Barking Up the Wrong Tree

 Art house flick goes out on a limb hanging heavy on the art
by
Morgan P Salvo

I dig Terrence Malick. Rarely have we seen such a director go out on a limb, taking chances few artists dare to make. Since his classic Badlands starring youngsters Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek chronicling the true life Charles Starkweather’s murder spree, Malick has made only three other movies (Days of Heaven, Thin Red Line and New World), all non-linear poetic cinematic sonnets hailed and scorned by fans and critics alike. With Tree of Life, Malick stirs the pot. Even if this movie sucks, long live Terrence Malick for his controversial visionary style.
Tree of Life won the Palme d'Or at Cannes giving credit where credit is due. Now I understand art and messing with it, deconstructing it and making the big artistic statement, but 2 hours and 18 minutes makes this film an endurance test. Cinematically Tree of Life is an enthralling, mesmerizing film. Meticulous to the hilt, technically everything shines. But after a half an hour we get it. We know what this film is about or not going to be about. The trip it takes isn’t so hard to follow, it’s just image after image in Malick’s surreal photogenic style. This is one of the most beautiful and intensely filmed bore-fests I have ever seen.

What poses as a plot is the story of the trial and tribulations of a 1950s Texas family. The film focuses on the eldest son, Jack, (Hunter McCracken) through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years. Pampered by his mother (Jessica Chastain), he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). The family experiences a loss of one of three children, with happiness and pain played out through everyone’s growing emotional despair. Jack as an adult (Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in a corporate modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.
I knew to give into the style immediately. Tree’s editing is fast and furious while the narrative meanders in a dreamlike slow motion pace. The flick had the ability to reel you right in at the beginning, then it started to detour. Roughly 20 minutes in, the movie shifts gears to a creationist vision of the world not unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey. Perhaps intentional, Stanley Kubrick's special-effects creator Douglas Trumbull served as a visual consultant on Malick’s stunning depiction of the dawn of time. Awe-inspiring images appear at massive intensity, including a colorful nebula expanding in outer space, cells multiplying, shimmering jellyfish, volcanic eruptions, glimpses of dinosaurs, and not too mention a lot of bubbling primordial ooze. The link between Jack's story and the film's prehistoric daydream is never clear, though its essential meaning is clearly expressed. Conveying the sense of birth this flick begs to urgently question, yet also accepts, the presence of God in a fallen world.
The focus of Pitt’s character’s dichotomy becomes clear as he is moved by classical music yet tormented by his post WWII era temperament. Who could’ve conceived Brad Pitt would star in a movie slower than Benjamin Button? If I had my druthers I would choose this artistic creative pastel of ambiance and wonderment over the silly concept of someone aging backward.
TOL resembles a poem and sometimes a symphony. Most often, it’s a dreamlike prayer weirdly detailing memories about growing up in Texas during the 50’s, with scary yet powerful reminders of a suburban domestic and “safer” era albeit a more ignorant time when cigarettes helped digestion and spraying DDT from trucks on kids parading down the street was just good fun. Malick is deftly in tune with the Norman Rockwell-esque feel as he grew up during this time period in Texas himself. It’s too bad that after a while, you wonder if this flick is worth sitting through. People I have spoken with say it was a chore to stay awake; another nodded right off.
Defying true definition, this is a beautiful movie but sadly easily forgettable. I thought afterword the images of Tree would come at me, sparking new generated thoughts of how I grew up, but instead it had the opposite affect. I can hardly remember the movie at all - it’s a blur. Not a bad one, but an artistic blur. TOL doesn’t make you think, it makes you feel, but only as an afterthought does it conjure up feelings. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but it seems like torture to sit through a movie in a theater to get to your true feelings later. My favorite part was listening to other moviegoers talking in the corridors afterward. No one seemed to have seen the same film and as I thought to myself “what a bunch of morons, they didn’t get it”, it dawned on me: there’s nothing to get, it’s all in the interpretation. At its most basic this flick is a testament to capturing our memories
One thing for sure, Tree of Life brilliantly articulates in cinematic terms, the way we remember.


Tree of Life

Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken
Director: Terrence Malick
Rated PG-13
2 ½ stars