Best Picture #2: THE TREE OF LIFE (2011)

Some directors tell stories; others compose symphonies. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a symphony of images, connected not by the logic of plot but by the strands of memory and thought. It is not the story of a boy growing up, but the story of a man contemplating his own growth, as well as his relationship with his parents, and even the origin of life itself. Our own personal experiences are often the jumping-off point for contemplating the big questions: what is life? Where does it begin and end? What does it mean to be a father? To be a man?

The parents in question are played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. Their characters are not so much unique and specific as they are universal. They represent paternity and maternity, respectively. Pitt is the eternal father: stoic, strict, and firm, but loving, and a strong leader of his family by example. Chastain is the mother: supportive of the father but more compassionate and more likely to take the children’s side. The press material lists the family’s name as O’Brien, but I don’t recall anyone ever saying anyone’s name in the film. The father is the Father, the mother is the Mother, and the son is the Son.

Like a symphony, the film is composed of movements. The first movement, sure to be debated at length, chronicles the beginning of the universe and the origin of life on earth. We see the Big Bang, the emergence of unicellular organisms, their multiplication, their evolution, the beginning of sea life, early animals first crawling out onto land, and dinosaurs. And finally, we see an asteroid hurtle toward the planet and wipe it all out.

It may be difficult to see the significance of this segment, considering that the remainder of the film contains no reference to it. Like many prologues, it is there to provide a contrast to the rest of the film. Everything in this first movement flows so simply and easily, guided by randomness. I think the key to this chapter is located in a sequence in which a dinosaur, wandering in a valley, steps on another dinosaur’s head until it is dead. This is not a brutal scene, but merely one of nature. Even the dinosaur getting stomped on doesn’t seem to care.

Once the asteroid hits, the slate is cleaned and there is no more simplicity. The randomness of the early scenes gives way to the complexity of humankind. An early voice-over from the Mother speaks of the difference between nature and grace; where the scenes of prehistoric life represent mere nature, the family represents the pursuit of grace.

The bulk of the rest of the film takes place during the boy’s pubescent years, during which he is played by Hunter McCracken. It particularly explores the difficulty--at times downright impossibility--of the father-son relationship. The boy is on the cusp of adulthood, at that moment when he is just grown enough that he desires autonomy, but not quite grown enough to view his father as a fellow human being, rather than an imposing authority figure. We see his clashes with the Father, as well as the implication that in the Father’s absence the Mother is more easily manipulated. The boy simultaneously wants to please his father, to be his father, and to kill his father, which sounds contradictory to anyone but an adolescent. Envy also enters the equation, when the boy feels his younger brother is treated with more respect than he is.

The production design, by Jack Fisk, is a perfect evocation of a universal neighborhood. Though it takes place in the 1950s, one shot of the suburban streets dimly lit by dusk sunlight was all I needed to remind me of my own adolescence. The film is filled with such reminiscences: the bottle rockets, the BB guns, church on Sunday, and I particularly liked the neighborhood boy with the--shall we say--unique haircut.

A Bergman-esque coda has been interpreted by some as a version of the afterlife, but I don’t think the film bothers with this kind of metaphysics. Rather, it depicts the mass of memories that has accumulated in the boy’s mind over his entire life. The boy is played as a grown man by Sean Penn, who is better than anyone at showing inner conflict and contemplation with few words. The key to his motivation for doing so revealed in one very brief shot near the end, and makes complete sense.

The Tree of Life is at heart an existentialist film. It tells the story of what one man has made of his life, and ponders the question of where he should go next. The prehistoric sequence depicts species making their own way out of the water and evolving. The recurring present-day image is of Sean Penn climbing across a rocky beach; he is in a sense evolving himself, building the rest of his life from what has happened in the past. But while the animals evolve from necessity, the man evolves from, as the Mother says, grace: a desire to follow the example of his parents and to set an example for his children.

**** out of ****

 Best Picture #1: THE HELP (2011)