May 28, 2011

It’s no exaggeration to say I wiped away tears 10 or 11 different times while watching Terrence Malick’s diaphanous meditation on human existence, “The Tree of Life,” but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if many people reading this review find it difficult to sit through the entire picture, or even if they roll their eyes during passages that pretty much devastated me.

Malick’s vision, and that’s precisely the right word for it in this instance, is so adamantly void of conventional narrative tropes - the story takes place in 1950s Waco, TX, as well as during the birth of the cosmos and in the corners of a man’s mind - that its specific impact centers on whatever emotional baggage individual audience members carry into the theater with them.

Personally, I processed much of what I was watching as a parent who struggles to be as receptive and open-hearted with his children as he should be while simultaneously wrestling the spiritually counterproductive realities of everyday life. That’s just one of the many currents flowing through “The Tree of Life,” though.

I know it sounds vaguely ridiculous to say the film is about trying to find value and beauty in our state of being, since, to one degree or another, that’s what art is supposed to do for us anyway. But I have no better way of phrasing it.

Malick and his brilliant cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, have made the most expensive, breathtakingly gorgeous Rorschach test ever produced, and, although Malick is famously eccentric, he’s absolutely right not to sit down and discuss this movie with the media, which happened recently at the Cannes Film Festival. He doesn’t have the answers anyway, and couldn’t possibly have them. He just reminds us, because we need to be reminded, that both life and death are nothing short of miracles, and we choose for ourselves how receptive we are to the endless wonders that surround us.

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For purposes of explanation, rather than as a blunt statement of what’s “going on” in the movie, Sean Penn plays a modern-day businessman living and working in a large city who’s reflecting on the course of his life, most pivotally on memories of his two brothers, one of whom died for tragic, never-stated reasons, at the age of 19.

Penn’s memories float back to his childhood in Waco, and the battle of child-rearing wills between his stern, taskmaster father (Brad Pitt), who, we’re informed, chose the path of selfish nature through life, and his saintly, fair-skinned mother (Jessica Chastain), who chose the way of grace, and was able to “accept sleights” and find transcendence in everyday experience.

Woven into all of this is a series of flashbacks to the literal beginning of time, a stunning abstract of free-flowing imagery that suggests a technically updated take on the famous gateway sequence in “2001: a Space Odyssey” mated with an absolutely mind-boggling episode of “Nova.” Malick literally moves from the big bang to the formation of the galaxies to the beginnings of primordial life and the rise of dinosaurs, all with occasional passages of narration about our place in the world delivered by his 20th century characters.

The audience I saw “The Tree of Life” with at the first screening on opening day here in Manhattan sat utterly transfixed throughout these segments— their stunned silence was deafening.

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I’m tempted to say “The Tree of Life” stars Pitt, Penn, and Chastain. It’s really not that simple, though. To begin with, Penn probably has less than 10 minutes of screen time, although they’re pivotal minutes. But it speaks volumes about how Malick conceived of and shot the picture that a great deal of the above trailer doesn’t even appear in the finished film.

Pitt, who has more dialogue in the movie than any of the other actors, all of whom portray aspects of divine interconnectivity as much as they embody traditional “characters,” recently referred to Malick’s approach as “waiting with a butterfly net to catch what was going by that day.” Thus, Malick shot hours and hours of improvised footage, usually lit by just sunlight, over the course of many months, and was able to select fleeting moments of interaction between the performers that seem both utterly naturalistic and fraught with emotional resonance.

Some of the more breathtaking footage involves the family’s children when they’re toddlers, with offhand moments that might forever stick with a person for reasons that even they can’t explain rising from the mists of Penn’s character’s memory. The intimacy of these images is indescribably powerful, in part because they trigger long-dormant memories of your own life while you let the film wash over you.

There’s a remarkable shot when we see a very small baby, whose face is framed in tight close-up, at the instant he falls asleep. Later, for just a split second, we see a child’s hands twitching while he dreams. There’s also a passing glimpse of the child’s eyes being shielded by his mother while someone - it’s not even remotely explained who the person is - suffers a seizure on the family’s front lawn. This occurs so quickly and casually, I’m sure much of the audience didn't even catch it.

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As consistent with the nature of memory as it is, there are drawbacks to Malick’s glancing approach. Chastain’s character, in particular, is almost impossible to play with any real depth, although Chastain does manage to shade her performance with subtle head tilts and flickering gazes. Still, the mother is so fragile and beatific she often appears to have absolutely no spine.

Aside from one memorable outburst, she sits by far too resignedly while the father berates and belittles the children, but even those scenes unfold in an invitingly non-traditional manner, and there’s a remarkable instant when one of the kids stands up to the old man at the dinner table that’s so unexpected and hedging it seems likely Pitt himself was shocked by it.

Pitt, for his part, delivers the most effective performance of his career. I don’t know that he could pull off playing a complete bully— his soft handsomeness simply won’t allow for it. But he’s great at simmering, non-specific anger, and it’s possible to see that the father loves the kids even while he’s systematically pushing them way too far.

Malick's entire cast, it needs to be stressed, was up against it when they entered into this one. Given the sometimes brief snippets of dialogue, and scenes that hinge on descriptions of the inner lives of the characters, there must have been a distinct possibility of coming unmoored, of losing a vague narrative thread that's comprised of ideas rather than concrete actions, and hangs suspended somewhere in the heavens.

Surely, Malick selected a patient, kindred spirit in Pitt, who, of course, is an A-list movie star. He's an actor who can accept far less amorphous, emotionally draining offers than this sort of thing. He deserves credit for seeing it through so movingly.

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Even though he’s currently finishing another picture (a domestic drama of sorts starring Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams, although, once again, no one is blurting out details), “The Tree of Life” feels like the final film Malick will ever, or should ever, bother making— it would certainly be hard to offer a bigger statement of belief.

Like his forever rocking and floating camera, Malick’s themes seldom sit still long enough for you to get a complete grip. But his art is the art of suggesting, and the viewer is expected to take it from there. Bring your self-reflection when you see "The Tree of Life," then be grateful for the opportunity to use it during a big American movie. We should always be so lucky.

“The Tree of Life” is the picture Werner Herzog would make if he had real balls, and, until now, I didn’t think anybody had bigger balls than Herzog. The only viewer warning I can possibly supply, aside from the fact that it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen, is that the film will either further the healing process or tear you apart if you’re in the midst of mourning a loved one. Rated PG-13. 138 minutes.