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Jessica Chastain, Tye Sheridan, and Brad Pitt in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

May 19, 2011 By Chris Tinkham Web Exclusive

After a hiatus that stretched from the late '70s to the late '90s, Texas-bred director Terrence Malick has aimed big in his return to filmmaking. He cast his nature-adoring lens upon WWII with The Thin Red Line (1999), the founding of America's first settlement with The New World (2005), and now, with The Tree of Life, Malick's fifth feature film in a span of 38 years, he has super-sized to tackle life itself—not just plain old human life; we're talking the birth of the universe as well.

At the heart of The Tree of Life are the formative years of Jack O'Brien, one of three brothers raised in 1950s suburban Texas. Sean Penn plays Jack as an adult, a successful but disenchanted architect who lives his days swallowed up in the expansive corporate offices of present day. A sense of mourning and spiritual contemplation overcome Jack as he ponders the decades-ago death of his younger brother and his childhood relationships with his mother (Jessica Chastain) and father (Bad Pitt). Jack's brother died at 19, likely in Vietnam, but, as is the case with much of the film, specifics are not revealed. The film plays out like a dream, with a persistent but rhythmic flow of imagery accompanied by classical music and score. Oftentimes, dialogue is muffled to faint murmuring. Because of the film's extensive amount of cuts and camera setups, it's somewhat of a descendent of 1920s Soviet cinema and the German and Soviet "city symphonies" of that era. Yet, while the cutting is relentless, The Tree of Life also is distinguished by constant Steadicam motion, which softens the force of montage and gives the film fluidity, whether it's jumping back and forth between Jack's present and past or whether Malick is crossing the stage line.

Numerous Malick trademarks abound throughout the film: voiceover narration, with existential questions posed to a higher power; skyward shots of sunlight shining through tree branches; compositions with the sun setting in the background; wind blowing a curtain through an open window; upside down imagery; handheld shots tracking a character from behind. Stylistically and tonally, much of The Tree of Life is akin to a feature-length version of the Miranda Otto vignettes in The Thin Red Line.

What's new is Malick's foray into the present day—there's even a fleeting Koyaanisqatsi moment—and the use of modern visual effects. The most radical component of The Tree of Life is Malick's detour from Texas into the cosmos. The extended sequence occurs during the first third of the film, depicting an array of microscopic and jellyfish-like organisms, as well as swelling molten, billowing clouds of gas, sharks swarming around blood in the water, a whale/dinosaur lounging on the shore, and an asteroid collision with the Earth. Amidst this, near-whispered voices interject, "We cried to you, 'my soul, my son,' hear us," and ask, "When did you first touch my heart?" It's a wildly enthralling segment that renders us Double Rainbow Guys: "What does it mean?"

From there, the film returns to 1950s Texas to depict Jack's infancy and growth, settling into a linear structure, though employing a succession of ellipses. Pitt and Chastain are the dominant presences during the first half of this section. Chastain, as the mother, is a nurturing, angelic figure, whose red hair adds complementary warmth to the green lawns and tree leaves outside the O'Briens' home. Pitt's character is one of the more complicated dads we've seen in big-budget filmmaking, an affectionate parent but also a short-tempered disciplinarian who's vexed by the path he's taken in life and frequently measures his status against that of his neighbors. Malick moves through the benchmarks of Jack's upbringing quickly, as he's joined by his two brothers, and the film finally establishes its central conflicts when Jack reaches early adolescence, where he's played extraordinarily by first-time actor Hunter McCracken.

Jack's adult existence, where he's contained by modern edifices, contrasts with that of the adolescent Jack, who roams the neighborhood with his pack of friends, engaging in hooliganism or indulging in more innocent pleasures, such as rolling on a grassy hillside or walking on tin cans. Jack becomes witness to darker incidents about town at a time when his aggression is starting to boil. He begins to domineer his artistic middle brother and butt heads with his dad, recognizing their similarities. At one point, he wishes to himself that his father die, and so ensues an internal (and eternal) conflict between the ways of his father and mother. There are two ways through life, Jack's mother posits at the beginning of the film: the way of nature, and the way of grace.

Again, Malick returns to a theme that surfaces in all his films: the "war in the heart of nature." Yet, as unmistakably Malick as The Tree of Life is, its scope is so vast that the works of other legendary filmmakers seep in throughout, from Bergman and Tarkovsky to Kubrick and (a dash of) Lynch. One section even incorporates a piece of music from Kieślowski's collaborator, Zbigniew Preisner. And, though they are formally dissimilar films, The Tree of Life bears a surprising kinship at times to Mike Figgis' The Loss of Sexual Innocence.

With above-the-title names Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, but also long stretches without dialogue over the course of 138 minutes, The Tree of Life is bound to polarize viewers. The film will be criticized for being ponderous to a fault and for going all Nova without good reason, perhaps at the expense of Penn's performance, which seems curiously skimpy with respect to screen time. And, in the era of digital presentation, Malick's imagery, as beautifully as director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki has captured it, lacks the textural warmth of his '70s films, lying too closely to today's TV advertising.

The least plot-driven of Malick's five films, The Tree of Life is loaded with classical music selections along with original score from Alexandre Desplat. Like a dream, the film is at once elusive and enveloping. It's an art film and an epic event film in one, a creature that coincidentally became nearly extinct in the years shortly after Malick stopped directing. In gravitating to big-budget filmmaking upon his return to directing, Malick has rekindled a war in the heart of cinema.

www.twowaysthroughlife.com

Author rating: 9/10