Scene City #3: The Tree of Life (Malick, 2011)

Most movies are content with dealing with formal narratives while aspiring to tell a compelling story. They usually let their characters dictate the story’s themes but “The Tree of Life” lets its themes dictate the characters. Here we have a film that contemplates existence through the prism of an ordinary family life and pulls us in through the beauty of nature to contemplate our own.

Movies rarely get more ambitious than “The Tree of Life” and also, rarely more polarizing. The reactions from the audience at my screening were mostly of frustration and tedium and even though it won the coveted Palme D’Or at Cannes, the movie was met with both applause and boos in equal measure. I’m not a huge fan of Terrence Malick (I think “The Thin Red Line” is one of the most exhausting and dullest war movies ever made) but I admire the craft of his movies even though most of the time they feel like meandering philosophical statements. “The Tree of Life” starts with whispers and an amalgam of scenes from a family in the fifties, the cosmos and an extended sequence on the creation of life on our planet that includes dinosaurs (this sequence my baffle viewers who don’t see a connection with the rest of the story).

“The Tree of Life” is a beautiful and haunting work of art. Whether it works or not as art depends entirely on the viewer but there’s no denying that Malick pours himself into the picture and dares to take the audience on an astonishing journey, the journey of life itself. The actors embody perfectly their roles (except for Sean Penn who wanders aimlessly through the movie; Penn himself wasn’t satisfied with his role and the final product since he feels it fails to represent the beauty of the script). So divisive is the movie that even Penn fails to grasp Malick’s intentions but I was so moved by the family scenes that I started to wander into my own childhood and my love for my mother, father and brother (feelings evoked by empathy towards this memory, even though it’s quite different from mine).

It’s rare to find spirituality in a multiplex but “The Tree of Life” is a communion for the believers. It’s a soaring work that goes deep in its humanity and delivers a transcendental experience. It’s by far my favorite movie of 2011.