A Tree of Life

The filmmaker truly dropped the ball on this one and failed to make this not just a compelling, but a coherent story.

Disregarding the chronology completely, spending too much time on trivial family matters and stories that don't matter to the main aspect of the event.

Not setting up the event at all, giving exposition in the start, none of that.

There isn't a good 25 minutes of story in this. It's like watching the news channels reporting on the issue but the channels switch randomly every five minutes.

In the end, it's barely about the event, more about the usual overall political American society. With a bias towards one side. Of course.

Just last week a white supremacist shot a group of Black folks in Florida. One of many hate crimes in the past few years. That makes "A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting" all the more relevant.

The documentary features interviews with the survivors of the shooting (one might call it a terrorist attack, don't you think?). There's also an emphasis on how many communities came together to support the synagogue, and its significance in the rash of racist violence over the past decade (and the documentary makes clear which individual emboldened the racists).

Not the best documentary ever, but worth seeing, especially as certain politicians and celebrities have normalized anti-Jewish sentiment.

The documentary includes a song belted out by Idina Menzel.