Dir. Terrence Malick, USA, 2011, 139 mins
Cast: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain,
Review by Carol Allen
Malick has gone on record about his intention in this film, which is to link our small human lives in the form of an ordinary family, the O’Brien’s, living in the mid West in the fifties, with the vastness and unknowingness of eternity and the universe. Or as the publicity materials for the film put it: “Through Malick’s signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families but all life”.
Which is a big theme, a difficult, almost impossible one for a film, and while he makes a valiant effort, Malick doesn’t really succeed in making that connection with any real clarity. The film looks magnificent, particularly in the film’s visual meditations on the universe. The cinematographer is Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men). There’s a long sequence in the first half of the film which takes us through time and space, out into the cosmos and back to earth and a time when dinosaurs jockied for supremacy over each other in the river, which runs still close to where the O’Brien’s live. It is a section which is almost a complete film in itself. One is also tempted to wonder, while watching the frequently recurring shots of the beauty of the sun filtering through the leaves of a trees, whether Malick ever experiences a day on his shoot when the sun doesn’t shine. As a director, he is a master of visual beauty and imagery.
Not in this case however such a master of narrative. The O’Brien family consists of Mr O’Brien (Pitt), his wife (Chastain), and their three sons. Their story is told through the memories of their eldest son Jack (Hunter McCracken), played as an adult by Penn. As a disenchanted and confused middle aged man living in the city, he looks back on the events that shaped him, as he struggles to find answers to the eternal questions about how our little lives fit into the mystery of eternity. The O’Briens’ story starts with the news of the death of Jack’s brother’s, one surmises from the period and the telegram that brings the news, as a soldier in Vietnam – though we are never actually told. Much of the film is then devoted to Jack’s memories of his childhood, his difficult relationship with his father, a loving but strict man with a love of music and unfulfilled dreams of his own, and with the brother, whom we know is destined to die young. Then follows a long series of not always narratively clear incidents from Jack’s childhood, which are played out in a way that visually captures the misty, imprecise feeling of long ago memories, which is effective from that point of view but not very illuminating in terms of character. I say for example that Jack is the eldest son. Not even that fact is made clear. There are moments of emotional engagement, as in a charming sequence of the birth of the O’Brien’s first child and then a couple of years later the toddler being introduced to his baby brother and a scene where Mr O’Brien loses his temper with his second son over some muttered remark at the dinner table. And the performances from Pitt, Chastain and the three boys are good within the limitations of the style in which they are working. But for much of the film we are struggling to construct a factual and emotional narrative for ourselves from Jack’s memories. The last part of the film takes place in a Fellini style dreamlike set up on a beach, where Jack, outside the restrictions of time, confronts the people in his life who have made him the man he is.
It is not surprising that the film won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where the jury would have loved it for its cinematic style. In the early sixties Resnais’ enigmatic Last Year in Marienbad, (re-released this week) won a clutch of awards including the Venice Golden Bear and had baffled audiences endlessly arguing endlessly over dinner tables as to what the film was really about. The Tree of Life, I suspect, will have a similar effect.
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