{"id":2095,"date":"2011-07-11T15:21:12","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T21:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/mainlineportal\/?p=2095"},"modified":"2011-07-11T15:21:12","modified_gmt":"2011-07-11T21:21:12","slug":"the-tree-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithforward\/2011\/07\/the-tree-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tree of Life: For Those With Eyes To See"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Guest blogger Edward McNulty<\/strong> is a Presbyterian minister who has been using films for 40 years in his ministry. Here, he offers some reflections on the new film, <\/em>The Tree of Life.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?<\/p>\n

Tell me, if you have understanding.<\/p>\n

Who determined its measurements\u2014surely you know!<\/p>\n

Or who stretched the line upon it?<\/p>\n

On what were its bases sunk,<\/p>\n

or who laid its cornerstone<\/p>\n

when the morning stars sang together<\/p>\n

and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?<\/p>\n

Job 38:4-7<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026 for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.<\/p>\n

Matthew 5:45b<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>It is a bit amazing that Terence Malick\u2019s new film, The Tree of Life<\/em>, was released during the season known as that of the summer blockbuster. None of the films that he has \u201cwritten, produced, and directed\u201d since his first, 1973\u2019s Badlands<\/em>, ever achieved the enormous profits of one of the summer action\/super hero movies that audiences love to escape into. Badlands, <\/em>the story of a couple of young lovers murdering their way from a small South Dakota town to the badlands of Montana, followed the traditional narrative arc, but since then Mr. Malick\u2019s style has evolved into an impressionistic one, the writer\/director in Tree of Life<\/em> almost abandoning a narrative structure for a series of seemingly random shots of the life of a small town family that invites viewers to connect with their own memories of family life\u2014and of the larger context of the cosmos that surrounds us. This is not an easy film to watch, Mr. Malick making no concessions to the viewer, but it is immensely rewarding for those willing to go along with the director.\u00a0 In one sequence he takes us on the most exciting visual ride since Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 2001: Space Odyssey.<\/em> Indeed, for people of faith, this is a far more exhilarating trip than 2001<\/em>, thanks to Mr. Malick\u2019s deep interest in matters of the spirit, one that was so manifest in his wonderful war film The Thin Red Line.<\/em><\/p>\n

The film opens with a dark screen on which is printed a passage from the Book of Job, and then we watch a series of shots of a mother and father enjoying their three young boys. The time is the 1950s, and the place is a small town in Texas. Then, apparently much later, Mrs. O\u2019Brien (Jessica Chastain) receives a telegram. We do not see the text, nor is there any dialogue, but we can tell by her reaction that it must be about the death of one of their sons. Mr. O\u2019Brien (Brad Pitt) receives the sad news at the town\u2019s small airport. Because of the prop noise from a plane we cannot hear his words.<\/p>\n

The couple are wracked with grief. We do not see the funeral service, just the church\u2019s stained glass window, a wonderfully spiral-shaped one. We see hands, children\u2019s shadows, and we hear the snatches of the conversations of the would be comforters\u2014\u201cNothing ever stays the same\u2026You still have your two others\u2026The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.\u201d Mr. O\u2019Brien chokingly remarks that there\u2019s no reason for this. Up to this point the film reminded me a little of Rabbit Hole<\/em>, stylishly very different, but also about parents grieving over the loss of a son. But then comes a lengthy segment that immediately recalls to mind the passage from Job quoted at the beginning of the film (the film\u2019s title doesn\u2019t come on until the end), \u201cWhere were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding\u2026when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?\u201d (<\/strong>Job 38:4,7)<\/p>\n

These were words spoken by God to a man who was not only filled with grief, but also protesting the unfairness of what had happened to him. We are in the land of calamity unfairly befalling the innocent, explored in a very different vein by the Coen brothers in their A Serious Man. <\/em>The flame-like image that the film began with introduces this new sequence, taking us on a ride through the history of the universe, thanks to the fine special effects work of 2001<\/em>\u2019s Douglas Trumbull. The big bang. Stars, nebulas, and galaxies. Suns and planets. The watery earth and erupting volcanoes. The beginning of microscopic life. Fish (lots of hammerhead sharks) and other sea creatures. Plants and mountains. A small dinosaur hops through the forest and along a river. It stops when it sees a fallen dinosaur. It places its foot upon the creature\u2019s head. We expect to hear a crack or squishing sound, but it lifts its foot off and moves on. Could this be the beginning of compassion, even at this early stage in the evolution of life? Then comes a cataclysm that even the mighty dinosaurs cannot survive.
\n
\nThe rest of the film seems to be from older son Jack O\u2019Brien\u2019s (Sean Penn) point of view. He is now a successful architect working in a Houston high-rise as he reflects back on his family and raises questions concerning his troubled relationship with his father. A marvelous series of images of growing up with two brothers, ruled by a harsh father and nurtured by a gentle mother. We never hear the first names of the parents. This is in keeping with Jack\u2019s point of view\u2014no child in the 1950s would have called parents by their first names.<\/p>\n

