The scope of Malick’s accomplishment in
Tree of Life is huge. This film doesn’t just follow part of the childhood of a couple of boys in Texas in the fifties, though that would be enough given the images, editing and music that make up the film. And the film doesn’t just give us elements of a theology, though that would also be a unique use of the medium. Instead,
Tree of Life binds both these components seamlessly into a film that also engages us in sympathy and dread for all the principles in the story. This movie is a rare cinematic achievement.
The theological component is front and center from the opening of the film as we hear a voiceover and watch an abstract, orange shape flicker on the screen. We later realize we’ve heard the voice of Jack as an adult saying that his mother and brother had led him to “your” door. The reference to “your” sets up the flicker as a representation of god and tells us that the speaker’s brother and mother are to lead the speaker to his redemption. And that’s what happens as
Tree of Life unfolds. After this set up, we hear the mother in voiceover drawing a contrast between the Way of Grace and the Way of Nature, the former being playful, loving, generous and non-egotistical while the latter is arrogant, combative, selfish and unhappy. Her voiceover explains the spiritual dilemma that Jack finds himself in throughout the film as he deliberates which of the two paths to follow.
The theological dichotomy of Grace/Nature defines the main characters in the film. The mother lives in Grace. She loves her husband, her boys and the people she encounters. She sees the good in her kids, and she’s free to express her love for them and for the natural world. Humble and tolerating her husband’s slights and insults, she plays with the kids at times like she was a child herself. She teaches the young Jack to love his brother RL, the younger sibling who also naturally lives in Grace. RL is a gentle kid who can’t or won’t fight, preferring instead play, music and art. While Jack generally finds himself in conflict with his father, the grace-infused RL at one point naturally collaborates with his father and begins to play a guitar accompaniment to his father’s piano. The young RL tells Jack that he trusts him even when Jack has told him to put his finger in a lamp socket, and he forgives Jack when his brother betrays him. The mother and RL are both characters who follow the Way of Grace.
While Laramie Eppler was clearly cast to resemble a young Brad Pitt, his RL has a very different personality from that his father. Pitt’s Mr. O’Brien lives largely in the Way of Nature. He works in an environment without the earth’s natural trappings, one of loud machines and grey metal. He’s envious of neighbors and distrustful of them, and he suffers no insult or rebellion from his sons. He goes to court to claim what he believes is his, complains about and resents every slight, and tries to teach his sons how to fight so they can succeed in the world. He thinks of himself as a failure in the same house and with the same family that gives so much joy to his wife. All that said, the father is not without glimmers of Grace. He shows love to all members of his family, worrying about his wife after the loss of one of their sons and awkwardly acknowledging Jack’s need for consolation and even love. He regrets not having chosen music as a career and joins in playing music with RL. In recognition of RL’s lack of desire to fight, the father doesn’t insist with him as he does with Jack. Although the father lives mostly in the Way of Nature, there are elements of the character that point to Grace dwelling in him to some extent.
In addition to describing its theology through the story of Jack’s boyhood,
Tree of Life considers how Grace and Nature have been inscribed into the universe from its very creation. The film opens with a quote from Job that celebrates god as the creator of the universe. Abstract images soon carry forward Creation in Grace/Nature terms. Some of the abstract images of this section show gentle morphing and accommodation of forms while others show explosions, shifts and formal conflict, visual expressions of the forces of Grace and Nature at work. The dinosaur episode portrays Grace and Nature most clearly in play in this section of the film. One dinosaur lies dying on a beach after being mauled by sharks, indicating the Way of Nature in this new world, but a carnivorous dinosaur in the next scene elects not to kill an ill herbivore who is at his mercy, a sign that the Way of Grace, too, is already present. The creation section of the film shows us that the dialectic of Grace/Nature have been present since the creation of the universe.
This same dialectic is at work in Jack. As he says in a voiceover, his mother and his father constantly battle within him for dominance, and his working out which one he will follow informs the plot of the movie. Jack can be kind and loving, taking care of RL and regretting when he does something bad, but he still does things he knows he shouldn’t, like breaking out a shed window, putting firecrackers in a bird’s nest or stealing a woman’s nightgown from a neighbor’s house. He even says explicitly that he does things he hates, making clear his inner conflict. And he expresses anger at god, who allows things like criminality, deformity, house fires and the death of his brother. He’s torn between wanting to live in Grace, as his mother has taught him, and lapsing into the Way of Nature that his father follows. The theology of
Tree of Life is a central element of the film.
