Back in 2011, there were rumblings of audience members in attendance of “The Tree of Life” screenings who were asking for their money back. Primarily because they didn’t understand the film. Sitting here I can safely say that this movie isn’t for everyone. It’s a thinking man’s picture, an existentialists dream, a study in to the nature of our universe and what we view as world’s colliding and collapsing in on themselves. I couldn’t understand what was so difficult to comprehend with “The Tree of Life.” It’s a film about the crisis of faith, pure and simple.
It takes the O’Brien family, a long suffering tribe of Texas denizens whom have never recovered from their son’s death in the war, and dares to defy their own grief and aimless suffering by taking a step back in to the beginning of time using them as a microcosm for the bigger picture. What “The Tree of Life” will essentially do is challenge the viewer in to seeing what they will want to see. Are we all alone in this vast universe, merely animals colliding in to one another forming an ecosystem filled with coincidence and fate? Or is there a god out there, a heavenly force conducting nature and the realm of Earth in to one giant mass that has to live out its manifest destiny whether they like it or not?
In the grand scheme of things do the O’Brien’s problems really matter? Should we linger on death when there is so much beauty to life and evolution? “The Tree of Life” is not just about the crisis of faith within the O’Brien family, but a crisis of faith in the viewer. What we’re seeing, is it intelligent design? Or merely just a construct of random occurrences? Surely it will force the strongly adamant atheist and self-respecting theist to come to grips with their own beliefs and question what they’re seeing deciding on religious occurrence or the more pragmatic view of nature.
As a person who has struggled with his faith, ultimately choosing to adhere to the principles of atheism, “The Tree of Life” spoke to me, asking me to decipher what I see and forcing me to confront the beauty of the beginning of time. How can something so magnificent and eloquent be just a random accident? Is not life merely a work of a master craftsman we’ve yet to meet? “The Tree of Life” is not a religious picture, but merely one that asks us to question our own nature of existence, begging us to decide on one or the other, while also asking us why we’re so easy to linger on the prospect of death and grief when there is so much undiscovered beauty and grace in the planets and the cosmos.
The O’Brien clan are so fixated on the loss of their son they’ve forced their middle aged businessman son to retreat in to the cold confines of the office building workplace to avoid the beauty of life. And he’s forced to confront his father if he’s decided that the grief they continue to linger on is trivial. Director Malick’s message is also for those enduring the grief of loss merely implicating that life has to go on. Life will go on. And Life does go on. Whether we like it or not we have to appreciate what time we have left, because nature is unstoppable and will move past our small problems and woes. The O’Brien’s are merely the chain of life, the end and the beginning, the modern man if you will. We all have a role to play. So why spend so much time focusing on sadness?
Director Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is a taxing piece of art, as it literally jumps back to the beginning of time right to the creation of the universe and keeps the steady balance between sheer supernatural force and force of nature coming in to play with the creation of Earth, the galaxy, and the evolution of the species. Once again Malick asks the viewer to decide what we’re seeing before our very eyes and dares to defy our own petty problems at every turn, focusing on the beauty and terror of the wilderness for a brief period. Thankfully he never quite draws it out and uses the creation of a new baby from the O’Brien’s a metaphor for life’s renewal, showing their true importance as a species. The father as played so brilliantly by Brad Pitt represents God, the creator, the provider, the disciplinarian, the being who asks never to be questioned and never to be defied, while Jessica Chastain is ethereal as Mrs. O’Brien, a metaphor for mother nature, the forgiving, passive, and heavenly force who cradles rather than punishes.
What follows is not only a family looking to find their place in the cycle of life, but their sons whom represent the followers of the religious tenets who are struggling to see where they stand in the world as they learn their parents are not who they originally were raised to think they were. It’s a tall order to ask everyone to have patience with “The Tree of Life,” but when you finally settle down and soak in the message, it’s a bleak, haunting, and brutally enchanting tale about religion, atheism, and struggling with what we were raised to believe over what we’re growing up watching before our very eyes. Are we missing reality by praising god? Are we missing the beauty of life by abandoning Religion? Are we betraying our parents by questioning their principles? “The Tree of Life” is filled with difficult questions and zero answers. Not since “The Fountain” have I been left pondering on the bigger picture for such an extended period of time.