Maybe it’s less intense, a casual visual poesy even, for someone who does not have kids, but I could not finish Tree of Life because it was a perfume commercial for death. It could of told the same story–shiny surfaces contrasting with the crags of Sean Penns face, the agony of the mom with the innocent beauty of her perfect unlined teenagers face (despite being the mother of three pre-teen boys), Brad Pitts pumpkin jaw contrasting with the movie star we know is behind those glasses, ashes to ashes, martian dust to bible quotes and dinosaurs to leaves. Is there a narrative to be had? I mean, is there a reason behind the movie to care–because the easy part is just having close-up shots of beautiful people and trees. How to make the beautiful people’s lives compelling? Kill a kid. Make us care that they are crying. Also, if you are going to go through all the total period piece rigamarole and get exact-era matchy matchy modernist furniture or post-war boomer outfitting and set dressing, give every aspect of the movie the same attention: women then, if they were having a hospital birth, would not be awake and lovingly attended by handholding nurses. She would have had a twilight birth and depending on the decade she might have been tied up for a day or two half-concious on a bed, or if it was later on, 50s-early 70’s, say, she would have been knocked out cold and then woken up and presented with a baby she delivered in her sleep. But I guess that’s not part of old dudes lifecycle cinema.
I have to say, huge fan of Malick, always, always, since I saw Days of Heaven when I was maybe 12 and became obsessed with it and I thought “I only ever want to watch movies like this.” Such romantic light! I have not disliked any of his movies, but I really feel like killing a kid is a cheap, easy devise. There is almost none cheaper! It is tied with “threat of rape” and “threat of harm to pregnant woman and unborn child”. I almost thought I might stop watching the so totally good-bad American Horror Story on this second episode because it played on the threat to Coach Taylor’s Wife™ fetus so much, but then it ended up just being a blip in the story, and it weighs no more heavily than the threat of the the face-eating hundred year old baby/phantasm in the basement. THAT SAID, American Horror Story is a cliche-driven show on a second string cable network that is like, 13% Dylan McDermott’s sexual rage/flashes of side-peen. Terrance Malick won the Palme D’or! He is an American Auteur. I woulda booed this shit at Cannes, too. I feel like killing the weak and most vulnerable person in the story is so Hollywood hangover, and the preggo-peril/rape threat so a lingering tide of so much torture porn (SAW,etc.,etc.). I am not saying no child should credibly die, or the weak should never be killed–I mean, I love some Dogville and some other Von Trier stuff and he loves to sacrifice the sufferer, for the innocent to suffer, for the kid and poor blinded Bjork to die, their lives wasted. I know plenty of people argue that LVT does this to “manipulate” the audiences emotions (uh, what movie is not made for this express purpose?) but there is a moral hinge, something that baits and hooks us and he shows us up, he shoves our sympathies in our faces, he says “no, this is really how women are treated in the world, like garbage.” etc. He does so as an allegory about greed or fate or ‘morality’ or wrath or god’s indifference to us.
I mean, does Tree of Life end or continue in such a way where it does not play to our emtional cheap seats? Beautiful people in beautiful places, but you know, they have feelings. Oh, and here is the sunlight, and here are tears and here is outerspace, life is small, our suffering is small, a dead kid is small? THE END?
I think the thing about that entire movie is also this really obvious way of Malick working through a total fear of death. With its dead son hook right off the bat, that “I give you my child” Virgin Mary moment, and the inevitable let’s all gather at the table on the shores of Galilee and Heaven reads like this blazing “OH NO” of existential crisis, which brings me to the other bit about this movie. The mom is such a wooden character, save for those endless closeups of her line-less face, and the fact that she is essentially incidental to the entire storyline as anything other than a symbol is such a bummer of a lazy trope to put to use. Still, I would say the movie was most effective in that last chapter when it got into the struggles with masculinity and the nature of violence, sexuality, shame, etc. I mean, the kid looking at the slip laid out on the bed, and then cutting to him burying it under the log before throwing it into the river? Maybe Malick would do better to keep things a bit more micro rather than hitting the grandiose Oneness of the cosmos and merciful dinosaurs.
I am holding steady at a little more than half way through and what you write about the final part makes me at least curious. Hmmm. Thanks for such a thoughtful comment!
Malick’s brother Lawrence killed himself at age 19. The scenes in the movie (that aren’t dinosaur related) are supposedly drawn from Malick’s childhood in Waco, and are probably pretty personal and meaningful. I agree that as a plot device this sort of thing is hackneyed, but I think this is a different case. You can quibble whether it worked in the film or not, of course.
by focusing on the boy who dies, you’re focusing on a very small element of the story. but you wouldn’t know that, because you wrote your review before finishing the film. poor terry … this is what you get in America when you follow your unique vision. (i know that last bit is gonna make you mad, and you’re gonna wanna lash out and post my private info on your board again, but i really think that, had you finished the film and thought about it and talked about it with others, you’d have a much different reaction. the point of me maybe/maybe not pushing your buttons with that last bit is that i feel artists – especially ones like terrence malick – deserve to have their work respected. am i wrong? what if i reviewed your book after only reading half of it, and then had a pretty big and loud opinion that focused on one small element of it? then i posted that review in a public place … would that make you feel good about me as a critic? would you not feel disrespected, like i cheapened your hard work? as a professional critic, i’m sure this is something you’ve given some thought to.)
for what it’s worth, the middle brother dying is simply the catalyst for adult jack looking back on his life (we don’t see the kid die and we don’t know how he died; all we see is how it influenced the lives of our three principles – jack and his parents. jack, mostly). it’s the thing jack never got over – the thing he could never make any sense of, and now he’s having something of an existential crisis of the undefined as he gets older and wonders how he got to where he is (a successful architect living in a big city). i could go on and on, but it sounds like you’re over it. it’s an impressionistic puzzle/riddle/meditation/whatever … i had to see it a few times before it made complete sense, but it does, and i’m glad i gave malick my time and patience, as i consider him to be one of the great living artists. it’s all there on the screen and it’s a big, big, big story from a master – you don’t get that every day/year.
when i saw that you wrote it up, i was hoping you’d have examined the film from a female’s perspective. as a whole, it is what it is (a movie about pondering the mysterious/unknown parts of life), but i imagine it’s a very different viewing experience for a woman than it is a man, and that’s something i’ve been curious about all along.
below is a review i wrote a day or so after my first screening. i’ve seen it three times since and have been writing notes all along. there’s so much to say about this movie … i just really hope you’ll go back and re-watch it, front to back, with your thinking cap on. to me, it was like reading a really great, long, sprawling abstract poem for the first time. i had to live with it and revisit it before it really revealed itself to me. that alone is quite an accomplishment for malick.
http://www.zecatalist.com/uncategorized/the-tree-of-life/