The Tree of Life, for most people either one of the best, or one of the worst films they’ve ever seen.
Completely incomprehensible to some, but visually stunning to all.
This highly ambitious project by Terrence Malick goes all the way back to the 1970s
but finally saw the light in 2011,
baffling the audience with its combination of family drama, existential themes
and what seems more like a nature documentary.
Even today most people still don’t seem to know what to make of it,
which is probably the main reason I wanted to make this video;
What story does The Tree of Life tell?
And perhaps more importantly; how does Terrence Malick tell it?
- The Tree of Life: Crafting an Existential Masterpiece -
- Part I. Engaging The Tree of Life -
The Tree of Life features the O’Brien family.
There’s Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien and their sons; Jack, R.L. and Steve.
To best understand their story we can break its timeline down in 3 important segments:
the first part features Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien somewhere in the late 60s receiving a telegram
with the news that their son R.L. has passed away at age 19.
We then cut to Jack as an adult in the present day finding himself lost in a modern world.
After that we see Jack’s childhood in the 50s.
Chronologically it would look something like this; Jack grows up, is confronted with the death of his brother,
and carries that trauma with him into adulthood.
Now this is obviously not how Malick tells this story.
Instead, he opens the film with an introduction to two ways of life;
the way of Nature and the way of Grace.
Nature basically assumes a dog eat dog world of selfish beings in a violent, meaningless universe,
whereas Grace is the way of forgiveness, humbleness and selflessness.
Choosing the way of Grace is deemed preferable because, as Mrs. O’Brien puts it;
“No one who loves the way of Grace ever comes to a bad end”.
This idea stems from the ancient world view
in which moral behavior was believed to be significant for one’s fate.
Now of course we know this isn’t really true as people suffer regardless of their attitude towards life.
Malick seems to have been struggling with this issue for some time
and already addressed it in The Thin Red Line for example when Private Witt,
a character following the way of Grace is spoken to by a dead Japanese soldier;
“Are you righteous?
Kind?
Does your confidence lie in this?
Are you loved by all?
Know that I was, too.
Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness, truth?”
In The Tree of Life, Mrs. O’Brien ends up suffering too when she loses R.L.,
the son who most resembled her in the way of Grace.
The existential question then is why should we follow the way of Grace if we still end up suffering?
Why should we be kind and forgiving of a universe that is cruel and indifferent?
To engage this question, Malick refers to the book of Job in the opening lines of the film;
the biblical story in which Satan and God argue over Job’s faith.
Satan argues that Job’s faith is only there because he has been blessed with good fortune
and that it will wither when that good fortune is taken away,
which God allows to happen to test Satan’s argument.
Job endures this suffering without any insight or explanation and, like Mrs. O’Brien,
receives only inadequate condolences from the people around him.
When God finally speaks to Job he is basically told to trust in God’s way;
which today can be interpreted as an apologetic explanation for why bad things happen to good people;
that especially for non-religious people doesn’t really suffice as an answer.
I think therefore that with The Tree of Life, Malick wanted to give his own answer,
or at least; frame this existential question in his own way.
So how does Malick do this?
For starters; he fully utilizes the medium of film,
meaning that there really is no distinction between the story and the way the story is filmed.
What this implies is that every image, every piece of music, however random it may seem,
serves a purpose to the narrative.
What purpose exactly may not always be clear and that’s okay
because I think that it’s important to remember that Malick doesn’t just want you
to experience The Tree of Life intellectually, analyzing every frame for what he could have meant by it,
he wants you to experience it emotionally, intimately, original
which is shown by the preface to the original screenplay, in which he wrote;
“The “I” who speaks in this story is not the author.
Rather, he hopes that you might see yourself in this “I’ and understand this story as your own.”
So what follows is not a definitive interpretation of The Tree of Life,
to be honest it’s barely an analysis.
What I want to do is merely observe what is shown, translate Malick’s cinematic language if you will
using his original screenplay and some of his sources for inspiration,
so that it might be easier for you to figure out what it all means,
or if you already have a pretty clear idea of what it’s about; perhaps give you some new perspectives or
details to look at to deepen your appreciation of this film
- Part II. Crafting an Existential Masterpiece -
The first thing you’ll notice while watching The Tree of Life is that it begins and ends with this image of light.
We also hear the first of many whispered voice-overs.
The common interpretation is that the light resembles God or some kind of divine presence
and that the voice-overs are prayers from the characters,
which would effectively turn the film into one big prayer or meditation.
