I Like to Watch | Tree of Life (2011)
In episode four of the new I Like to Watch podcast with Donnie Smith, he and I disagreed pretty significantly about the 1981 'anti-musical' Pennies from Heaven. While Donnie had some issues with the film, what he did appreciate about it was the artists creating this odd film really "swung for the fences."
As a fan of visual entertainment, of film and television, I find that while I certainly have a pedestrian strain in my viewing—I love Survivor and anything involving Gordon Ramsey, I'm an avid fan of everything Marvel and Star Trek, I can't get enough of greasy cheeseburgers like Armageddon, The Rock, and John Wick—I have a real sweet tooth for the artists who swing for those fences and go above beyond, even if the result is convoluted or frustrating.
In eighth grade, I was in love with my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Schuytler. She was a movie geek. I was a movie geek. She liked science fiction. I spent my recesses reading Asimov. This was all before the dark realities of grown women teachers having sex with their thirteen-year-old students so the fantasy was just that. I did, however, try to impress her any chance I could.
Mrs. Schuytler annually took her classes to a pizza and a movie field trip and she asked my class what movie we wanted to see. Half the class voted to see The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh. The other half voted to see The Black Hole. I could tell she was not inspired by either choice so I suggested Being There
Being There starred Peter Sellers as Chance, a gardener who has resided in the Washington, D.C., townhouse of his wealthy patron for his entire life and been educated only by television. When he is forced to vacate his home when his employer dies, he encounters business mogul Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas), who assumes Chance to be a fellow upper-class gentleman. Soon Chance is ushered into high society, and his unaffected gardening wisdom makes him a messianic figure.
Mrs. Schuytler was thrilled. The rest of the class was not but cared less about the movie than they did escaping the walls of Benton Elementary for an afternoon. We sat in the theater and watched. Mrs. Schuytler and I both laughed and laughed. We loved it. The rest of the gang of simians were bored.
The first movie I remember seeing is Harold and Maude so it stands to reason I might have a weakness for the weird and unwieldy.
If you are completely married to the idea of a traditional narrative or have a hard time looking at paintings for any extended period of time, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life is not your cup of tea. I have heard from intelligent, open-minded folks who sat through the first thirty minutes of Malick's opus and given up, leaving the theater without hope that there was a point or an actual movie going to occur. In fact, Joe Janes and I went to Landmark Century on a Thursday at 5PM in 2011 and were among, perhaps, 15 other people and app. thirty minutes in, a couple got up and left.
No question, Tree of Life is a challenge. Malick creates a film that puts in contrast the very idea of what a film can be. A short description might go like this: a beautifully rendered Creation of the World and an anti-narrative that plays like the most gorgeously shot and expensive home movie ever made starring Brad Pitt with (mostly) silent appearances by Sean Penn.
But that really doesn't do it justice.
"The nuns taught us that that there were two paths - that of Nature and that of Grace." intones the Mother of the 1950's family at the center of the film. Malick proceeds to visually (and with a lot of incredibly potent musical choices that range from Brahms to Mahler to Holst in pretty exceptional crossovers between the eye and the ear) show us a journey taken by Man since there was Man—the purpose of the Universe, the value or lack thereof of Death, the helplessness of Life on the Planet, all framed by the Mother's search for why her son was killed. This is not a "popcorn" movie with a wisecracking sidekick and a "Boy Gets Girl" sort of formula—Malick is going for the Big Questions of Life. This is heady shit, brother. This is the very definition of swinging for the fences artistically.
Brad Pitt, in a phenomenal performance, is the patriarch of the family and, in essence, represents Nature; Jessica Chastain is the matriarch and represents Grace. There is no simple story to follow but a series of memories that take the viewer on a journey through a single life—Jack's (played by Hunter McCracken as a boy and Sean Penn as an adult)—as he is born, grows, learns, and is shaped by his circumstances and choices.
At one point, Pitt looks at his son and asks him "Do you trust your father to do exactly what he asks without question. Good. Then, for the next thirty minutes, say nothing unless it is important." Malick seems to be following this advice throughout as this 138-minute film could fit all the words spoken in it inside of ten or twelve typed pages but when someone speaks, it is essential.
The imagery is intoxicating and filled with nostalgia and regret and wonder:
Boys running through the clouds of a DDT truck
A dinosaur washed up upon the shoreline, discovered mobility on land
Pitt having a random court proceeding wherein his patent idea is stolen from him
Chastain teaching Jack the names of animals using painted wooden alligators and kangaroos
Jellyfish evolving from cells
Two boys mimicking the walk of a town drunk seeing a crippled man walking the same way
A boy drowning in a pre-chlorine public swimming pool
Jack deciding to break windows with a rock
The narrative is not one of character arcs or story but the narrative of daily living on an evolving planet and Malick manages to find connections between the mundane and the miraculous that bridges the violence of Nature with the wisdom of Grace. What's Tree of Life about, you may ask?
It's about the molecular connection we all have with the planet and the universe and each other. It's about primordial soup evolving over time into weeds that Jack is instructed to pull from the root, not just the top. It's about the brief glimpse of a human life, filled with pettiness and violence and sex and love and hate.
One moment that struck me to the core—Mr. O'Brien (Pitt) has established that he is a strict disciplinarian. Over the course of the film, Jack develops the love/hate relationship with his father that we all do. Pitt is working on a car, the jack holding it above him. Jack looks at the car and contemplates killing his father by dropping the car on him, looking around to see if anyone would see. And, in a quick flash, decides not to.
Such are the fleeting but significant moments in life. The moment you discover that your parents are real, flawed human beings. When you discover the talent that defines you. When, like most humans on the planet, you recognize the finite nature of Life and the conditions we all have for our love.
When Joe and I left the theater, I was less than enthusiastic about Tree of Life. Two hours later, I began to appreciate the experience more and more, the images recurring in my head, disconnected to a specific storyline but connected somewhere inside my own experiences growing up.
Ten years later, my appreciation for Tree of Life has grown as each year has passed. Here's to the artists who swing for the fences because they create the stuff of magic.
