Review of the film The Tree of Life

            Our lives begin long before our births. This idea could be seen as spiritual, but I like to think of it as simply physical—the matter of the cells that make up our beings has been in existence for millennia. That is something that cannot be denied when thought out rationally. We begin in the cells and, therefore, the genes, of our ancestors. The people who become our great grandparents, grandparents and parents, their matter, contains the same stuff that will be that which makes us up as well. 

            The Tree of Life is a film that explores the makings of life on this planet as well as the workings of a small family living in East Texas during the 1950s. It may seem a far reach to relate the story of a few interconnected lives to the beginnings of the world and humanity, but Director Terrence Malick makes an often-moving and beautiful attempt. He starts as far in the past as a life begins—as far back as those interconnected lives deserve in order to frame them truthfully.

            In this small family, Mother and Father behave as drastically far a part in nature as the two poles of the Earth. Mother exudes and behaves with grace and mercy towards her three young sons. Father lives by the strict savagery of nature—he is a disciplinarian and deeply troubled, and his oldest son, Jack, feels the brunt of his anger and frustration. There are memories of love and hurt, beauty and rage that the adult Jack flashes back to as he lives a seemingly empty existence in the present day. He seems to be reaching for something in his past to help him make sense of who he is now. But the pictures are a jumble within his mind that cannot be teased out from the emotions they provoke in him. Jack fights again the battles of his childhood, hears echoes of profound words spoken in his youth, relives moments beyond simple explanation or comprehension. The sun of summer flashes through the leaves of the tree in the front yard and the sprinkler water sparkles between fingers and toes stretched forth.

            Epic and deeply autobiographical, this film searches to tell the simplest and most complex of narratives. The scenes produced by the filmmakers feel so real and also a few degrees heightened above reality. It is a gorgeous and flawed film. Its scope encompasses more than a three-hour movie can relate, but it tries sincerely and with the ambition this story, anyone's story, deserves.