Two ways to live?
THE TREE OF LIFE
Director: Terrence Malick
Cert: 12A
Running time: 138 minutes
With its unconventional narrative structure (hopping through time in a non-chronological manner and leaving many things unexplained) and relatively languid pace, The Tree of Life is challenging, and thus requires engagement (and probably multiple viewings) in order to appreciate it fully.
Early in the film, we’re told: ‘There are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace’, nature being selfish sinful nature, and grace being an attitude of godly love, with Brad Pitt’s father character representing the former and Jessica Chastain’s mother character the latter. (Ironically, however, the way of grace is the one more in tune with nature, i.e. creation.) The main character, one of their sons, muses: ‘Mother, father… always you war inside of me… always you will’.
Cosmic docu-drama
Going from the deepest reaches of space to the microscopic level to the human level, the film works as both a cosmic documentary and an intense family drama. This vast contrast of scale raises questions of man’s place in God’s universe, and juxtaposes the wonder of creation with the reality of grief and suffering.
This brings to mind Psalm 19: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’, and also the story of Job, which is directly referred to in the film.
Likewise, prayer is a regular presence throughout the film, though it’s mostly characters questioning God. The film contains at least some level of answers to these questions, though they’re not made clear.
In fact, there are lots of Christian elements, though little emphasis on Jesus. It verges on worshipping the creation rather than the Creator. Or maybe there is, and it’s just too subtle to pick up on a first viewing. After all, the film subtly illustrates the doctrine of total depravity (that we’re all inherently sinful and thus helpless without God), a scene of a child taking his grandmother’s cake and claiming it as his own despite being told to put it back. Later, he seemingly references Romans 7, with the line, ‘I can’t do what I want to do…I hate what I do’.
A heavily metaphorical ending (an approach which perhaps works story-wise, but not as well cinematically) offers some kind of reconciliation after all the familial strife, but are the characters reconciled with God, or only with each other?
The imagery of lighting candles is used throughout the film, perhaps as a metaphor for salvation, or (if the reconciliation’s not with God through faith in Christ) maybe just some kind of lesser inner peace.
The Tree of Life is a work of art, in the truest sense. It’s dense, rich, beautiful, demanding, uncompromising, thought provoking, and invites plenty of analysis and re-watching.
