by David Schleicher
Malick’s sublime 2011 masterpiece, The Tree of Life, invites you to watch it as a child…and loudly, the producers remind us on the Blu-Ray – not just to hear all the philosophical whispering and pining that highlights the voice-overs, but to sit in aural awe of the classical music and natural sounds that paint with Lubezki’s fluid imagery a cacophony adjacent to dreaming.
Remember the first time you heard a piece from Beethoven as a child but didn’t know exactly what it was, only that it made you feel something you hadn’t before?
We never know exactly what happens in The Tree of Life. A middle child of three dies at some point, while an older one lives his adulthood in a sterile corporatized environment that couldn’t be further from the Texas Eden he experienced as a child – all of the family lives, loves, pines, mourns, remembers, but in transient states inter-spliced with meditations on the nature of nature, the meaning of life, religion, social mores, grief, motherhood, fatherhood, brotherhood and a cosmic tapestry that denotes the beginning and ending of time. All meaning what? We long for that meaning (just as a child – born in the natural state of a scientist – longs for answers to the questions they observe). But instead, we are summoned to a cinematic cathedral to experience some grand impressionism…where all was formed in childhood.
To claim The Tree of Life is not a film about childhood is akin to claiming one’s childhood experiences have no bearing on how they turn out as an adult. Childhood is paramount both in life and this film.
Endless summer days running amuck in the neighborhood, unnecessarily tense family dinners, walking down the sidewalk in the twilight and hearing another kid’s parents’ argument filter into the otherwise deathly quiet street from an open window; those first feelings of jealousy, of having and having not, rebellion, shame and resentment…it’s all there in The Tree of Life. The boys’ childhoods become our own as we recall similar moments and feelings both vividly and distantly.
And by weaving the life of an ordinary family (and the childhood of an ordinary man) into the grand story of the cosmos, Malick shows that every life is as insignificant and as a monumental as we want it to be. We provide meaning to what we want to provide meaning to. If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it make a sound? Our observing of a thing gives it meaning, changes its definition. For a film where characters frequently talk to their god in one-sided prayer, Malick’s thesis points to both the meaning and meaningless of it all. We answer our own prayers.
And so we wonder and ask why, as a child would. From the profound (why do bad things happen to good people?) to the mundane (why does water create different rivulets when you pour it over the same dirt again and again?) we constantly ask why. But the point isn’t the answer. It’s the question. Who would care about anything if we didn’t ask why? And The Tree of Life challenges us to live loudly, listen intently, dream big and embrace the why.
Malick has thus reversed the Dark Ages’ mantra perhaps you heard foolishly dictated to you in your own childhood, “Yours is not to question why, yours is but to do or die.”
In a meaningless universe where everything dies, sometimes the question why is the only meaning we’ll ever have.
Here is a link to David’s stupendous original review of the film at The Schleicher Spin: http://theschleicherspin.com/2011/06/11/memory-and-magic-in-terrence-malicks-the-tree-of-life/
Click on names for archives
Writers/Founders
Wonders in the Dark 
Terrific review of one of the greatest films of the new millennium. I have always felt the childhood label stuck.
Thanks, Frank. I can’t remember who made the argument this wasn’t a childhood film…but to me this is THE childhood film – no other film has ever attempted to evoke childhood in such a BIG metaphysical way.
The Tree of Life will inspire serious debate among cineastes for decades to come. It’s one of those rare films that has you thinking days after with the same veracity that dominated your consciousness in the hours immediately following the experience. It’s a towering work by a towering artist, and it will likely exacerbate as many as it will enthrall. It’s a metaphorical voyage into the outer recesses of memory, faith and the infinite that requires far more than the logistics of order and logic. The Tree of Life is both elusive and accessible, vague and lucid, real and surreal. Its a film about the loss of faith and the renewal of belief. Malick has mustered up the audacity to survey the cycle of life and it’s origins, and we can only look on riveted and enthralled on a level one rarely experiences within the confines of a movie theater. David, your shorter piece here is outstanding and a wonderful encore of that masterpiece you wrote at THE SCHLEICHER SPIN that is linked here.
Sam – do you consider this his best work? I’m always on the fence. My heart still goes to The New World – but I could be easily swayed depending on the day or the debater.
I consider this to be Malick’s masterpiece. Brilliant, metaphysical and emotionally enthralling. Great review David!
Peter – so you put this over The New World? I sometimes wonder (heck, Malick always has us wondering). Come to think of it…whatever happened to his Knight of Cups…I remember seeing trailers but no release yet?
Great claim to the justification for this countdown, however, I’m with you David. I can’t see how some do not consider this a film about childhood. I voted for it rather highly. True, it is a perspective of childhood looking back from adulthood, but I don’t think that disqualifies it. Well written!
Jon – I’m actually surprised this didn’t finish higher on the list – but it may be because it is still such a recent film – it does not yet benefit from the perspective of long-term reflection.