The Tree of Life (2011)

Directed by: Terrence Malick

Produced by: Sarah Green, Bill Pohlad, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Grant Hill

Written by: Terrence Malick

Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain

Music by: Alexandre Desplat

Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki

Editing by: Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber, Mark Yoshikawa

Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Released: May 27, 2011 (United States)

Running time: 139 minutes

Budget: $32 million

Box office: $54,303,319

Rating: PG-13
Trailer: 

 

Synopsis:

A mysterious, wavering light, resembling a flame, flickers in the darkness. Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) recalls a lesson taught to her that people must choose to follow either the path of grace or the path of nature. In the 1960s, she receives a telegram informing her of the death of her son, R.L. (Laramie Eppler), aged nineteen. Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) is notified by telephone while at an airport. The family is thrown into turmoil.

In the present day, the O'Briens' eldest son, Jack (Sean Penn), is adrift in his modern life as an architect. One day he apologizes to his father on the phone for an argument about R.L.'s death. In his office, Jack begins reflecting and we see shots of tall buildings under the sky, Jack wandering in the desert, trees that stretch from the ground up to the sun high in their leaves and scenes from his childhood in the 1950s that all link together and lead back to the flame.

From the darkness the universe is born, the Milky Way and then the solar system form while voice-overs ask existential questions. On the newly formed Earth, volcanoes erupt and microbes begin to form and replicate. Sea life is born, then plants on land, then dinosaurs. An asteroid tumbles through space and strikes the Earth.

In a sprawling neighborhood in Waco, Texas live the O'Briens. The young couple is enthralled by their new baby Jack and, later, his two brothers. When Jack reaches adolescence, he is faced with the conflict of accepting the way of grace or nature, as embodied by each of his parents. Mrs. O'Brien (grace) is gentle, nurturing, and authoritative, presenting the world to her children as a place of wonder. Mr. O'Brien (nature) is strict and authoritarian, and easily loses his temper as he struggles to reconcile his love for his sons with wanting to prepare them for a world he sees as corrupt and exploitative. He laments his decision to become an engineer rather than to pursue his passion of becoming a musician. He tries to get ahead by filing patents for various inventions.

Jack's perceptions of the world begin to change after one of his friends drowns at the pool and another of his friends is burned in a house fire. He becomes angry at his father for his bullying behavior and begins to keep a running tally of Mr. O'Brien's various hypocrisies and misdeeds while lashing out at his mother for allowing the behavior.

One summer, Mr. O'Brien takes a long business trip. While he is away, the boys enjoy unfettered access to their mother, and Jack experiences the first twinges of rebelliousness. Goaded by other boys his age, Jack commits acts of vandalism and animal abuse. He later trespasses into a neighbor's house and steals her sheer nightgown. Jack is confused and angered by his feelings of sexuality and guilty trespass. He throws the stolen lingerie into a river to rid himself of it. Mr. O'Brien returns home from his unsuccessful business trip. Shortly after the plant that he works at closes and he is given the option of relocating to work in a thankless position within the firm or losing his job. He and his family pack up to move to the new job location. He laments the course his life has taken, questioning whether he has been a good enough person. He asks Jack for forgiveness for his harsh treatment of him.

In the present, adult Jack leaves work. Riding the elevator down, he experiences a vision of following his young self across rocky terrain, in the far distant future in which the sun expands into a red giant engulfing the earth and then shrinks into a feeble white dwarf. Jack tentatively walks through a wooden door frame, erected on the rocks. On a sandbar, Jack sees images of death and the dead returning to life. He is reunited with his family and all the people who populate his memory. His father is happy to see him. He encounters his dead brother, whom he brings to his parents. Accompanied by a woman in white and her younger self, Mrs. O'Brien looks to the sky and whispers, "I give him to you. I give you my son."

Jack's vision ends and he leaves the building smiling. The mysterious wavering light continues to flicker in the darkness.

Critical Review:

This film addresses four philosophical questions: the struggle between nature and grace, the duality of man, the meaning of life, and a sense of understanding and reconciliation amidst the chaos and suffering of it all. The Tree of Life opens and closes with a shot of a gorgeous and bizarre light that seems to represent the light of “God.” It then continues with a Biblical quote from Job, the prophet whose morality was tested through suffering. Would Job relinquish God if he was to test him with calamity (the calamity being the tragic death of Jack’s younger brother, who died in combat at the age 19 many years ago), or would he remain true and committed in his conviction?

Through numerous voiceovers (the primary dialogue in a movie that communicates mostly through images) we hear characters’ quiet prayers, laments and frustrated questions to a ubiquitous (but distant) God. In response to R.L.’s death, Mrs. O’Brien asks and prays, “Why?” Malick’s visual answer to her question is unquestionably one of The Tree of Life’s most bold and stunning sequences. The audience now boards on a beautiful, wordless cinematic tour of the history of conception, from the magnificent beauty of the cosmos to the brutality of the Big Bang to the initial stirrings of life in the primordial soup to dinosaurs walking the Earth to a small asteroid colliding with the planet. The random death of one young man seems trivial when measured against the balance of time, space, evolution and the origin of life.Yet, it is also a random act of violence, a fortuitous eruption, that somehow inspired the entirety of creation on Earth.