malick, who wrote and directed The Tree of Life (an experimental movie that just won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival) was born in 1943 and grew up in Texas and Oklahoma, and he knows some key facts about this culture that most folks don't. He knows that in a place like Waco in the 1950s people tended to be obsessed with trees, that they had a great respect for traditional high culture (particularly classical music), that they deeply felt the weight of history, and that they were always, always talking to God.

So while the The Tree of Life appears to touch all of the typical stereotypes of this world, it goes beyond the Pat Conroy view of the South, and really tries to give the viewer a sense of how these people think and feel. Sean Penn plays a very successful architect, now living in a large city, who is still mourning the fact that his younger brother died back in the 1960's at the age of 19. He cannot understand how God could have allowed such a terrible thing to happen, and he questions God on this issue. One day, while Penn is thinking about his brother, he sees that a new tree is being planted in front of the skyscraper where he works, and this sets him off on a meditation on the past that makes up most of the movie. The meditation begins with a long and detailed sequence about the creation of the world. With spectacular cinematography and ethereal music, we see the fallout from the Big Bang, the origins of life on earth, the increase in the complexity of life, and life among the dinosaurs. The effect is to give you the sense of creation from God's perspective, and it shows why many Christians are not troubled by the theory of evolution -- even if God created life over 6 billion years, the process is still incredibly strange and beautiful and inexplicable.

Then we see Sean Penn's character, Jack O'Brien, as a baby growing up in Waco during the 1940's and 1950's. Through a series of fast cuts, we watch his world expand, meet his two younger brothers (including the one whose death we are mourning), and start to learn about his parents, played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. Chastain does a great job of convincing you why boys love their mothers so much. But Pitt's character is, to me at least, the heart of the movie. He is an ambitious and frustrated engineer who wanted to be a musician, and who is never happier than playing the church organ. Unfortunately, he is so furious about his inability to become rich (and so determined to ensure that his sons do better) that he is constantly breaking out into hostility toward the family that he loves. Pitt is amazing in this role. He captures the physical strength and presence of a big man who almost seems to overwhelm the O'Brien's tiny suburban house. He also captures the enormous rage of someone who certainly has great talents, but who just can't quite make it in the corporate world, and who cannot fathom why the God he worships is treating him so badly. And he captures the divided mind of someone who works on cutting-edge technology, and who carefully dresses in white collar attire at all times, but who will come home from work to weed his garden while wearing dress pants. The subtlety and nuance of Pitt's performance is very important here, because there is a severe Oedipal conflict between Jack O'Brien and his dad, and it would be easy for Pitt's character to become just another Southern bully. Pitt does not let that happen.

There is a lot more to this section of the film. Malick has a great feel for the rhythms of life in a place like Waco, and anyone who grew up in a small Southern town before cable television will recognize the casual violence, the church services, the contests of physical strength, and the vast and desperate efforts of boys trying to fill endless summer days. Similarly, anyone who grew up with a younger brother will recognize the enormous amounts of time that brothers spent together in a pre-video game age. Indeed, I found time starting to crawl toward the end of this sequence, and I would have shortened it somewhat. But it clearly has great meaning for Malick, and I can understand his wanting to show all of it.

Finally, we return to the present, where Sean Penn is still depressed. And at this point he has a sort of mystical vision in which he sees his family (as it was in the 1950's) reunited along a beach, and he sees his mother apparently give her son (his dead brother) to God. Then we come back to Sean Penn, who now appears to feel better, and that's the end of the movie.

What does it mean? Well, this is modern art, so you will have to decide for yourself. Personally, I think the explanation is given by the quotation from the Book of Job that opens the movie: Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation . . . while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Like Job, the characters in the movie want God to justify himself -- and like Job, they learn that God does not give explanations. The world is a strange and mysterious place, even to its most intelligent creatures, and the deepest purposes of God remain a secret. But as the reference to the morning stars and the sons of God makes clear, it appears to be a happy secret.

How will people react to this movie? I think it will be enormously popular with highly-educated Christians from small towns who like to reflect on the book of Job, and with people (like the critics in Cannes) who tend to support modernism and experimentation in any form. But I'm afraid most typical Blue Staters will be uncomfortable with all the God stuff, while most typical Red Staters will mistrust the modernism. (The same fate has befallen T.S. Eliot, who is losing influence because his combination of modernism and conservative Christianity doesn't fit neatly into either side's strategy for winning the Culture Wars.) Nevertheless, I do believe that the film will live as a cult classic, because it will affect some people very deeply, and because if you like this sort of movie, you pretty much have to watch The Tree of Life -- there's really nothing else like it.