The Tree of Life

For all the hype about Terrence Malick's latest film, The Tree of Life and its interlude of cosmic creation, fans of his previous work need not worry: there are shots where the camera wades through seas of grass and holds fast to images of natural beauty.

The movie begins with a quote from the Book of Job: "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation...while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Later in the film the O'Brien family is at church and the sermon is about this very same book. Perhaps The Tree of Life is a meditation, of sorts, on its themes. My understanding about the quote above is that Job was a pious fellow who endured many tribulations. When he and his friends start debating why the righteous suffer, Yahweh speaks the above in his own defense, i.e. – "Hey, I created the universe and know what I'm doing. You mere mortals, on the other hand, simply cannot understand."

We then witness a red-haired girl playing out on what I presume is the farm where she lives. There's a beautiful field of sunflowers and the girl holds a goat and traipses amongst cows. The film then fast forwards to the 1950s when the girl has become a woman – Mrs. O'Brien. She and her husband have three sons. Another flash forward takes us about 10 years into the future. Mrs. O'Brien receives a telegram stating that one of her sons has died. Mr. O'Brien gets a phone call as he stands on an airport runway bearing the same sad news. These scenes stick out for their lack of diagetic sound. Instead the characters' face stand out against an aural backdrop that is a quiet rumble, like an organic rendition of cosmic background radiation.

Yet another flash forward brings us to today with Jack O'Brien, one of the three sons, all grown up. He lives in a nice home with a pretty wife and works in a big, flashy skyscraper (I believe this is Houston). Jack is distracted and most of these sequences are basically him wandering the halls of a modern monolith looking worried and pensive. At one point he is talking to his father on his cell phone. He apologizes and admits that he thinks of his departed brother every day.

In addition to playing with diagetic sound, the film has a lot of voiceover narration which mainly consists of the characters taking up the role of Job and saying things like "I give you my son" and "Where were You? You let a boy die. You let anything happen. Why should I be good? When You aren't." But there's another bit of voice over that sets up the plot. Mrs. O'Brien intones "The nuns taught us there were two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow."

But before this makes sense, Malick treats us to, if not the ultimate trip, then the penultimate one. We get to do what Job didn't: witness the creation of the universe. There's no Big Bang here but neither does everything appear in the snap of a deity's finger either. It's a flashback of epic proportion where giant clouds of gas spread and planets condense out of them. It's a slow, lingering procession but eventually galaxies form, including the Milky Way, and our home, Earth. Moving from lava flows and oceans to the microscopic world of nascent life. And then there are dinosaurs. A large one sits helpless with large gashes on its side. Half a world away another smaller one lies injured in the shallows of a river. It is powerless as a predator comes in for the kill but the coup de grâce is never delivered.

Most of the rest of the film consists of flashbacks to Jack's childhood in Waco, Texas. Mrs. O'Brien is a gentle, loving mother; she is grace. Mr. O'Brien, while not without affection, is rather stern. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" could be his motto. He is nature. Nature, a voice over tells us, is egotistical and ostentatious while grace takes the weight of the world on its shoulders. Jack and his brothers are almost smothered by their demanding father. He insists they do things his way and that they address him as "Father" and not "Dad". Mr. O'Brien flies into a rage at the dinner table one evening when Jack disobeys him. Mrs. O'Brien can only look on and shelter her youngest son. When Mr. O'Brien leaves town on business for a stretch, the boys feel like they've had a yoke lifted from them. They are finally able to enjoy themselves and take the opportunity to engage in some low-level mayhem like breaking windows and taping a frog to a model rocket and then launching it. Even Mrs. O'Brien seems relieved as she runs and plays with her sons.

Mr. O'Brien is not a completely unsympathetic character, however. He is a good musician but was never able to parlay his talent into a career. Instead he works at a factory and does some inventing on the side. Unfortunately he is unable to get patents or sell his ideas to anyone else. He wants what's best for his kids and for them to succeed where he has failed.

While this part of the film has a linear narrative and is character driven, it's not without its WTF moments which segue into the enigmatic ending. In one scene Mrs. O'Brien is out in the yard and she dances in mid-air, levitating a few feet off the ground. It's like she's an angel. This is appropriate in the sense that the character isn't defined by dialogue or plot but rather by the smiles and hugs she gives her children and the mercy she bestows upon them, something Mr. O'Brien is unable to do.

