{"id":28,"date":"2011-08-01T18:26:17","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T22:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/?p=28"},"modified":"2011-08-01T23:53:08","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T03:53:08","slug":"is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/08\/is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Is “The Tree of Life” a Christian Film?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This weekend, the inimitable filmmaker and essayist Matt Zoller Seitz asked via Twitter<\/a> what I took to be a strange question: \u201cHow Christian is The Tree of Life<\/em>\u201d? Strange, because I\u2019ve been thinking of the film as unusually biblical and indeed Christian in its whole sense of itself, from its title forward. It\u2019s made by a Christian, with Christian imagery and themes, Christian language, prayer scenes, and visions of creation and, arguably, an afterlife. Asking how \u201cChristian\u201d it is seemed like asking how \u201cAmerican\u201d is Captain America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But Seitz linked to three essays (#1<\/a>. #2<\/a>. #3<\/a>.) that show, to greater and lesser degrees, that the question of The Tree of Life<\/em>\u2019s Christianity is in fact open and complex. I\u2019ll leave those for your reading and reflection, and note that Seitz\u2019s own guide to The Tree of Life <\/em>(#3 above) links to several other interesting essays that explore the film\u2019s approach to religion.<\/p>\n

For now, then, just two small points that speak to Seitz\u2019z question<\/p>\n

Much has already been made of the film\u2019s epigraph from the Book of Job: \u201cWhere were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?\u00a0 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?\u201d (38:4,7). Quite a bit less has been made of the film\u2019s other biblical allusions. Actually, I\u2019m still not sure how many of those there are\u2014I\u2019ve only seen the film once, and without a notepad handy\u2014but I was struck by a moment in the voiceover near the end of the film when we hear Jack O\u2019Brien utter, \u201cI don\u2019t want to do what I do. I hate what I do.\u201d (The quote is from my memory, as the script is not available yet.) That\u2019s a paraphrase of some famous lines from the Apostle Paul\u2019s letter to the Romans: \u201cFor I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate\u201d (7:15). At the moment when we hear this paraphrase, we\u2019ve spent a long while watching the boy trying to become a man, and being thwarted at most points by his overbearing father, and then, tragically, by his own embrace of his father\u2019s ways. He is becoming strict and mean-spirited. He is distant when connection is required. He uses force when compassion is called for. He is becoming the man he precisely does not want to be. In representing this classic human experience, Malick leans on a classic and poetic Christian expression of the problem.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s also crucial to witness that all this happens in a film that has a grand cosmic vision. The Tree of Life<\/em>\u2019s beginning-of-the-world sequence places its central subjects\u2014the O\u2019Brien family\u2014into a cosmic history. That\u2019s a profoundly Christian and biblical gesture to make. It orients this rather archetypal family quite distinctly to proclaim, as Malick does, that they are part of a long, long story that begins ex nihlio<\/em>, that involves primordial goo and light separating darkness and prehistoric insentient beings (dinosaurs!). The tree of life has many branches. There\u2019s something uniquely Christian, or at least uniquely biblical, about the impulse to tell the story of a family that places that family within an entire mythological framework, from First Things to Final Things.<\/p>\n

(I\u2019ll also note that with films that are as open-ended and abstract as Terrence Malick\u2019s, we\u2019re always in danger of reading ourselves into them\u2014or, more optimistically, we\u2019re always invited to read ourselves into them. Malick\u2019s films, more so than those of most any filmmaker working today, are anthologies of questions set within narrative contexts, and it\u2019s almost always easier, and perhaps more productive, to respond to his films not with an attempt to discover what he\u2019s telling us, but rather, with an attempt to understand the questions he is asking of the world.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend, the inimitable filmmaker and essayist Matt Zoller Seitz asked via Twitter what I took to be a strange question: \u201cHow Christian is The Tree of Life\u201d? Strange, because I\u2019ve been thinking of the film as unusually biblical and indeed Christian in its whole sense of itself, from its title forward. It\u2019s made by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIs "The Tree of Life" a Christian Film?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This weekend, the inimitable filmmaker and essayist Matt Zoller Seitz asked via Twitter what I took to be a strange question: \u201cHow Christian is The Tree\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/08\/is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is "The Tree of Life" a Christian Film?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This weekend, the inimitable filmmaker and essayist Matt Zoller Seitz asked via Twitter what I took to be a strange question: \u201cHow Christian is The Tree\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/08\/is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"REELigion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-08-01T22:26:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-08-02T03:53:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/cache.io9.com\/assets\/images\/8\/2011\/06\/xlarge_05_02_2011.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Patton Dodd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Patton Dodd\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/08\/is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/08\/is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film\/\",\"name\":\"Is \\\"The Tree of Life\\\" a Christian Film?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-08-01T22:26:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-08-02T03:53:08+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/#\/schema\/person\/d17a172574cd7ce9cd87e047664371d7\"},\"description\":\"This weekend, the inimitable filmmaker and essayist Matt Zoller Seitz asked via Twitter what I took to be a strange question: \u201cHow Christian is The Tree\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/08\/is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/08\/is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/08\/is-the-tree-of-life-a-christian-film\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Is “The Tree of Life” a Christian Film?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/\",\"name\":\"REELigion\",\"description\":\"We're looking for religion in the movies. 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