Although I think there is merit to this, which I’ll come back to later,
I first want to emphasize that Malick clearly meant for this film to be allowed an atheist interpretation.
In the screenplay he writes; “Let us sing a new song, tell a new story;
one which, mindful of the ancient tales, takes its inspiration from science.
Let us search for the permanent amid the fleeting and mutable,
for that which endures through the spectacle of ceaseless change.
Let us discover the eternal, the good.”
In a completely atheist interpretation, my best guess is that the light represents a
personification of the metaphysical, the source of the universe that we most likely will never
have access to or be able to understand.
The prayers then become expressions of our existential questions,
questions buried deep down in all of us yet mostly subdued in our busy everyday lives.
Barely present as active thoughts, they are turned into whispers.
Like the story of Job, we are then introduced to the crisis of faith,
the questioning of the way of Grace, which is centered around Jack as an adult.
In another image of light, Jack whispers;
“How did you come to me?”
At this point it does feel like the film is either a divine intervention within Jack’s psyche,
or some kind of conversation with a metaphysical entity,
similarly to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal in which a knight challenges Death to a game of chess for his life.
Perhaps you can even see it as a director guiding his audience through a man’s life
while he is aware of it; completely breaking down the traditional barrier between subject and object,
creating the story not only as we are watching it but because we are watching it.
We see flashes of images, a closed door, a threshold.
Malick is setting up the conflict; a man lost in a modern world,
surrounded by the way of nature.
Or, as Malick describes it;
“Physical life in a world abandoned by the spirit.
Organized unreality.
The soul a hindrance in one’s dealings here.
A burden.
A mere quantity of thoughts and desires.”
We hear the elevator beeps as if Jack is a man on life-support, barely alive.
He remembers his brother, true, kind, a source of Grace he himself has lost.
One reoccurring motive in Malick’s films is water,
which he tends to associate with the way of Grace; in water we find the origins of life, of birth.
In water we are cleansed and baptized.
So how would Malick show the opposite of that?
A man like Jack who has lost the way of Grace?
He shows him wandering in a desert, defined by the very absence of water,
looking for his brother who of course, stands in water, asking Jack to find him.
His search starts with his mother who questions God after R.L.’s death.
This is the introduction to the extensive sequence showing the creation of the universe,
which is presumably meant to put us in our place against the vast context of the universe.
One article suggests Malick doesn’t do this in a misanthropic way, but merely wants to reminds us;
“We are small and we are brief, he says with these first chapters,
do not presume you can understand it all.”
Perhaps the most important part here is the beginning of life, and with that; the beginning of death.
Malick writes;
“Thus the first animals arise; life robbing life; assassins.
Alien as they appear, they show the beginnings of need, of purpose and will;
the unmistakable marks of identity, the first true signs of self.
But if the way of Nature was part of the creation, Malick wonders,
then so too must be the way of Grace,
which we undeniably recognize in the living beings around us.
At the end of the sequence we shift back to Jack’s perspective who, according to the screenplay,
is given some answers by nature but also conflicted by new questions.
In particular regarding the nature of the soul;
“The soul: the crown and apex of creation: the self, the center and inside of nature.
Great not in space and time, but in capacity, in depth and power of apprehension.
Where does it come from? When is it first born? How does it advance? Towards what?
Here we move into the bulk of the film
and what I believe to be the most perfect depiction of childhood ever put to film.
We see the birth of Jack, the birth of his self, making his way into the physical world.
From this point, Malick shows everything from Jack’s perspective;
flashes of a child’s memory.
We see the world as if we’re witnessing it for the first time;
distorted, strange, big and mysterious.
We see the joy of discovery and the first signs of envy, of jealousy.
All of which under the grace of the protective mother, seen here as some kind of divine being.
We jump ahead a couple of years.
Jack is now 11 and having dinner with his family,
a scene which sets up the family dynamics for the remainder of the film;
a graceful mother and an authoritative father.
Jack, like any other child of his age, is slowly getting to know the adult world;
a world of conflict, suffering and injustice,
leading to him asking his first existential questions, wondering about the nature of the world.
His father, a man who is made cynical because he had failed at achieving what he saw as success,
for Jack is a representation of the way of nature;
teaches him that he can’t be too good or he’ll be taken advantage of,
Wrong people go hungry, die.
Wrong people get loved.
The world lives by trickery.
You wanna succeed, you can't be too good.
Jack is also introduced to the story of Job and, like we all will at some point,
begins to actively question the way of Grace.
