The Tree of Life and the Reason for Everything
For the first hour of Terrence Malick’s newest film, The Tree of Life, I literally didn’t move one inch. It’s so visually and emotionally arresting and haunting that calling it a “religious experience” doesn’t quite do it justice. The majority of the film centers on a simple coming-of-age story about a little boy and his family growing up in Waco, TX in the 1950s. Intercut with this thread is this same family learning that one of their sons has died at the age of 19, the boy now grown and wrestling with the meaning of life and the past death of his brother, and oh yeah–the Big Bang and the beginnings of life on Earth. The latter is used mostly in the beginning of the film, creating a sense of where these characters (and humanity itself) fit into such a big picture. A film has never made me feel so small. It prepares us for what follows–a film yearning to understand the point of it all.
Malick’s universe is one giant cathedral filled with slices of our lives where God moves and lives. Every now and then, a small beam of swirling, misty light appears on screen and the camera dwells on it as we hear characters from the film quietly whisper prayers to it–to God. And that’s what this film basically is–a prayer to God from humanity itself. For example, when the son talks about the memory of his mother to God–”You spoke to me through her before I believed in You.” And like a prayer, the film frees itself from an obvious narrative–flowing memories, images, orchestral music, whispers, visions, and dreams collide as the film composes a meditation on what life is and humanity’s relationship to God and to ourselves. Epic sounding? You’re damn right.
It is, by far, the most spiritually honest and vibrant film I’ve ever seen. God is in every single frame, even as humanity wrestles with the tough questions about God. The mother and father in the film present two different ways of parenting and how this one sons sees himself through them as he whispers, “Father. Mother. Always you wrestle inside me.” Early on in the film, the mother is teaching her children that there are two roads to take in life, “the way of nature or the way of grace.” Their father represents “the way of nature”–commanding, domineering, obsessed with rules, and a betterment of oneself. The mother represents “the way of grace”–loving, compassionate, merciful, selfless. Both parents love their children more than life itself, but it’s the way they show that love that is so conflicting. The parents seem to represent God as the child represents humanity. At one point in the film, the son demands from his father, “Why should I be good when you’re not?” Those hard questions again. And I wonder if part of what the film is asking is–Which of these two parents is the way we, personally, see God? Is God strict and rules-obsessed like the father or is God loving and full of mercy like the mother? Is there a possibility that the two sides can exist together within God?
Many people will hate this film and that’s okay–It wasn’t made for them. Some people just want entertainment in their movies. Again–that’s fine. But for those of us who yearn for our films to mean something as well, to invoke the biggest questions in our souls, to reach into our hearts and pull out longings we may have never even known where there–then The Tree of Life is one of the biggest gifts we could receive. It’s an awe-inspiring piece of art that these silly words typed out on a keyboard don’t even begin to represent well. It’s a film that takes the weight of the world upon its shoulders as it wrestles with God and the meaning of life. It refuses to proclaim an answer which is the most truthful thing it can do. Because the answer is not the point, the wrestling is the point.
Engagement in life and its many hardships and struggles along with its joys and beauty is what makes us human. It’s what brings us closer to God and to each other. We mean something. God means something. And that’s the biggest life lesson of all. But still only a starting point…
