The Tree of Life elicits many emotions from its audience - wonder, shock, horror, joy - but, at least for me, the overwhelming feeling was one of confusion. For an entire minute after the credits started to roll, my theater was completely silent. No one moved or spoke, I could tell that everyone was attempting to digest what they'd just witnessed; even now, I'm not sure whether this is good or bad. Such ambiguity surprised me. Given the rumors of fervent booing and mass walk-outs that provided the majority of the movie's publicity as well as the hasty decision by many a film aficionado to label it a "masterpiece", it was clear that Terrence Malick's latest visual poem was a love-or-hate-it affair.
From the film's first shot – a still of a flame surrounded by darkness – Malick's influence is unmistakable. Alternating between a grand, mostly wordless montage of the creation of the universe and an intimate portrait of family life in suburban 1950's Texas, The Tree of Life displays a liberal use of imagery and parallelism to tell its story, which is less a fully formed narrative than a tapestry of ideas and metaphors. A significant portion of the dialogue is done in voice-over narration as the characters reflect on their lives, and in the end, it seems almost irrelevant, little more than a series of melodious asides, as the images alone are enough to convey the movie's central message. Here, pictures are really worth a thousand words. Captured and arranged with exquisite, painstaking deliberation, each scene is practically its own individual story, a rich medley of symbolism and meaning, seething with understated emotion, begging for a scholarly analysis. While it is theoretically possible to enjoy the movie on a more superficial level, to simply let the beauty wash over you, I'll confess that there is a strange delight in peeling back the myriad layers and searching for the various labyrinthine implications hidden behind them. Like all the best directors, Malick understands the power of images – he knows that one perfectly positioned shot can affect the viewer more deeply than the most elaborate monologue – and never has that been more evident than in The Tree of Life.
That said, the movie is most engaging at its quietest. The shots of outer space are undeniably breathtaking – if The Tree of Life does not score Oscar nominations, if not wins, for its visual effects and cinematography, it will be shocking, to say the least – yet not until the half-hour mark, when the central narrative takes hold, did I become truly absorbed. This section plays out as a seemingly arbitrary compilation of memories (birth, learning to walk, playing with friends, first love, etc.), and, despite the meandering pace, it eventually develops a rhythm of its own that suggests a running train of thought; it's stream-of-consciousness expressed through images rather than sentences. Naturally, much of the story's power comes from the visuals as Malick transforms even the most mundane scenes, such as a woman strolling casually through a sprinkler or a group of boys frolicking on a suburban street on a calm summer night, into works of fine art. In addition to the purposeful camera-work, the spot-on period detail, gorgeous yet never garish or distracting, further immerses the audience in Malick's depiction of the 1950s suburbs, where the sun apparently always shines and nature coexists peacefully with man. The occasional bursts of brutality and ugliness amidst the unrelenting beauty and surrealism make the movie all the more potent.
And that is really the biggest surprise of The Tree of Life. I, presumably like many people, went in hoping for little more than extravagant visuals and, perhaps, an eye-opening message about the meaning of life itself, but what I got was something different; indeed, it's spectacularly photographed, but what raises it above the pretentious superficiality that dogs many art films is its emphasis on contrasts: man v. nature, peace v. violence, life v. death, love v. hate. If anything, the film is about the gray areas in life, the way in which opposites can intertwine and blend with each other, not the big, all-encompassing Truth hinted at by the advertising campaign. Nowhere is this ambiguity more evident than in Malick's portrayal of family life, which is among the most honest and realistic I have seen in recent cinema. Neither dysfunctional nor enviable, the O'Brien clan consists of several relationships, from father-mother to brother-brother, each given equal thought and complexity, and for anyone who either belongs to such a family or knows one (which, I assume, is almost everyone), their love-hate dynamic is painfully familiar. This is a family in which most thoughts go unspoken and sincerity is a rare occurrence. In addition to the director and screenwriter, the actors deserve credit for their preference for subtlety over scenery-chewing and their remarkable ability to convey emotions as assorted as rage, resentment, jealousy, fear and affection through the blink of an eye or turn of the head.
Of course, The Tree of Life isn't for everyone. I consider myself a patient viewer, but the first half-hour is almost unbearably slow, and at a certain point, endless shots of volcanoes and cosmological happenings, no matter how dazzling, become more self-indulgent than profound. Although some may insist that each second was somehow significant to Malick's overall intent, the movie still clocks in at a whopping two hours and twenty minutes, and I'm sure that a few montages of swirling planets could have been sacrificed in favor of a reasonable running time. In the end, The Tree of Life is like a classic novel: you admire its craft and you're glad you read it, but you don't feel the uncontrollable urge to experience it again. So, while I wouldn't recommend this movie lightly, if you're in the mood to contemplate themes about love, existence and time and analyze surreal visuals, these two-and-a-half hours are well worth the effort.
