What Mr. Sanem Gets Wrong About “Tree of Life”

by Mr. Himes

First off, I totally get this movie. It’s a cinematic meditation on the Book of Job. Perhaps Jack is a modern-day Job: a man in crisis asks God why he’s suffered the loss of his brother, the harsh discipline of his dad, and the collapse of his architecture career, as if the movie is a prayer on suffering. And wait– don’t forget the interjections of dinosaurs, meteorites, supernovas, volcanoes, and jellyfish. Whatever the structure, Jack’s crisis binds the origins of the universe, our experience in it, and God’s explanation for it into an ambitious cinematic experiment.

This is clearly supposed to Mean Something Important. My kind of movie! Though, as Sanem has said, it is more of a meditation than a movie.

Why? Many of the film’s harshest critics miss its theological underpinnings or don’t want to hear the hymn to the universe that Malick is singing.

In other words, critics don’t get it or don’t want to get it.

You deploy this criticism when you’d rather dismiss critics instead of rebut them. Of course you can “get” the “theological underpinnings” and love these kinds of experimental films, but still argue “Tree of Life” is an artistic failure.

As in other Malick films, he so indulges nature imagery that the metaphors become obvious and forced. For example, just as God the Creator made man in His likeness, Jack is an architect who feels the same burdens God does. Cool idea, right? But by the film’s end, Malick presents so many loooong shots of Sean Penn looking upward… at glass buildings… reflecting the clouds… which God created… that yes, we get it. And if we didn’t, here’s five more minutes to help us out.

Malick shows us dozens of natural fractals, patterns seemingly without end: whirlpooling ocean waves, cascading avalanches, meteors plunging into the ocean, even spiral staircases disappearing into darkened ceilings. Here, Malick poetically conveys God’s response to Job on the incomprehensible eternity of Creation. Another cool idea, right? Malick’s first few interjections are chilling, like profound versions of the plastic bag scene from “American Beauty.” But as the film wears on, Malick cuts so much from the central narrative and uses so much screen time that the tone becomes more lecturing than celebratory. Where Ricky Fitts says, “There’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it,” Malick seems to say, “LOOK AT THIS BEAUTY! YOU CAN’T TAKE IT!”

The film’s defenders respond to Malick’s nature shots by saying “Tree of Life” is “more of a meditation than a movie.” Indeed, movie-watching can be a meditative experience, where viewing can achieve the clarity of a higher state of consciousness. And sure, if you’re buying what Malick is selling, watching minutes-long shots of Sean Penn’s brooding reflection in a glass skyscraper angled toward the clouds can be transcendent.

Still, it’s perfectly reasonable to understand this and find Malick’s messaging and execution troublesome. Maybe I’m a bad meditator, but I kept thinking “PBS should have Terence Malick film Nova specials for the pledge drive” and “I wonder if that tiny dinosaur is Sean Penn getting crushed by Dino-Pitt” and “I bet that DDT truck is a metaphor for Vietnam” and “You know, the Book of Job is really messed up.”

And that could be my real problem with the film. If God had simply said, look, I set nature in motion and let things play themselves out, so enjoy the good and persevere the bad, be kind to others and reach out to your enemies– I can understand that. Perhaps God is like the Greeks imagined: He doesn’t dictate events to teach people lessons; rather, we’re just improv-ing roles on Creation’s stage.

But God responds to Job by telling him to “gird up his loins like a man,” asking if he understands the burdens of being the Provider, recounting all the good things He’s provided, then chastising Job for questioning Him. Like the abusive father in “Tree of Life.” Finally, Job just relents like a boy who’s made to feel three inches tall, says he doesn’t understand, then apologizes.

Basically, God’s responds that His critic just doesn’t get it. Job may accept this response, but as a viewer of Malick’s portrayal of God, the lecturing borders on cinematic abuse. Two and a half hours of pretty clouds and angry dinosaurs and visions of mommy dancing through white sheets willowing on the clotheslines of youth, and yet neither God nor Malick answer a perfectly legitimate question: If God is so Almighty, why does He let good people suffer? At best, this is an elision; at worst, it’s a bullying tactic to get the critic to shut up. Maybe Sanem’s right: I just don’t get it.