Review: The Tree of Life

Hitchcock said the three key ingredients required to make a film are: “A good script; a good script; and a good script.” And while that is true, what sets cinema apart from well-crafted TV is the dark of the auditorium, the big screen and the sound, simply the capacity for film to be ‘cinematic’.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life is no doubt just that – it is the essence of pure cinema – but the writer-director has never shown any interest in Hitchcockian entertainment values.

Indeed, the viewer’s shell-shocked experience of the film adds to the many juxtapositions that the film conjures through its notional story and masochistic, ambitious execution.

The film runs for two hours and 18 minutes – nothing wrong in a long run time as long you’re enthralled – and, be warned, it proceeds at a stately pace.

That nominal story of Sean Penn reminiscing about his borderline abusive father, played with some aplomb by Brad Pitt, and his family is eeked out with exacting yet numbing precision.

I have to say that I really didn’t connect with any of the characters, as well played as they were. And I think that stems from the fact that, as I get older, I can’t stand characters, no matter how well fleshed out, that are simply there to serve as cyphers or allegorical devices.

And now we get to the meat of the film. The Tree Of Life is not a film about a man remembering his near-abusive father: ultimately the film strives to address the grandest issues ever to face mankind, indeed Mother Earth herself.

Among the many themes it pontificates on are: mankind’s place in the entire history of the Earth; mankind’s ability to create set against his ability to destroy; the celestial plane versus the mortal plane; the eternal battle between grace and nature (in the sense of habit); mankind’s constructions versus the destructive power of nature (in h sense of the elements); strength versus mercy; and the obsolescence of religion set against mankind’s need for a spiritual aspect to life as life becomes wage-slavery.

Commendable no doubt, but I didn’t pay £12 to be repeatedly smashed over the head, Terrence!

And yet, and yet… There are some astonishing sequences that render the viewer speechless, scenes that simply crush you with the context they force upon your own life. The extended sequence in which Malick recreates the genesis of our planet is as truly astonishing as it is monunmentally trying.

This film is without doubt one of the most beautiful I have ever seen: every single scene is composed with such expertise, so exquisitely lit that you could unspool the film, blow up the stills by a factor of 100, exhibit them in the world’s best gallery and there they would remain, beyond the end of humanity, for whatever that comes after us to marvel at what we, those who destroyed themselves, could achieve.

The visuals are aided and abetted by the frankly amazing special effects by Mike Fink and the godhead of existential space visuals Douglas Trumbull (reinforcing the film’s connection to its spiritual predecessor, 2001), the precise editing, and another outstanding score from Alexandre Desplat (he scored The King’s Speech) that reinforces the film’s overwhelming thematic concerns.

It is clearly rich of me, one of the few people on the planet to rate The Fountain, to celebrate this film for its visual panache, while being grossly offended by its ridiculous pretension, but hey, it’s my blog!

And as my companion, Jonesy, said as we left the cinema: “The dinosaurs? What the fuck?!”
Score: 10/10 for the visuals
-10/10 for the story and its execution