From the film's first shot – a still of a flame surrounded by darkness – Malick's influence is unmistakable. Alternating between a grand, mostly wordless montage of the creation of the universe and an intimate portrait of family life in suburban 1950's Texas, The Tree of Life displays a liberal use of imagery and parallelism to tell its story, which is less a fully formed narrative than a tapestry of ideas and metaphors. A significant portion of the dialogue is done in voice-over narration as the characters reflect on their lives, and in the end, it seems almost irrelevant, little more than a series of melodious asides, as the images alone are enough to convey the movie's central message. Here, pictures are really worth a thousand words. Captured and arranged with exquisite, painstaking deliberation, each scene is practically its own individual story, a rich medley of symbolism and meaning, seething with understated emotion, begging for a scholarly analysis. While it is theoretically possible to enjoy the movie on a more superficial level, to simply let the beauty wash over you, I'll confess that there is a strange delight in peeling back the myriad layers and searching for the various labyrinthine implications hidden behind them. Like all the best directors, Malick understands the power of images – he knows that one perfectly positioned shot can affect the viewer more deeply than the most elaborate monologue – and never has that been more evident than in The Tree of Life.
That said, the movie is most engaging at its quietest. The shots of outer space are undeniably breathtaking – if The Tree of Life does not score Oscar nominations, if not wins, for its visual effects and cinematography, it will be shocking, to say the least – yet not until the half-hour mark, when the central narrative takes hold, did I become truly absorbed. This section plays out as a seemingly arbitrary compilation of memories (birth, learning to walk, playing with friends, first love, etc.), and, despite the meandering pace, it eventually develops a rhythm of its own that suggests a running train of thought; it's stream-of-consciousness expressed through images rather than sentences. Naturally, much of the story's power comes from the visuals as Malick transforms even the most mundane scenes, such as a woman strolling casually through a sprinkler or a group of boys frolicking on a suburban street on a calm summer night, into works of fine art. In addition to the purposeful camera-work, the spot-on period detail, gorgeous yet never garish or distracting, further immerses the audience in Malick's depiction of the 1950s suburbs, where the sun apparently always shines and nature coexists peacefully with man. The occasional bursts of brutality and ugliness amidst the unrelenting beauty and surrealism make the movie all the more potent.
And that is really the biggest surprise of The Tree of Life. I, presumably like many people, went in hoping for little more than extravagant visuals and, perhaps, an eye-opening message about the meaning of life itself, but what I got was something different; indeed, it's spectacularly photographed, but what raises it above the pretentious superficiality that dogs many art films is its emphasis on contrasts: man v. nature, peace v. violence, life v. death, love v. hate. If anything, the film is about the gray areas in life, the way in which opposites can intertwine and blend with each other, not the big, all-encompassing Truth hinted at by the advertising campaign. Nowhere is this ambiguity more evident than in Malick's portrayal of family life, which is among the most honest and realistic I have seen in recent cinema. Neither dysfunctional nor enviable, the O'Brien clan consists of several relationships, from father-mother to brother-brother, each given equal thought and complexity, and for anyone who either belongs to such a family or knows one (which, I assume, is almost everyone), their love-hate dynamic is painfully familiar. This is a family in which most thoughts go unspoken and sincerity is a rare occurrence. In addition to the director and screenwriter, the actors deserve credit for their preference for subtlety over scenery-chewing and their remarkable ability to convey emotions as assorted as rage, resentment, jealousy, fear and affection through the blink of an eye or turn of the head.
Of course, The Tree of Life isn't for everyone. I consider myself a patient viewer, but the first half-hour is almost unbearably slow, and at a certain point, endless shots of volcanoes and cosmological happenings, no matter how dazzling, become more self-indulgent than profound. Although some may insist that each second was somehow significant to Malick's overall intent, the movie still clocks in at a whopping two hours and twenty minutes, and I'm sure that a few montages of swirling planets could have been sacrificed in favor of a reasonable running time. In the end, The Tree of Life is like a classic novel: you admire its craft and you're glad you read it, but you don't feel the uncontrollable urge to experience it again. So, while I wouldn't recommend this movie lightly, if you're in the mood to contemplate themes about love, existence and time and analyze surreal visuals, these two-and-a-half hours are well worth the effort.