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<\/a><\/div>\n\u201cWhere was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth\u2026When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?\u201d Job 38:4, 7.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So begins Terrance Malik\u2019s newest film, The Tree of Life<\/i>. Great flick! The film is more about fleeting mood \u2013 from awe to near patricide and the subtle affective message of mood itself than any other narrative.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Except maybe the play of fundamental and in-our-face daily life. The beyond-words wonder of the cosmos \u2026 and the horror of the death of a child.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Malik put\u2019s us in the body of a human \u2013 the ten-year-old boy, the father, the mother \u2013 and there we are in the midst of creation \u2026 suffering and confused. Wandering aimlessly in wind-swept deserts or in cities of glass and steel.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n A. O. Scott in the NYTimes (here for that<\/a>) compares Mallick\u2019s work with the great American authors:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/span>This movie stands stubbornly alone, and yet in part by virtue of its defiant peculiarity it shows a clear kinship with other eccentric, permanent works of the American imagination, in which sober consideration of life on this continent is yoked to transcendental, even prophetic ambition. More than any other active filmmaker Mr. Malick belongs in the visionary company of homegrown romantics like Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, <\/a><\/span>Hart Crane<\/a> and James Agee. The definitive writings of these authors did not sit comfortably or find universal favor in their own time.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n