“He sees the abuse which goodness suffers in this world,
the painful consequences of walking in his mother’s way.
Where does it lead? To a life of sorrow, for all he can tell.
What is the value of goodness? How shall it stand against bullying force?
His questioning of the way of Grace turns into a rebellion,
at first a rebellion against his father but later,
after his first encounter with death and the fact that all that lives will someday die,
a rebellion against God himself, for why should he be good if God isn't?
Malick shows extensively how the way of nature takes hold of Jack;
he starts to defy the rules, doing bad things just for the sake of it, he becomes more violent.
His first exploration of his sexuality appears to turn into perversion.
He hates himself and his father, and wishes him dead.
He even starts resenting his mother for her weakness,
because in a dog eat dog world where everyone ends up alone; other people become either a threat or a victim.
The turning point comes when he shoots his brother R.L. in the finger with a BB gun,
who later forgives him for it; reminding Jack that the way of Grace is always a choice.
For his father as well comes a turning point when he is fired from his job and,
following some kind of revelation, reflects on his attitude in a monologue
that seems to be adapted straight from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,
a novel that deals with similar existential questions and was clearly a major inspiration to Malick.
This becomes evident when we compare the scene with Dostoevsky’s words;
I wanted to be loved because I was great;
A big man.
I'm nothing.
Look, the glory around us;
trees, birds.
I lived in shame.
I dishonored it all, and didn't notice the glory.
There is an interesting small detail that comes after that when Jack helps him pack the car;
his father, just moments after his revelation, already seems to be his old self again:
You just gonna stand there like a bump on the lawn?
It suggests that the way of Grace is not found in a mere moment of inspiration,
but takes active effort as Jack reflects in the screenplay;
“It seems forgiveness must be an ongoing business.”
The journey through Jack’s childhood ends with his mother reaffirming the way of Grace
as the only remedy to the unhappiness that inevitably follows the way of nature;
The only way to be happy is to love.
Unless you love, your life will flash by.
Do good to them.
Wonder.
Hope.
And yet, the film does not end here with this simple platitude.
Malick wants to show us the way of Grace, not just tell us to follow it.
He brings us back to the present day, to Jack as an adult,
still roaming the desert of our modern society but finally able to cross the threshold into the way of Grace,
in which he finds the future unfolding before him.
In the screenplay this sequence is much more extensive;
Malick envisions the great tribulation and a new Earth in which the soul is reconciled with nature.
He describes the destruction of our planet, the dying of our sun
and the eventual end of our universe.
But he then turns to the theory of multiverse; the idea of endless creation,
in which he finds the eternal he was looking for;
“Creation is eternal birth. A beginning without end.
It happens in every instant of time.
The same power which burns in the stars burns equally in us.
Our being is a miracle, equal with the creation of the universe,
and like the universe, each day is created anew.”
In the film, this sequence is much shorter and quickly moves on to the final segment
of Jack actually stepping into the way of Grace.
It is interesting to see how Malick shows this visually,
especially when we compare the images he used in the beginning of the film to set up the conflict,
with the images he uses to resolve it;
in the beginning Jack is wandering the desert alone, now he is guided by his younger self.
Clouds make way for a clear sky.
His lost brother now found.
These final minutes are often perceived as a vision of heaven or the afterlife,
but based on Malick’s screenplay I believe it is more likely a personification of the soul,
a metaphor for the way of Grace,
Jack’s connection with the eternal that needs to be felt more than it needs to be understood.
When we return to the present, Jack sees the world as though for the first time,
according to the screenplay, wondering if his revelation will be forgotten.
Malick concludes; “All ends in peace, as music does.
The last chord melts into ordinary production sound.
Time has reappeared; resumed its sway.
And still the vision is not the journey. The real journey has yet to begin.
Will he give himself to this new life? Does he dare?”
I like to think there is a message in this final quote for the audience;
what to do after seeing a film like this?
Or any great work of art engaging in these kinds of existential questions?
Will you let it pass as if it were a dream?
Or do we dare let it affect us, or even change us?
What you do with it and how is of course up to you.
Malick doesn’t exactly spell out what it means to follow the way of Grace,
and I wonder to what extent he is still trying to figure that out for himself.
I am therefore going to conclude this video with another quote from Malick’s source of inspiration
The Brothers Karamazov, one that is also used in a shortened version in The Tree of Life.
The full quote however might just give you that extra bit of insight;
“Brothers, have no fear of men’s sin.
Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth.
Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it.
Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light.
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.
If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.
Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day.
And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”