Culture

Director: Terrence Malick (4/5)

Audiences fervent for a visual assault on the senses will find Terrence Malick’s brave new epic film, The Tree of Life, remarkably awe-inspiring. Although this year’s darling of the Cannes Film Festival and winner of the coveted Palme d’Or, Malick’s exploration of his central themes has divided critics, invoking both critical argument and high admiration. It is Malick’s fifth feature film in thirty-eight years, and while this film will not be for everyone, it certainly has been worth the wait for most.
 
The film centres on existence, human relationships, and God’s omnipresence in humanity. It is also a sorrowful reflection on love and loss, regret and paths not taken, childhood perception and adult maturity.
 
At the centre of Malick’s partly-autobiographical story is Jack O’Brien, a middle-aged disillusioned city executive played by Sean Penn. Set in the present-day, against a backdrop of steel skyscrapers and white minimalist interiors, Jack is going through a personal crisis, still haunted by the death of his younger brother, which we learn of via flashbacks to his 1950’s childhood in smalltown Texas. Recalling his relationship with his highly demanding father (Brad Pitt), his loving and empathetic mother (Jessica Chastain) and his two younger playful brothers, the news of his middle brother’s death arrives via an official telegram. Some of the film’s most challenging shots come from close-ups used to capture the raw emotion of the family’s loss. No tear-soaked freckle, wrinkle or weathered flaw is left unscrutinised.
 
The film follows a mind-boggling non-linear narrative. At the very beginning of the film, Jack’s mother encourages her sons to choose God’s grace over nature as the preferred path. This sets in motion Jack’s questioning of the very point of existence. Present time and flashbacks are interwoven with Jack’s visions of pre-historic origins and the far unknown reaches of the universe, a nod to Kubrick’s images of wonder. Voiceovers come from the younger Jack, played superbly by newcomer Hunter McCracken, as he questions God’s part in this as a way to make sense of his pain: “Where are you?” he first wonders, then more saliently, “Where were you?”.
 
Be prepared to be challenged by this film’s subject matter and overwhelmed by its visual and symphonic beauty.