'Tree of Life' directed by Terrence Malick.

Produced by: Dede Gardner, Sarah Green, Grant Hill, Brad Pitt, and Bill Pohlad.

Written by: Terrence Malick.

Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain.

Year of release: 2011.

Run Time: 139 minutes.

Budget: $32 Million.

Gross Revenue: $54, 246, 069. 

“The nuns taught us that there are two ways through life- the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself, accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked, accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world shines around it, and love is smiling through all things.” Jessica Chastain’s Mrs. O’Brien informs us in voice over at the beginning of Tree of Life, and we the audience know that it is in for something special.

This movie was my second experience of Terrence Malick’s exceptional writing/direction, the first being The Thin Red Line, which is often unfairly compared unfavourably with Saving Private Ryan due to the proximity of its release to Spielberg’s war epic. I’m happy to report that Tree of Life is a stunning film—one of those classic films that inspired me to start writing a blog about film in the first place. Not only is it visually intriguing, and riveting dramatically, it also connects two ideas that have too long stood unrelated in the general zeitgeist: the relationship between the evolution of species and human behaviour.

If I were to recommend a companion book for this movie, it would certainly be Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. This book is a consciousness shifter, the kind that changes your entire view on life after you read it. If you have ever found yourself pondering why humans behave the way they do, then let me assure you that The Selfish Gene provies an answer, and indeed the answer to that timeless question of the meaning of life. And if The Selfish Gene provides the answer, then Malick’s Tree of Life certainly extends the reach of the book well into human psychology, attempting to explain human nature through a scientific lens. Is it successful? Probably not as much as it could have been if the run-time was extended by another two hours, but Tree of Life still stands as one of the most thought provoking films of 2011 (it is perhaps bested by Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, which I shall endeavour to review at some point).

When I say that Malick attempts to explain human psychology via a scientific lens, I suppose you’d be forgiven for thinking that the film is a cold consideration of humanity, much like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion. It is a sad fact that most people quickly associate the word ‘scientific’ with words like ‘cold’, ‘sterile’, and ‘non-living’. When the grandiose and beautiful reality of biology on Earth is considered, science is quickly transformed into something that is warm and wonderful (though sometimes cruel indeed). Tree of Life is filled with such warmth, and such insight into what it is like to be a human, that you'd be a pretty hard individual to not be at least a little moved by it. It successfully manages to marry the depth of human emotion with the scientific crane of evolution by natural selection in a way that would make Richard Dawkins proud.

By now, you’re probably aware that the film doesn’t follow a linear narrative path, but rather presents fragments of narrative through stunning images. This is certainly true in the first half of the film, which leads up to the much lauded montage of the big bang, right on past the evolution of simple life forms, to the extinction of the dinosaurs. After this however, Malick explores the life of the O’Brien family much more comprehensively, though altogether natural and realistic. You get the sense that you are actually witnessing real lives, as opposed to characters, and scenes where the boys of the film put themselves in danger cause a primitive emotional response; you wish you could reach into the film and tell them to stop doing what they are doing.

The film is marred a little in the last twenty-minutes, where it kind of meanders off and doesn’t really make much sense (at least not to me), but ultimately Malick achieves something that no other film-maker has; a vision that is beautiful and utterly unique. Is this not more than we can ask for as an audience of cinema? Though Tree of Life might not change your outlook on life completely, its ideas will stay with you pleasantly for weeks. It's also one of those movies (much like 2001: A Space Odyssey) that's going to be interpreted and reinterpreted for years. I thoroughly recommend this one.


                                               Four-and-a-half stars: