The Tree of Life

The credits rolled and I turned to my companions and harrumphed, "What a huge load of self-indulgent crap." But then, I thought, isn't that, perhaps, a part of what it means to be an artist? Isn't all art to some degree an indulgence of self? The Tree of Life is not to my taste, but it is art. High art. By a master of his chosen form. This is the fifth feature film by Terrence Malick, the director of Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), and then after a twenty-year hiatus, The Thin Red Line (1998), and The New World (2005). I've had the pleasure of seeing all but The New World on the big screen, though not in the order the films were released. The first Malick film I saw was Days of Heaven, as part of a double-feature with the just-released Tess (1979). Bless Baltimore's Charles Theater for the years it had as an "art house theatre" before it went commercial! Polanski's film has dimmed in memory in the thirty odd years since I saw it, but there are images from Days of Heaven that remain as fresh as the day I saw them. Before Malick I never knew it was possible to have such a tactile film experience. I sat in the theatre and felt the wind and the sun on my skin, the smell of wheat and dust in my nose. It took me a long time to catch Badlands on the big screen, but I finally saw it in a Milwaukee revival house around the same time that The Thin Red Line was released. Some critics consider Badlands Malick's finest film but, while I found it strange and beautiful (in its own way), it could not compete with twenty years of anticipation. The New World simply holds no interest for me, and until it comes to me easily as a cable viewing or a Netflix Watch Instantly I won't be going out of my way to see it. Certainly not after seeing The Tree of Life.

Malick has the right to make any film he wants, and considering the infamously slow gestation of The Tree of Life and his other post-'70s movies that's exactly what he plans on doing, i.e. making highly personal films. In this case, a two hour and eighteen minute theological/spiritual meditation.

"A stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." - Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

"Man, woman, birth, death, infinity." - Ben Casey

A spiritual meditation without one original thought, without humor, without charm. It's a film encased in an amber coating made up in equal parts of schmaltzy musings on the birth of the universe and the development of life and Malick's undeniable way with a striking image. But it's all image, a series of carefully rendered tableaux. It's derivative to a fault, passing over the line of commentary into appropriation. Of everything. The Tree of Life is a kitchen sink movie, nothing left out. Man, woman, birth, death, infinity. Oh, my!

What's particularly frustrating is that there are many signs of how talented a film-maker Malick can be. The long section set in Waco, Texas, with Brad Pitt as a vain, ambitious, bullying father and the busy kid-lives of his children and their friends, is rendered so carefully one feels at times it has the documentary exactness of home movies. Well, home movies painted by J.M.W. Turner or Tintoretto. Everywhere there is light just outside the scene. It creeps in windows, doors, splashes faces, but everywhere is muted. Nearly every outdoor scene is set at twilight or the sky is overcast. I suppose we are meant to read this one of two ways: that life is a search for the Light or that we are separated from the Light (god, Jesus, Buddha, whatever). "Everywhere the ceremony is drowned." ("The Second Coming," W.B. Yeats.) In one case, literally, with a pool-side death of a boy. Much of the Waco section is undeniably beautiful, but like Kubrick, whose 2001 is a jumping off point for Malick, there is an insurmountable emotional distancing. Malick shows more than he tells. 

I also found the central drama wanting for significance. American art, looking at only the films, has given us a lot of bad fathers. But Brad Pitt's Dad endures more authorial opprobrium than I think he deserves. At one point the son with whom he has the most contrary relationship considers an action that would kill his old man, and I found the notion rather far-fetched. Even factoring in the Oedipal drama. Which, by the way, in terms of pure psychology, comes about eight years late in the development of the son. It's actually a little creepy the way Malick depicts it. 

Alright, a couple of final thoughts:

It's probably a petty observation but: Am I really supposed to believe that thirty year old actress Jessica Chastain is old enough to have a nineteen year old son? I know Hollywood casts this way routinely, but Malick isn't, I thought, a Hollywood director.  

What a thankless role for Sean Penn. Good on Malick, I suppose, for having the clout.

Unless the dinosaur is a stand in for Jesus it probably shouldn't look like it's walking on water. It's been almost twenty years since Spielberg gave us realistically rendered dinos. Take a hint, Malick. 

For a heterosexual director Malick certainly know how to cast the prettiest men and boys.