[Chuck Butler]

I enjoyed director Terrence Malick’s 2011 film The Tree of Life, though a couple sitting behind me in the theater walked out after the first hour. Others who remained could be overheard asking “What the hell was that?” (or similar). Despite provoking wildly diverse reactions among moviegoers and critics, the film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

The film features two distinct “story lines.” One centers on a family residing in Texas in the 1950s and is told in glimpses, flashing forward and back to key moments in the characters’ lives. There is little here in the way of plot; rather, we are presented with a series of scenes intended to concretize the film’s central theme. The other storyline is cosmological. Malick takes viewers on a breathtaking audiovisual journey that extends from the first moments of the Big Bang, to the emergence of life on earth, to the appearance of consciousness. This provides a “backstory” to the family storyline, and perhaps the family’s story is meant to be taken as a microcosm of the larger cosmological one.

What, then, is film’s theme? Ultimately, it is an ode to compassion. Malick suggests that is our capacity for compassion that enables us to transcend the relentlessly deterministic forces of the universe. I suspect that, like C.S. Lewis, Malick takes this as evidence for the Divine, though (departing from Lewis) he may be implying that compassion or “grace” is what mystics have sensed and mistakenly reified into a divine being. The character portrayed by actor Brad Pitt undergoes a personal evolution that mirrors the grand-scale evolution of the universe. He initially believes that his children must be raised in a heavy-handed manner if they are to survive in a cold, Hobbesian world, but eventually learns to be compassionate when he realizes that it is only our bonds to one another that remain when the deterministic physical universe thwarts our efforts to flourish.

Objectivists may be wondering what I could possibly have enjoyed about this film. I have no doubt that Malick is operating from altruistic and possibly mystical premises, and yes, the malevolent universe premise is in strong evidence as well. Fortunately the film is sufficiently abstract to permit alternate interpretations. Here’s what I liked:

1. I’ve never seen another film that depicts the origins of the universe and the development of life with such blatant and thoroughgoing naturalism. There is no hint of the hand of God here; physics, chemistry, and (with the arrival of life) natural selection are presented as solely responsible for the emergence of the world as we know it. I admit that I found this exhilarating, and the audiovisual presentation is quite stunning.

2. The emergence of consciousness is similarly portrayed as an entirely natural process. And in a key (though wildly speculative) scene, we see the first appearance of free will. This is portrayed as a major milestone, standing in stark contrast to the purely mechanistic forces that had previously held exclusive causal sway. Malick depicts this as a choice to act compassionately (and perhaps altruistically), but I would argue that an egoistic interpretation of the scene is possible.

3. As a filmmaker, Malick is technically accomplished and highly original. Many find the unique style of his films distracting and pretentious. I appreciate his sensibilities and think The Tree of Life is among his best work; I most loved the scenes of the three brothers growing up: running through the sprinkler, having a catch, exploring the woods–Malick is sensitive to the intense emotion and beauty that can be found in the simplest moments in life and captures them with an almost religious reverence. He also understands the pain and longing that a young boy feels: wanting to please his father while hating his authority; wanting to act morally while struggling against deeply felt anger and frustration. Perhaps due to his background in philosophy (he studied with Cavell and Ryle, and taught philosophy at MIT), Malick has a knack for noticing little things that other filmmakers overlook.

4. Most of all, I appreciate any film that is thought provoking and challenging. This is not standard-fare filmmaking: there really isn’t any plot to speak of; the music doesn’t telegraph emotion; the dialog is minimal; the acting subtle. And yet there is more content here than in most films released today (including The Artist, which took Best Picture that year). Not only does Malick expect the viewer to think, he expects the viewer to think philosophically. Admittedly, I’m excited by ideas, and seeing a film designed to get audiences thinking is refreshing and welcome–even if I don’t subscribe to the conclusions that the filmmaker intends.

One final note: actor Sean Penn has a relatively minor role in this film, and given his politics I am sympathetic to those who would prefer to skip the film for that reason.

[TonyWhite]

I had a very different reaction to the film than Chuck Butler. I didn’t like the content, style, or message of the movie. As I recall, I thought the “non-standard filmmaking” aspect was just pretentious and “artsy”.

To me, there was a morbid tone to the whole movie. One particularly ugly line came at the end when the mother whose child died said, to God, something along the lines of “I freely give him to you”, e.g., saying that the death of her own child was OK by her.

I can see that Chuck was not approving of the negative aspects of the movie in his review, so I don’t have any real disagreement with his review, in that sense. The difference is that I found nothing of anywhere near enough value in the movie to outweigh the negative aspects, and he did.

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