At the end, the 50-something Jack is seen wandering a desert and then finds himself on a sandbar where he meets his family circa the 1950s. His dead brother is also there. It's unclear whether this reunion happens in an afterlife or in Jack's mind. The final sequence contains some scenes that take place in the wood-paneled attic of Jack's boyhood home. I was reminded of Twin Peaks in one of them because a young Jack(?) is playing there while a very tall, thin man looks on – just like when the giant appears to Cooper and warns him that Annie shouldn’t enter the beauty contest. Carl Jung also came to mind with his dream analysis whereby – I hope I have this right – a house in a dream represents the dreamer. If memory serves, the basement represents the repressed, if I may borrow a Freudian term here, or the unconscious pains while the attic is reflects happier thoughts. Jung also wrote a book called Answer to Job about the problem of evil in the world.

A Jungian connection here? Probably not. But The Tree of Life is so opaque that people are going to be reading their biases and experiences into the film more than they do with films that are easier to understand. I know that when I thought about the concept of grace here, I thought about St. Augustine's conception of it because I've been listening to medieval history lectures lately. My admittedly very limited understanding is that Augustine felt that grace was purely something bestowed by Yahweh and not something to be earned. It doesn't matter how good and pious you are, the Creator's rationale for handing out grace is, like the problem of evil, unknowable. The whole thing is a lottery and you won't know if you've won or not until you die.

However, Malick implies that grace can be earned. Mrs. O'Brien is clearly associated with nature at the beginning of the film but that changes. Plus there's the voice over line about choosing it. At the end, it's as if she finally receives it on that sandbar. She is ecstatic when Jack's brother is resurrected and thanks him by kissing his arm. This refers to an earlier scene where Jack dared his brother to put his finger in front of the barrel of a BB gun. Jack pulled the trigger and later kissed his sibling's arm in a goofy display of asking for forgiveness. Was Mrs. O'Brien asking for forgiveness? Can Jack really bestow grace or is the ending just a dramatization of his wishes?

There are many other bits of the film which beggar explanation. What are the dancing lights that bookend the movie? How about the sunflowers? We see them early on during the flashback to Mrs. O'Brien's childhood and a shot of them is shown just before the final one of the lights. At the boy's funeral, a pastor tells Mrs. O'Brien "He's in God's hands now" and she replies with something like "He should be in my hands." (I hope I'm not confusing this with similar scenes in both versions of The Killing.) This would seem rather ungraceful.

How about that dinosaur which seemingly showed mercy? Perhaps grace isn't a divine quality after all and is instead something imbued in all of life. On the other hand, it could be that it is a divine quality but the Creator put a little spark of Himself in all living things rather than hoarding it all.

As for the cosmic creation sequence as a whole, it does a few things, not the least of which is to act as a cinematic Total Perspective Vortex where you get a 20-minute glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation. The universe is big. Really big. And we humans are the tip of a tiny leaf on a small branch of a huge tree. Set against it, the O'Brien family drama seems totally insignificant yet Jack's childhood is paramount to him. This sequence also tugs at the nature vs. grace dichotomy. If you've seen Malick's previous films, you know he loves nature so I find it difficult to believe that he's really promoting grace here. Witnessing the grandest story of all wherein a vast universe comes into being and on one planet of billions and billions you have some life forms is, to me, a mighty blow struck in favor of nature. (Add to this the sound of waves heard from beneath the surface which plays during some of the family scenes.) The film seems to say that grace, if it even exists, is beyond our ken. Nature is all we have. But rather than viewing it as a consolation prize, just look at it – it's amazing. Beyond that, it is us and we are it. In this sense, the visuals of the film contradict that line of narration. Just because some nuns say something doesn't mean it's true. Nature is not necessarily selfish and ostentatious or it may be those things but much more.

The Tree of Life doesn't have much in the way of answers. You can't watch it on Blu-ray frame by frame and find answers hidden away which, upon being revealed, will explain everything. (Although it would be helpful in finding motifs such as when jump cuts and when certain sounds were used.) In a way it's more like a palette than a finished painting. The viewer has to do some work here. Malick doesn't have the answer to life, the universe, and everything but he offers some ways to think about the question. We witness the laying of Earth's foundation yet we still do not understand.