And one of the greatest strengths of the film is that it works out its theological issues in such a specific set of circumstances. The art direction evokes a middle class family in the 50s not only with its deep dive into the cars, clothes and home furnishings of the time but also with details like the kids playing in the DDT spray of the mosquito-control truck. With such details,
Tree of Life captures that period with more specificity than most films. The actions of the children, too, have a sharp verisimilitude; kids tie a frog to a rocket, climb live oaks, ride their bikes through tall weeds, shoot a BB gun in the woods, taunt and get taunted. And the interactions of RL and Jack have an acute feeling of trust and tentativeness that feels as direct as childhood. Sorry for one of the things he’s done, for example, Jack tells RL he can hit him as hard as he wants. This is a peek into a specific 50s childhood in Texas that, thanks to its sharp specificity, becomes universal as the film integrates the everyday and the cosmic. The DDT truck shows the joy of Grace tied to the danger of Nature, and the frog tied to the fireworks is a child version of the Way of Nature. Jack's offer to submit to punishment comes from a feeling of Nature, and when RL declines to take Jack’s offer, the younger brother shows Grace at work in him.
There is great cinematic beauty Malick’s film, too. Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera captures the wonder and beauty of the world that Malick sees, whether it’s a backlit shot of the mother walking in the street, an image of the boy’s shadows on the pavement as they play or a tracking shot of them riding bikes. His camera is just as effective in dreamy, fantasy shots, like a boy swimming out of his house, the mother floating in the air, or the seaside gathering near the end of the film. And there are memorable short shots lasting a second or two and never repeated. A bowl of water reflects sunlight onto the ceiling in one such shot, recalling the abstract opening image of god. The image of adult hands holding a baby’s foot lasts only a couple of seconds yet makes a strong impression, both in visual and thematic terms. In all the images here, Lubezki’s camera finds the spiritual significance of the imagery and helps us see its beauty as well as its meaning. We see a world of Grace and Nature through this beauty.
Tree of Life uses particular networks of repeated imagery, and Lubezki endows these images with a special significance beyond what our eyes see. Trees, appropriately, recur throughout the film, and we usually see them from below, looking up as though we’re trying to discern the wonder in them. Giant oaks seem ready to show us their hidden consciousness, and stands of pine have the sun glinting through them as they move in the wind, teasing the eye with intuition of something grand just beyond. In each case, Lubezki uses light, framing and camera angle to evoke a significance beyond the visual from this central symbol. He does the same with images of water that also recur. A boy drifts up out of a room filled with water, the camera watches from below as children play in water, minister baptizes children with small amounts of water and the important conclusion of the film occurs on a spit in the ocean. Water has an important role in the imagery here. In one scene, the mother dances in a sprinkler, tying together water and tree imagery. A third recurring set of images is of technology, identified with the Way of Nature. In scenes set in the 50s, we see painted lines of piping receding into Lubezki’s clear depth of field or jet planes screaming in the background when the father receives the news of the death of his son. In the contemporary technological settings, austere, colorless modern office decor furnish towers of glass that have empty air between them. Lubezki's camera cuts the natural beauty of the world from these images.
And there’s great cinematic pleasure in the editing. In addition to the short shots of some of the images, the editing can break up time and sequences. The opening lines of the film become important later as we come to realize that RL has died and that we've been hearing an interior monolog of the adult Jack in his urban office building. Even the mention of the doorway in the first line of the film comes to have visual significance toward the end when we see a door frame in the exposed landscape. Malick fractures time throughout the film, breaking events into parts that thematically relate to other actions rather than keeping a sequence together in temporal order. In the BB gun episode, for instance, Malick edits to reflect a child’s recollection of a traumatic event. We don’t even see the actual event, and we see the boys crying together and RL’s forgiveness in reverse sequence, each part associated with another instance of regret and forgiveness respectively. It’s a deep, revealing and absorbing way to approach editing that respects rhythm and continuity even while violating it.
For all the theology and evocation of an era in
Tree of Life, the story of the film is one of personal salvation. At the opening line, Jack is on the verge of reconciling the inner conflict he has always between Grace and Nature, and what we watch in the film is his thinking back over his exposure to these two ways of life. The world we see in his childhood memories is one more populated by children than adults, one almost empty of people unless they are interacting with him. His memory is one of tension, fear of his father, fear of doing something wrong, fear of getting caught at transgressing.
Tree of Life captures this childhood of tension well through its editing, cinematography, music and great performances. The last set of images of the film then show Jack going through a doorway and leaving an austere landscape of empty rock to walk into the ocean, where he finds reconciliation with the family of his memory and with the world.
But the images of Jack’s redemption are not the last of the film. Instead, the film leaves us with a shot of a high-tech bridge leading to a city while a vast channel of water flows underneath, assuring us that Grace flows mightily through the world and inviting us to look around to see it. It’s a last understated image from Malick of a world whose every appearance is fraught with significance.
