Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Film Retrospective: "The Tree of Life" (2011)

LOVE THROUGH TIME by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

NOTE: In honor of director Terrence Malick's latest film, "To the Wonder," I'm reprinting this, my essay about his previous film.
For the first ten minutes of "The Tree of Life,” you may feel as if you're gently ascending into the atmosphere of movie heaven.  It begins with a disjointed prologue about a couple (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) learning that their son R.L. has died.  But in the midst of their grief, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and director Terrence Malick send the camera soaring across a field of dark ocean waves, into a rumpled, sparse apartment, and up a clear elevator to the skyscraper office of Jack (Sean Penn).  He is the couple’s oldest son and possessed with a determination to show how epic an ordinary life can feel, Mr. Lubezki and Mr. Malick construct a gorgeously glassy reflection of his life.

But this sequence’s true gift is that it tells you everything you need to know about Jack.  He looks majestic in his high-rise playground but as the elevator crawls upward, we’re permitted to gaze into Mr. Penn's weathered face and see that like his parents, Jack too is consumed by an aimless sadness that has ballooned into something heavier.  He's bothered by his family's trauma, but his angst extends beyond the personal—his faith in the rightness of the universe itself has evaporated.  “The world’s going to the dogs,” he tells us.  “People are greedy…it keeps getting worse.”

            You may ask—how does a storyteller solve such a conundrum?  What makes stories satisfying is their ability to offer characters a chance to find unusual satisfaction, or at least atonement.  But what’s to be done when solving your hero’s dilemma requires you to solve the problems of the world itself?  In the case of Mr. Malick (who wrote the film’s original screenplay), the answer is clear—journey to the deepest root of the matter by showing how the Earth itself was created. 

To be sure, this is a bold move—there are simpler ways to explore someone’s relationship to a macrocosm than delving into a poeticized record of the universe.  But Mr. Malick takes us into the cosmos and shows the Sun dawn over the planet for the first time as ice, waves, flowers, and dinosaurs flicker to life in a long deluge of brief, beautiful images.  And amidst the wondrousness, we are reminded that Jack’s doubts cannot be cleansed by a look toward creation—the pre- is just as cruel as the post-human world, and the lives of those dinosaurs are just as easily extinguishable as R.L.’s. 

            From Big Bang and bacterial birth, Mr. Malick leads us straight into the 1950s (the time of Jack’s childhood) and when I first saw the movie, I expected him to use that moment to transition into a more elongated rhythm.  But that never happens.  At 139 minutes, the “The Tree of Life” travels at a poky glide, yet it is deeply restless.  During the long journey of making a movie meant to be released several Christmases ago, Mr. Malick hired numerous editors (including Jay Rabinowitz, the gifted puzzle-maker behind “The Adjustment Bureau” and “The Fountain”) and if they and their director have a weakness, it is an instinct to diminish meaningful moments to iconic fragments.  The early scenes of Jack growing up—baby’s first walk, baby’s first tantrum—are clipped short, draining out eccentricity in favor of choral weightiness.  As a result, you may find yourself watching parts of the movie in a dully detached state, like a customer flipping through a meticulously assembled catalogue purged of movement or life.

            And yet, you would do well to keep flipping.  While “The Tree of Life” refuses to relax, its narrative pieces finally click into place when Jack’s abusive father mysteriously leaves “on a trip.”  At first, Jack revels in his freedom but then, still infected with his father’s mistreatment (and, Mr. Malick suggests, a seed of cruelty that was inside him even when he was a toddler), he goes on a destructive rampage with his friends, smashing windows and sneaking through unlocked doors.  In these scenes, Mr. Lubezki’s camera drops off its hook, staying unsteadily close to Jack and making us aware of the fragility of his position.  This visual and emotional precariousness is queasily frightening yet also enticing—it is the culmination of months of abuse.

And while this Luthor-like drama is staged, lest you forget, the adult Jack is sitting in his office, thinking.  For this was never a film meant to leave us jittering at his back—it is an assuaging remedy, not for one moment or one family, but for all time.  When Jack stares back into the universe of his childhood, he relives each moment of his turn to the dark side, from quietly terrorizing his brother to pausing by a jacked-up car while his father lies underneath.  But he also realizes the truth of his mother’s words (that there’s nothing to life if he doesn’t love everything around him), and more importantly, that even in an unfair world, loving makes a difference.

            Maybe that is why the film begins with a look at the universe and ends with a look at people.  In a sequence that I believe takes place inside Jack’s mind (and not heaven), he rides the elevator from his office, then finds himself on a beach, where he embraces his old family, friends, and neighbors, exactly as he remembers them from his boyhood—people, not planets.  And as he leaves, we see the trees above and hear the soft beep of the elevator as it descends, taking him back.  But really, Jack is emerging from a dream, the way you do whenever a great movie ends.  Parting is hard, but you can’t help but feel satisfied, even as you begin to wake. 

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