The Tree of Life - a mess or a masterpiece

The Tree of Life isn't an easy film.

It's one that doesn't provide a lot of easy or obvious answers. You need to know that going in. It's also one that provides a linear story but places it within a framework that provides us with almost no storytelling anchors at all.

The film is either a masterwork by one of our finest living directors or a self important, overly long bit of visual noodling that could have used the heavy hand of a good editor.

I'll try to keep things fairly spoiler free but do feel the need to discuss some of the more spoilerful things toward the bottom. I'll give you some warning before I make that change.

The more linear, central part of the film is fairly straight forward, focusing on a year (or so) in the life of Jack, the eldest of three brothers in 1950's Waco, Texas. The three are raised by their mother and father, the two opposing influences in their lives. Their mother is a playful, sweet soul who wished only for her sons to grow up to be good, loving men, enjoying and relishing the beauty of God's world. The father (Brad Pitt) is a much more driven, hard man. He loves his sons but wants them to be tough, to not be taken advantage of the way that he feels he has been, to not make the mistakes that he feels he has made.

As the seasons pass, particularly the summer, we see Jack fighting with the two aspects of his nature, wanting to be good and kind child but also feeling the need to establish himself as a harder, more world-ready man. We see the struggles within Jack in glimpses, moments where with the smallest of shifts, he could fall either way. The film masterfully places us in a drifting point of view from which we could easily believe either choice from Jack - to hurt those around him or to help them and turn from the darkness.

This central core of the film is marvelous and emotionally moving, particularly as we see Jack's father open himself up to his eldest son as he begins to see all of his strengths and his faults in the young man. Jack bristles under the rough hand of his father while simultaneously and silently mimicking his motions, his stances, his mannerisms. At the same time, Jack relishes the freedom and joy of his mother's outlook on the world while openly and harshly criticizing her for what his father has taught him is her weak nature, allowing the world - and her husband - to walk all over her.

This central part of the film culminates with a dramatic moment between Jack and his middle brother where a millimeter, a moment makes all the difference as toward which path Jack will find himself heading. The moment - and the subsequent leaving of their childhood home - is heart breaking and spectacular. There aren't many filmmakers who could provide us with this perfect a glimpse into the mind and heart of a young boy becoming a man.

This more linear core of the film is probably an hour - maybe an hour and a half - of the film's two hour and fifteen minute running time, however, leaving almost a full hour for Malick's non-linear musings on the meaning of life,the creation of the universe, and our place within it - how small and insignificant we are within it. This portion of the film - split fairly evenly between before and after the linear core of the film - is both the best and worst aspects of art cinema. It provides gorgeous visuals only loosely connected with scant narration and very broad thematic sweeps.

The early part of the film is frustrating in that it comes after we're introduced to Jack's mother and father in a very emotional, pivotal time of their lives and given no narrative thread to hold to. This is the part of the film  that has found moviegoers leaving the theater in frustration and others likely nodding off.

The latter part of the film is equally frustrating as it leaves the narrative, linear central portion of the film for wordless, drifting wandering from Sean Penn, a grown up Jack, through his memories - or the afterlife - or...well, we're not really given a whole lot of clues as to where or why he's wandering, whether Penn feels he's within his own mind or simply metaphorically wandering around.

My opinions of the film aren't set in stone just yet, and I suspect that I will come back to this film at a later time, trying to see it through slightly more experienced eyes, looking back at the film knowing a bit more about where it's going. The central part of the film is outstanding. Brad Pitt gives a spectacular performance as a man whose hard outer shell belies a seething, God-fearing, artistic heart. He does this with an economy of words and actions that reminds us Pitt truly is a great actor not just the charismatic smoothie of Oceans 11. The child actors - particularly the young man who plays young Jack - also perform marvelously, showing a grace and depth the belie their young ages.

The non-linear parts of the film need, I feel, more guidance, more connection to the central core. As they stand they seem an entirely different film from the core. There simply isn't enough connection to justify the length of their meanderings. I've read a number of theories on what these wanderings might mean, but there isn't any hope of an answer because Malick doesn't give us much of a glimmer of any hope to find out what it means.

The Tree of Life is a wonderful and wonderfully flawed film.

To call it "one of the most important, best films of the past ten years," as a theater manager did on NPR this week as would be calling it "a waste of my time and money" as did a user on metacritic, both overstate the case but both contain a kernel or truth.

SPOILERS after the jump...

Some thoughts...all of which are SPOILERS...

• I think I get the dinosaurs, at least the dinosaurs in the river/creek bed. The dinosaur on the ground is vulnerable, at the mercy of the dinosaur walking up to him. The walking dinosaur has the opportunity either to kill or to save the fallen dino. A choice must be made - a choice that I somehow doubt dinosaurs ever actually made, and this echoes the choices that Jack finds himself making in the film. He could have done serious harm to his brother with the bb gun, his brother could have hit him back with the 2x4, but both turn away from the darker option - Jack by luck, it appears, his brother by grace and kindness.
• I don't understand why we see the deeply wounded larger dinosaur. To show that the world can be a cruel place, maybe?
• I have absolutely no clue at all what was happening at the end with Sean Penn wandering the dessert...the salt flats...the mirrored land. Is he bringing his brother back to life in his memory, in his parent's memory? I read some discussion online about the possibility that Jack had killed himself as an adult as was somehow crossing over (passing through the door in the desert, crossing a bridge) , but I didn't see any inkling of this in the film. Malick really isn't giving us much to work with here.
• I started to nod off during the celestial workings early in the film.I really should've gotten more sleep before seeing this one. I remember having the same problems when I saw The Thin Red Line in the theater. 
• It's interesting to read actors talk about working with Malick, thinking that they were the leads of the film only to find that Malick had left 90% of their performance on the cutting room floor in crafting an entirely different film than the one they imagined they were a part of.
• Sean Penn is practically worthless in this film. It feels like he's in it for like two minutes. It's odd that he gets equal billing as Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain.
• I don't really know where the dark-haired classmate of Jack's was going. Was she meant to be a crush, a friend, the woman he ended up married to? Was she the woman Jack was chasing through the desert at the end?
• I was expecting more tree, honestly. I was thinking that the tree would be some sort of mythical, totemic object around which the film would circle - more like the tree in The Fountain. It's interesting that Malick had the tree of the film moved to the location but didn't seem to treat it with any sort of reverence.
• Why was Jack's mother floating under the tree?
• Did Jack actually shoot his brother's hand with the bb gun? I thought pretty clearly that he did - there was a splash of what looked like blood, his brother went crying and running away - but his brother didn't look hurt at all in the next scene.
• The shots of the sun - with the planet passing across its face - were gorgeous, but that planet would be toasted to a cinder if it were really that close.