Mrs. O\u2019Brien says that there are \u201ctwo ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of grace.\u201d The father embraces the way of nature, or what the apostle Paul would call the way of law. In one scene Father takes little Jack to the edge of their property and orders him to see the line where their neighbor\u2019s yard begins. He is not to cross it. Mr. O\u2019Brien often berates Jack for his shoddy yard work, and when another son resists him at the table, Mr. O\u2019Brien loses his temper and manhandles the boy, ejecting him from the room. Mrs. O\u2019Brien and Jack look on in disapproval. In another scene Mr. O\u2019Brien struggles with Jack himself. Jack\u2019s resentment turns into a hatred that causes him to wish his father to die\u2014and in the scene in which he comes upon his father working beneath the family car, we fear that he will give in to the clear temptation to kick over the jack holding up the car.<\/p>\n

Mrs. O\u2019Brien is grace embodied, quickly forgiving the boys\u2019 peccadilloes (Jack and some friends throw rocks through the window of a vacant house). She plays with the boys and often dances around the house or yard with them. She is a wonderful incarnation of verse 7 of the passage from Job, \u201cwhen the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy.\u201d We hear her tell her sons, \u201cThat\u2019s where God lives,\u201d as the camera pans up to the sky.<\/p>\n

The family is devoutly Christian, attending church and saying grace at family meals. At one point we hear a portion of their priest\u2019s sermon in which he is preaching on Job and reminding the congregation, \u201cmisfortune befalls the good as well.\u201d Mr. O\u2019Brien plays the church organ as young Jack looks on. Apparently the father\u2019s great regret is that he failed to pursue his passion for music professionally, settling instead for a secure job at the local power plant. Harsh as he is at times, Mr. O\u2019Brien deeply loves Jack and his brothers, embracing them often, and when Jack is retiring for the night, asking him for a kiss.<\/p>\n

Dozens of other scenes evoke the tenderness, wonder, and joy of family life\u2014shots of an infant Jack putting his ear up to his mother\u2019s swollen belly to hear movements of one of his brothers. Mr. O\u2019Brien holding the tiny foot of a new born son in his man\u2019s hand. The baptism. The brothers crawling, learning to walk, looking at the wonders of nature\u2014in a shot that Malick had not planned, Mother watches joyfully as a butterfly lands on her out-stretched hand. Chasing after bubbles floating across their lawn. Planting a tree. Mother tucking in the boys at night and looking in on them. The boys learning about death and injury through the drowning of a boy at the swimming pool and the burning of another lad\u2019s hair in a house fire. Running through fields, climbing trees\u2014all the mundane things we take for granted, Mr. Malick prods us to regard with a renewed sense of wonder, joy, and thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

There is more, much more, to be said about this great film in which cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, guided by the director and enhanced by the work of no-less than five editors, reveals so much beauty, of both of nature and that of the human spirit. The latter is fallen, as many scenes show, but it is capable of redemption\u2013later Mr. O\u2019Brien seeks Jack\u2019s forgiveness as he realizes that he had chosen the wrong approach to life. Earlier Jack himself had experienced forgiveness and reconciliation after he had deliberately shot one of his brothers with his BB gun.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s climax is a cinematic version of a cosmic reconciliation, some regarding it as an apocalyptic version of heaven. Whether or not Mr. Malick \u2018s beliefs conform to orthodox Christianity, he is clearly fascinated with the big questions of life, death, faith, and reconciliation. By setting his loose story of the O\u2019Brien family amidst the splendors of the history of the universe he has given us a film that will resonate within the hart and soul of those in the audience willing to open up to his unusual approach to filmmaking. Not everyone will be able to do so. Following the private screening I attended, one reviewer went into a rant about how terribly chaotic and incomprehensible the film was, a reaction that many others will also feel. However, for those with \u201ceyes that see and ears that hear,\u201d and are willing to work hard to do so, this will be a film to treasure and return to time after time. Because it is a difficult film I strongly urge you to see it in company with one or more friends so that afterwards you can help each other \u201cto see.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indeed, for people of faith, The Tree of Life is an exhilarating trip, thanks to director Terence Malick\u2019s deep interest in matters of the spirit, one that was so manifest in his wonderful war film The Thin Red Line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Tree of Life: For Those With Eyes To See<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Indeed, for people of faith, The Tree of Life is an exhilarating trip, thanks to director Terence Malick\u2019s deep interest in matters of the spirit, one that was so manifest in his wonderful war film The Thin Red Line.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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