Tree of Life (USA) Directed by Terrence Malick   Written by Terrence Malick   Starring Brad Pitt; Jessica Chastain; Sean Penn; Hunter McKracken; Laramie Eppler; Tye Sheridan

Sixty Seven year old Terrence Malick, he of the breathtakingly sumptuous Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978), has famously managed to make a grand total of five narrative features in his some forty years as a filmmaker. He once, in fact, went two entire decades between films. It is impossible then not to compare him to the late, great Stanley Kubrick, a man who may have been as well known for his oddities and the paucity of his output as he was for the dozen outstanding features he made in his some forty five years in the business.

Like Kubrick, Malick virtually eschews all publicity, and like his fellow American director (Kubrick later relocated to England), Malick has been accused of creating art that lacks a certain warmth or humaneness. Kubrick made coldly aseptic pieces that explored the intellectual questions that haunted his fecund mind. An inventor of sorts, who came up with a number of technical innovations that pushed the boundaries of what was possible photographically, Kubrick was in every way a visual filmmaker of the highest order. Malick, for his part, is also considered by most to stand in select company as one of the finest image makers in the history of the medium.

Malick is known for his reliance on voice-over - so much so that there have been questions raised about his reputed disdain for acting and actors - stories told of him barking orders at established thespians who are forced to do repeated takes walking through the woods, or lifting a leaf. Like Kubrick, Malick’s perfectionism, is the stuff of legends. He is, in some ways, more painter, photographer, or installation artist, than a traditional director of narratives. The difference, of course, being that his work costs many millions of dollars to make, appears in multiplexes, and stars A level Hollywood actors.

In the same way it is impossible not to link Kubrick and Malick, it is also difficult to ignore the similarities between 2001: Space Odyssey (1968) and Tree of Life. While Kubrick connected apes to a story about space, Malick weaves his tale of the suburban Texas O’Brien family in the 1950s with a nearly wordless flash forward of one of the boys as as an adult (Sean Penn), and long sections of no less than the big bang - shots of the cosmos replete with explosions and bubbling earth and the beginning of life itself. Thus we get dinosaurs and fish and bugs aplenty thrown into this wildly concocted stew, a whole IMAX-worthy documentary almost (and there has literally been talk about one being released), for our movie buck.

The question of whether a single frame of footage beyond the main story of the family is even one iota necessary is perhaps ultimately only for Malick to judge - for he is the artist and clearly every inch of the film has been agonized over to an infinitesimal degree. Still, one can’t help but wonder how conscious the man is of the seemingly preposterous proportions of the pretension on display. Is Malick so full of hubris that he feels capable of capturing the essence of human existence, or is the reach for such universal connection through art in and of itself a monumentally valiant endeavor adding up to a form of humility?

Clearly, there is auto-biography at work here as the main narrative mirrors Malick’s roots. The story involves Jack (Hunter McKracken), the eldest of three sons of Mr. (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. (Jessica Chastain) O’Brien. Pitt is no less than excellent as a father who consistently borders on abuse, a frustrated musician/inventor, consumed by pettiness and his own lack of professional success, constantly instructing and lecturing his browbeaten children on everything from table manners to music, attempting to soften his stern didacticism with physical affection, but failing to truly connect to them on any level. His intense domineering manner is juxtaposed with the children’s nearly silent but loving and ethereal Mom (Chastain is luminous in her role), who reassures them, tucks them into bed, and shares in their kids games. Framing the story, is the knowledge that one of the boys will later die at nineteen (as one of Malick’s younger brother did around the same age).

Though the scenes with the family are strung together in a quasi-non-linear way, leaving the audience to posit about certain elements of the story, Malick is not at all subtle with his overall message via voice-over. He starts the film with with a written quote from the Book of Job and all along has Jack wondering out loud about his own soul, about the influences his mother and father are having upon him, about God, and the purpose of life itself. Played with intensity, young McKracken’s Jack is compelling in his wide eyed innocence and growing pubescent anger, confusion, and discontent. Laramie Eppler as R.L. and Tye Sheridan as Steve are also well cast (a process that reportedly took a year).

The idea for the film, or at least its general scope, can be traced back to the seventies when Malick was involved with a project called Q. The film was never made, but Malick spoke, over the years, of doing a story about the beginning of the universe. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubetzki; Production Designer Jack Fisk; Visual Effects Supervisor Dan Glass; and (providing an identifiable link with Kubrick) effects master Douglas Trumbull - receiving his first feature credit in twenty seven years, assist Malick in bringing his vision to light, and the results, taken on their own, are impressive. From a technical standpoint, everything in the film is of the highest order, frame after frame of gorgeous and sometimes haunting visuals, accompanied by an elaborate score of classical choral music.

When examining the correlation between the sections, one can argue a need for the quiet, desultory pieces of adult Jack riding in elevators, telling his father over the phone he thinks about his dead brother everyday, staring up at sprawling urban architecture, and not listening during a business meeting - a troubled middle aged man who feels lost in his own life. It becomes more difficult, however, to justify the inclusion of a latter section (dream sequence?) that has Jack on a beach, tentatively passing through a doorway, one that has him walking through a kind of desert, or any of the beautiful though disconnected extended passages of visual yawping. There is no compelling metaphor at work when the filmmaker is simply spelling it all out in exhausting 138 minute detail.

When looking back at the film it is not the grand photography of the universe unfolding, or the very lovely images of the adult Jack being reunited with his family on a beach that remain with the viewer - rather, the heartfelt, poignant moments of simplicity - a baby playing on the lawn; a child uncomfortable with a father whom he resents, hugging him; the same father trying to explain himself to his child; a man attempting to teach his sons how to fight; a boy getting caught looking at a girl in class; one brother picking on another. There is beauty and revelatory power in this ’small’ story, and one can’t help but wonder of the ’smaller’ film that could have been, and how much more it might have said about our lives. The very prominent tree (flown in to the set and re-planted), focus on gardening, weeding, and tending the lawn, and the many low angled shots of buildings, tree tops, and sky serve as more than enough symbolism by themselves. The inclusion of all of this other ’stuff’ merely lessens their effect.

The issue with Tree of Life has nothing to do with Malick’s ability as a director. The Harvard/Oxford educated Rhodes Scholar is a genius filmmaker and there are very few of those in the world. However, a film must be judged on its merits and reach. Because Malick reaches for it all he demands that we judge the film along with the very best of its kind, and the end result translates into a finished product with an amazing, at times stunning, central narrative that is compromised by the inclusion of bombastic visual imagery that seems (to this layman anyway) virtually without cause.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 at 4:39 pm and is filed under In Theaters/Full Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.