The Tree of Life (2011)

One of my main criteria for evaluating a movie is originality. I like watching something different from the norm, and The Tree of Life easily fits that description. It is unlike any other film I’ve ever seen, except for previous works by the same director, Terrence Malick. Already a polarizing movie experience, it won top honors at Cannes despite considerable boos at the screening. If you glance at my star rating, you’ll immediately see where I land on the scale of critical opinion, but in keeping with Brad Pitt’s murmured, in-movie line about objectivity and subjectivity, I’ll attempt a bit of even-handedness before the rant begins.

The Tree of Life stars Brad Pitt–mostly the back of Pitt’s crewcut–as a businessman (his profession undefined, like Ozzie Nelson) and an accomplished church pianist. He’s married to wispy, eternally weepy-eyed Jessica Chastain. Together, they raise a family of three boys in Waco, Texas, during the 1950s. What little story exists is seen from the view of the eldest son, Jack (Hunter McCracken), as he grows into his rebellious teenage years and begins to question his father’s bullying method of marriage and fatherhood, as well as his mother’s weak-willed acquiescence. Jack also has a seemingly playful but slightly disturbing rivalry with his younger brother, who is more of the quiet, artistic type. (The youngest brother of the three is barely seen or heard; for a while I couldn’t tell how many kids they had.)

Most of what I’ve described doesn’t appear until over an hour into this 138-minute movie. Before that, we’re shown disjointed fragments of the family’s life, jumping across time and place: We see Brad Pitt’s neck and profile in old-age makeup (guess they didn’t have Benjamin Button’s makeup budget), and Jessica Chastain wailing and mourning the death of one of their sons. We see Sean Penn as the adult version of Jack, looking gloomy while mumbling and riding the glass elevators of Dallas skyscrapers. We see a looooonnnng, psychedelic cosmic trip sequence that, except for its odd near-absence of music, will thrill every stoner or acid-head who ever grooved on 2001: A Space Odyssey or a planetarium laser show. And we see a dinosaur. Two of them. Wait…huh? Oh yeah, it’s that weird.

I’ve previously raved about long, languorously paced movies like Barry Lyndon and There Will Be Blood, but The Tree of Life managed to bore me silly despite lush photography and occasional up-tempo editing. The narrative is choppy and disconnected, leaving much unexplained, and the characters lack emotional resonance. It often feels like a snapshot album of strangers, repackaged as a very long commercial (note that there are five editors listed in the credits). I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen, mainly because I couldn’t believe this pointless claptrap could be so acclaimed, so pretty, yet so monotonous.

But that seems to be typical of writer-director Terrence Malick. The Tree of Life is only the fifth film of Malick’s 40-year career, but during that time he’s built something else: mystique. After contributing to the heyday of ’70s cinema with his excellent debut film Badlands and the Oscar-winning cinematography of his follow-up Days of Heaven, he disappeared from the scene for 20 years, establishing his ongoing reputation as a recluse by refusing to be photographed or do interviews. Malick–or rather, his cinematic art–reemerged in 1998 with the World War II drama The Thin Red Line. And that is where he ramped up his reputation as a pretentious, detached photographer who thinks he’s a deeply spiritual poet.

I wanted to judge the movie on its own merits, without prejudice, hoping it would be a return to the quality of his earlier works. But with every whispered voice (loud popcorn eaters beware), every reference to Job and his suffering (per the standard Hollywood depiction of Christian spirituality, there’s a church organ and candles, but no crucifixes or mentions of Jesus), and every inane insert of mumble-mouthed Sean Penn, I grew more convinced that I may not be a great evaluator of art, even cinematic art. I do, however, know what I like, and this is NOT it.

It may be unique and original, but is The Tree of Life enlightening or even entertaining? Not to me, on either count. It’s basically the same old question, repeated over and over: Why do bad things happen to good people? Malick wants his audience to ponder, sitting shiva and tearing at our clothes in spiritual confusion, hoping for some generic afterlife decorated with simplistic imagery that would seem juvenile even to a child in Sunday school. (“God lives up there!” the mother tells her children while pointing to the clouds.)

This movie would be more appropriate in a venue like the Crystal Cathedral (I hear it’s available) or a big church or synagogue, where there could be lively discussion of its flaws. Or perhaps it could be projected onto the wall of a modern art museum, allowing patrons to stop and view as much of its admittedly eye-catching imagery as they desired before moving on to another, more meaningful, exhibit. Sitting through the whole thing at once, however, was an arduous and ultimately worthless experience. Malick can remain out of the public eye, for neither he nor his movies have anything relevant to say.