"Ambitious". It's the word I'm betting will be the most used in describing Terrence Malick's stirring, grandiose The Tree of Life. Certainly his hard core followers will label it such. Malick, who has only made a handful of films over his decades long career, has an almost folk or mythological air surrounding all of his films. Part of the reason is the extreme level of secrecy surrounding them, coupled with the precise amount of time he spends making sure each is exactly to his liking. No Terrence Malick film will ever come out before it's ready. But there's another level to the storied nature of his works, and that is most definitely ambition. Malick never aims small, choosing to tackle some of the universe's most contemplated questions, and in his own way provide answers for them. By that measure, The Tree of Life is indeed one of the most ambitious films ever, but it's also one of the most frustrating.
Maybe it's because this film signals Malick's first truly original work since 1978's Days of Heaven but Life has had a particularly closeted journey to the big screen. First announced way back in 2005 with then hot Colin Farrell and still bankable Mel Gibson attached, the highly secretive project wouldn't ultimately shoot until three years later with a vastly different cast. Malick has become a master at letting speculation snowball buzz for his works, letting minor blips of information out to the greedy masses. We heard rumors of everything from long planetary shots to talk of CG dinosaurs. In the end we got all that and so much more.
What? Dinosaurs? Yes, but it all makes sense. Where Malick's films have always been described as abstracts, poetic and lyrical in structure, The Tree of Life takes that to another level. The film starts with a quote from the Book of Job, and introduces us to Jack(Sean Penn), an architect who has become lost and disillusioned in the wake of his brother's death. Wrestling with a number of questions too big for any one man to answer, Jack is overcome with grief. The story then shifts suddenly, as if trying to provide the sullen Jack some grief, to a magical clutch of time at the beginning of the universe. The big bang snaps us back to life, and we see the evolution of this planet and all the life upon it. In this, we get a glimpse at the inherent natures of all creatures, the pull to sin and the yearning for love. And yeah, there are dinosaurs. Malick is clearly enamored with the metaphysical imagery, and they certainly are breathtaking. I felt like the story would've been better served if these sequences were better dispersed throughout rather than lumped together all at once. If you aren't invested in it, you'll find yourself no longer caring what the story is supposed to be about. And what the story is about ultimately is Jack, and we're transported to the 'idyllic" 1950s. Just as we witnessed the birth of the universe, we see Jack's birth and evolution into a young man. Through beautiful home movie-eseque footage we see the rise of the O'Brien family. A remarkable Brad Pitt plays the stern father, product of the time where men were nobody unless they were successful. The pressure he's put on himself coupled with a nagging doubt have turned him into a hard man. His frustration is channeled into his three sons, who bear it in vastly different ways. Then there's Jack's mother, played by a luminous Jessica Chastain, who approaches parenting from a completely different angle. She prefers to teach her children to love first, and be prepared to accept love in return. She tries to instill a spirit in her boys that the father seems just as willing to break. In the midst of all this, Jack is the most susceptible to influence. We see that the questions that nag him as an adult were first planted in him as a child.
Transported back into the present day, Malick is kind enough to try and relief Jack's distress. He takes him on a journey through his memories, visiting again the many people who have been such a component in his life. Maybe it's Malick's version of Heaven. I don't know, and wouldn't want it spelled out so clearly anyway. Nothing in The Tree of Life is ever spelled out for you, which is as it should be.Some will find this lack of explanation to be extremely frustrating, and I must confess that for awhile I began to think that this was the sort of pretentious claptrap that makes people hate art house movies. My rash response was kicked off by the film's narrative structure, which leaves much to be desired. The film is set up in such a way that failure to connect with any portion of it will leave you utterly cold to the rest. Whether or not I fully grasp what Malick's intent thematically was, I have a pretty good idea in my head that makes perfect sense. For all the film's little faults, the true greatness that is The Tree of Life is that it lets you draw your own conclusions to the questions Malick is presenting. In that way, this is a film that will be virtually impossible to forget. The imagery will creep into your mind when you least expect it, and you'll be forced to think about all you've seen once more. If that was his goal, then I'd say that's pretty ambitious.
