'Tree of Life' Demands More Engagement from the Viewer

I don't mean to be the worst writer of all time, but in scanning ahead to the end of August, I'm going to go ahead and close the book on this Summer Movie Season by telling you, unequivocally, that I'm not going to see another film as good as Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Not suggesting the triple threat of Cowboys & Aliens, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Conan the Barbarian won't do some trick, but I will submit that, at least for me, it won't do THE trick.

As the winner of this past year's Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival, The Tree of Life joins interesting company but - more to the point - it joins a list of films that truly, madly, deeply polarized their viewers. A bad thing, I suspect, for the folks on the business end. But for me, it seems to make a film instantly desirable. (To clarify: Desirable in terms of "desire to see" not desirable in terms of "worth having, pleasing or excellent".)

More recently, films like Antichrist - Lars Von Trier's eerie treatise on healing and talking foxes - divided critics and audiences. (And, of course, let's not disremember Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny, which drew boos and rave reviews in equal shares for its long-take heavy Gordon Lightfoot drive-alongs slash unsimulated sex).

Both films received mixed reception when released in stateside theaters, too. And minuscule releases. (These types of films are seldom moneymakers.) While healthy varieties of judicious dialogue, even for its own sake, can deepen one's understanding for one's own perception of a film, there's something about the lack of congruency in our critical community that makes us want to ignore not just those we trust, but those we don't trust as well.

I'm sort of surprised that these films - those that receive both "A"s and "F"'s - aren't more popular. They practically beg us to take over and to receive them however we will. They make us want to go out and make up our own damn minds for a change.

And as those Cannes' puzzlers that peak our curiosity out of general disparity go, so goes The Tree of Life. Met with similarly divisive reactions - competing applause and jeers, from press accounts - The Tree of Life, like the rest of Malick's work, is deeply interpretative.

The most exciting prospect for any artist is that of people being enthusiastic about the work of art - like it, loathe it, or the long gray in between. Whether it was dubbed flabbergasting, incomprehensible or brilliant, I suspect those doing the dubbing can all agree that the film does not inspire passivity, or what might be referred to as the conventional distraction of the mainstream multiplexes. Am I the only one who feels like this metric is the pinnacle of greatness for cinema?

Perhaps at this point, I should at least dole out a semblance of what the film is about, lest I come off too obtuse to lob the point across.

An architect, Jack, (Sean Penn) is coasting in a seemingly sterile existence and, in the off hand way things tend to occur to us, he remembers his younger brother's death. We see their mother's (Jessica Chastain) and father's (Brad Pitt) reactions, setting off a flashback to the beginning of the universe, which includes some dinosaurs, and gradually careens back to Jack at birth and as a boy (played by Hunter McCracken). 

Jack thrills of mischief, basks in his mother's care and butts heads with his father. This is the largest section of the film, unfolding as memory does, with connections seen and unseen, with sequences that dart from end to end on the emotional spectrum.

And don't misunderstand my myopic, practically inappropriate love for The Tree of Life. I do understand why a film like this would be divisive. As nostalgia, one must grapple with its lack of form and memory-inspired tectonic shifts.

As interpretive cinema, one must wrestle with the general immensity of its ambition, the massive questions and contradictions it poses, and the tightrope its extended conclusion walks (in proximity to everything that has come before it, that is).

As a film in the canon of Terrence Malick, it is the very core and essence of his (comparatively) more narrative-led films. It is a pure dose of his signature. It is Meditative Cinema, or, cinema wherein the viewer is very carefully assumed into the spectrum; what we watch is only a projection of how it causes us to reflect.

Terrence Malick has only made five films since 1973. All five feature characters who share their self awareness with the audience, be it about their doubts, their dreams, or about their interpretation of The Big Questions.

Frequently, they are up front with us through voiceover. And this film is no exception. On the contrary: The Tree of Life is the first one that seems to simply be "about" the processing of these Questions. About being self aware. And this may be the reason that it seems to keep company (in film notices far and wide) with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And it is an apt comparison. Made by Stanley Kubrick in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey takes on the origin of the species (so to speak), and seems to see eternity and nothingness in that species' long strange trip to find said origin. (And it, too, does it with technically stunning tripped out visions of the universe's beginning.)

Both Malick and Kubrick stress an emphasis on authorship. Both knew/know the value of waiting for the right stories - - versus being salaried to make a film at the behest of others, as both directors get/got the ever elusive "Final Cut Privilege" as well.

Each filmmaker seemed in their comfort zone when challenging an audience. Each seems to bridge the gap between being acutely aware of their relationship with the audience and also, being aware of their singularity of vision. And both have the ability to take hold of your consciousness and alter it, as with a drug. (And I have names for this phenomenon, too: Kubrick's is the "Camera Trance" and Malick's is "The Bubble.")

"The Bubble" refers to that unshakable head space that follows the screening of a Malick film. The world appears to slow down. We look at things, at situations and at interactions differently. It puts us into the ether of the thing. We carry the film's motion, the film's pace and the film's power around as we exit the dark womb of the movie theater and go back outside into our hot, square reality. There are other films and other filmmakers who can approximate this narcotic haze (Gus Van Sant's "Death" trilogy comes to mind), but none do it this consistently.

I distinctly remember planning to see Malick's 1998 film The Thin Red Line a second time and my wife asking if I were going to get "all peace and harmony" on her again. Big Yes on that one. Bias duly noted, I am in awe of The Tree of Life, in all it's condensed, extra strength "peace and harmony" glory. And what's objectionable about that? I live for films with these properties. Live for them.