The Tree of Life: Don't Give Up On It Too Early!

The Tree of Life is Terrence Malick's critically acclaimed, highly-rated movie starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn that "contemplates human existence from the standpoint of eternity" (New York Times) while at the same time being quirky, odd, and brilliant. Marcia and I went to see it on Saturday night, and I have never watched a movie that caused me to ponder its meaning in its aftermath in the ensuing days. On the flip side, though, I have also never been to a movie where so many people walked out before the end of the movie.

The movie begins with a quotation of Job 38:4-5 against a black background:

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!Who stretched a measuring line across it?

This, I think, is the key to understanding the movie. None of the people who walked out seemed to get it, and no one in any of the reviews I looked up mentioned it either. But it seems to me that the story is the tale of Job set in, well, this is where it gets a little tricky: 1960s and 2000s America. Like Job, tragedy strikes—the death of a son—and through flashbacks to three boys growing up in a family circa the 1960s with a strict father father (Pitt) and gracious mother (Jessica Chastain), seemingly a pair that gives a full-orbed picture of most people's conflicted concept of God. At the beginning, the film briefly looks at the oldest son (Penn) as an adult in a modern high-rise building, but quickly goes back in time to the family's tragedy, and then the film takes us on a journey back to creation in a variety of breathtaking footage of the wonders of creation that seems to last at least twenty minutes. (A few dinosaurs show up too, apparently having wandered over from Jurassic Park.) This is where the audience started getting restless and people started sighing and then finally walking out. But if you know Job 38, the filmmaker has done for the viewer exactly what God did for Job—took him on a tour of creation. This was the only response Job received to his own calamity, but it was enough to get him through. In the end Job worships God without getting the answer he was looking for, but being reminded that the God who made everything is still out there. And this is what the characters wrestle with, individually, after their own tragedy.

After the long creation hiatus, the film get back to the family. The boys grow up in what appears to be an idyllic Texas town, yet we see them subtly losing their innocence in myriad ways, knowing that the middle son came to an untimely death. We see the father's sternness becoming more pronounced. In reality, we see Everyman and Everywoman coming to grips with their own moral awakening and view of God, evidenced by the whispered thoughts and prayers that come forth from the minds of the characters throughout the movie. They are struggling with the big questions of life.

Near the end, the characters end up on a beach in a kind of weird, heavenly scene. The mother seems to resolve her struggle of faith with a whispered confession, and the older son (Penn), whom I don't believe has a spoken line in the movie, is left more ambiguous, as are the other characters.

Overall, The Tree of Life is a brilliant, unevenly paced, thought-provoking, quirky film that asks questions of cosmic importance, yet offers only the same response God gave Job: you weren't there when I created this world, but this God of nature is still watching over creation.

It's too bad so many people gave up before letting this truth unfold.

(I also recommend the New Yorker review of this movie.)

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