Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Movie Review: The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's new film starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn left me underwhelmed, an ironic result given the film's attempt to overwhelm the viewer with images, cuts and its jolting lack of narrative. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes (the festival's highest prize), and I think I know why. When people see a movie that is different in some remarkable way--and The Tree of Life certainly is that--they think they are supposed to like it. The Tree of Life has the added benefit of being about "the big questions," presenting a juxtaposition of the beauty and vastness of the universe with the beauty and grace of the nuclear family capped off with voiceovers asking simple (and yet somehow stilted) questions of what most would assume to be God.

The journey of the family's oldest son is set against the images of creation Malick provides in the first twenty or so minutes of the film. After a neighborhood boy drowns in front of him, the oldest son asks God, "If you're not going to be good, why should I?" From there he spirals into acts of boyhood mischief that draw him away from his family and ultimately, himself. The best part about this film is how Malick is able to convey the gravity of just one young person's rather common mistakes. In another film, for instance, a twelve year-old boy shooting his brother with a bb gun could have a completely different tone and purpose (my dad shot his brother in the leg with a bb gun and the story always seemed more hilarious than tragic). Malick manages to turn what some might dismiss as the trials of growing up into an interesting commentary on sin and redemption.

I appreciate the attention Malick pays in this film to the relationship between the mistakes we make (especially in our families) and the cosmos. The film lacks a driving narrative but manages to make the viewer care about what is happening in this one family. It moves from the particular to the universal and back again, presumably to highlight the space between feeling completely inevitable and utterly insignificant that form the poles of our searching for God.

So this review sounds favorable but I have some issues with this film. The first is that it should not have been a feature-length film. I think Malick could have done a beautiful, halting job in like an hour. Too many images in the beginning made it feel more like Planet Earth than anything and I was distracted by the form and began to question the content (judging only by the shifting of the people in their seats around me, I would say I'm probably not alone on this one).

Secondly, for me, the ending added little to what came before it in terms of sin and redemption. All the beach-walking and hugging reminded me of several moments in other films that I hate. What is awesome about the majority of the movie is what I mentioned above: Malick drawing the universe and the family in ways that puts them in the same cosmos. Personally, I think the other-worldly beachland verges on undermining the very space he creates in the rest of the film.

Overall it's worth seeing, if only so you'll be able to nuance the inevitable and uncritical cocktail party reviews.

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