THE TREE OF LIFE (2011)
I was 15 when I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for the first time. I thought I will see the first few minutes and then sleep (this was around 2 in the a.m.) I had decided to come back from school the next day and watch it properly. But that didn't pan out. I was sitting awestruck in front of the TV 2 hours later. Wide awake. The images were so big and vast that they could hardly fit on my TV screen, let alone my brain. I could not believe what I had just witnessed. "You can do THAT in movies?" I kept repeating to myself. The medium of film and its quintessence was finally unearthed for me. I could see the extent of the beauty that results from the juxtaposition of the visual and the aural. I did not understand the movie in its entirety, I confess, but I felt it. It took me two more viewings over the years to fully comprehend what the movie was about but the experience I had the first time could not be replicated. The Tree of Life is another such experience. I'm not going to be repeating these two things for the rest of the review; First that The Tree of Life is a visual spectacle. Second that it is a masterpiece. Not that both these statements are not true but I want to get done with the obvious first, put it on the side and continue.
The first Terrence Malick film that I had seen was The Thin Red Line (1998). To this day I believe that it is the best war film ever made and definitely one of the greatest films ever made. Now comes The Tree of Life which is undoubtedly his best film. His resume boasts 3 more great films: Days of Heaven (1978), Badlands (1973) and The New World (2005). Most filmmakers wish they could make one masterpiece like any one of these and that would be the pinnacle of their career. He did it 5 times in the span of 4 decades. In this sense, Malick is like Kubrick. He matches his craftsmanship and innovation as well. He is a philosopher like Bergman, a surrealist like Tarkovsky, Bunuel and Fellini, and a poet like Dreyer, Antonioni, Ray and Bresson. One thing is for certain, Terrence Malick is quite easily the single greatest living filmmaker in our world today.
Malick has been making this film since years, in his head and actual production (Apparently, the movie was shot 3 years back). You can see the amount of thought that has gone into each shot, each cut and each word that has been said or unsaid. There is no plot in the film. Well, there is but not a conventional one which moves only in one direction. For me each scene was a concept, till the end when it became a collage of concepts and converted itself into a cohesive film. I remember what Martin Scorsese once said about The Thin Red Line:
"The Thin Red Line is an important film. You could come in the middle of it, you can watch it. It's almost like an endless picture. It has no beginning and no end. People say, "Well, sometimes I can't tell whose voiceover it is." It doesn't matter. It's everybody's voiceover!
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| My favorite shot in the film |
The trademark Malick voice-over narration is in The Tree of Life as well. Except they are whispers now. They are more internal. If Malick's voice-overs earlier were about voicing the character's thoughts, this time it is the voice of the soul. More than what the characters are thinking, it is their prayers that we hear. Despite the biblical references in the film, I could hardly call this film religious. It is spiritual, if anything. Or maybe that's the way I want to look at it.
I recently heard a song which sounded great. I didn't know what exactly it meant but when I asked my friends I saw how different each of their interpretations were. None were wrong, none were exact but each was true. It meant something completely different to me. But one thing was for certain, there was a common thread running through all of them. This is how I distinguish a great film or a work of art with a bad one. An artist never leaves it ambiguous or vague without giving you enough fodder to chew on. He strikes an equilibrium between asking you to read from the film and then inviting you to read into it. It appears that I'm not the only one who has not unlocked all the answers to this film. I admit I did not walk out of the movie knowing exactly what happened and why? But here's the thing, sometimes your physical mind, your logical mind does not need to understand art and poetry as much as your emotions, your senses do. Your subconscious mind reacts more than the conscious one.
But if all these words about spirituality don't mean anything to your scientific, rational mind, then the Tree of Life evokes a sense of time which you may find a connect with. A time when there was no television, internet or video-games. When children actually played outside. When throwing stones at a window of an empty house was "fun". I did not grow up in such times but I have experienced them in my childhood. Maybe because the country I live in did not advance as rapidly or as much as the one in question in the film. However different or similar my time was, it wasn't as devoid of human connection as it is for the children of today. Every generation sees traces of what the next generation will face. My generation saw the origin of the internet, we saw the inception of video-games from Sega to Nintendo to PC gaming to Sony Playstation to Wii. I used to love gaming. But I don't anymore, I despise them from the center of my being. It diminishes my intellect one grey cell at a time. But can I keep my children away from them or would that be strict/ unfair parenting? What is good parenting? Do we want our children to get the best of what we had in our childhood or give them what we did not have in our childhood? As you can see this film raises more questions than answers.
For me, Malick hit the nail when he skillfully depicts the bridge between "I am nothing" and "I am all". This dichotomy is what illustrates the spirituality in the film - the microcosmic O'Brien family and the macrocosmic creation of the universe. It is not so much as witnessing the two sides of the same coin or mirror images but two different realms, the physical and the metaphysical. Malick explores the creation of the earth, evolution, feelings of alienation in a modern world, never-ending quest of a home, existence of god, the beauty of nature and grace, innocence gained, lost and regained, the inevitability of death, immortality of the soul. Yes, you could say this film is about everything. It plays out like a transcendental meditation, a prayer, even more so than 2001: A Space Odyssey. If 2001 was a cerebral exercise this is an entirely spiritual one. What separates these two movies for me and makes The Tree of Life a greater film is the fact that Tree of Life is about love. Malick is aware that love is the only truth we know and can ever know.
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