Tree of Life

Movie Review

Tree of Life

Reviewed by Dan McDonald

            Maybe you are like me and spent too many years not watching the movies which tell the stories that connect with the human issues of our times. I know people who imagine Hollywood as a monolithic cultural negative where movies with spiritual value are no longer made. Whether you are like me and failed to watch some of the quality movies or one who feels that "Hollywood" is anti-faith and anti-religion, we would be an audience that might have missed how much the 2011 Terence Malik directed film “The Tree of Life” offered in the telling of a man struggling with what he comes to believe is God's calling of him.

            I want to express my gratitude to Karen Swallow Prior, a Liberty University literature professor, whose mention of this movie on Twitter first intrigued me to give the film a look. Her words about the movie led me to scheduling it for a watch on Netflix. My choice was rewarded by being granted the opportunity to watch a thoughtful movie, beautifully photographed, which weaves the story of a man reflecting on his childhood, his relationship to members of a struggling family, his relationship to career and world, and a sense of a struggle between rejecting God and alternately his sense that God's call has never been absent from his life.

            The movie is seen primarily from the vantage point of Jack O’Brien, an adult presented by actor Sean Penn, who is looking back on his troubled life. Throughout much of the movie, the child version of Jack O’Brien is presented by Hunter McCracken. Jack’s parents are different from one another in a struggling marriage composed of two very different people who understood life in ways not able to be understood by the other. Mr. O’Brien is played by Brad Pitt. He is a practical man concerned to not get run over by a ruthless world. He is continually seeking to build the sort of life that will create a haven in the midst of that ruthless world. Mrs. O’Brien, on the other hand is a sort of free spirit who seems to float from life experience to life experience no matter what life brings her way. That said, the characters occasionally show how their life tendencies are not their full explanation. Their tendencies do not minimize them into caricature characters. Both Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien are capable of having their life tendencies challenged by facing life crises.

            The movie is visually magnificent. There are scenes where present day landscapes are seen as if populated in a pre-historic world by dinosaurs roaming the landscape where people now live out their lives in suburbia. These scenes seem to suggest that not even our modernized compartmentalized lives are ultimately escapes from the creation which surrounds and is the source of our life's nourishment. A dinosaur pictured caring for its young offspring leaves us wondering if within this landscape of earth's nature and creation, there is not at some level a connection between us and them. The passing thought undermines our cynicism that modern life might only be something experienced without a seeming shape of meaning.

            I appreciated that the movie did not seek to answer the great questions about coming to faith. What it did well, was to express with respect a sense of the mystery of faith. The movie told a story of a man looking back on his life, considering the meaning of his life and feeling the tug of a divine call on his life. The searching of God reflected in his life resonated with expressions one would find in the Psalms where the poets of the Psalms express their search for good with the realities that they also often felt God to be far away and at times even against them. This Psalm like sense of the story percolated up from the story of the reflections of the older Jack as he contemplated the younger Jack's life. I felt a sense that the creator of this movie might have experienced what is experienced in my worship, where we find the reading, reciting, and praying of the Psalms an important facet of our considerations of God.

For me this movie was more satisfying than many of the evangelistic films I have viewed. The movie showed a man's struggle to understand and come to terms with life. At times the story was beautiful, but also often harsh and painful, even discouraging and distressing. There was in the telling of the story a sense of suspense and mystery. Whatever one thinks of Hollywood, whether it is a friend or foe of Christianity, religion, and faith; I felt as if director Terence Malik with actors Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, and the children actors in this film presented an intriguing story that deeply respects humankind's struggle to seek spiritual understanding of our experience of life. This is a movie that reverences humanity's search for spiritual meaning. It can be quite dark, but ultimately it is definitely not hopeless.

            I will close with a lengthy quote which introduces us to the story of the movie.

 “The nuns taught us there are two ways through life; the way of nature and the way of grace. We have to choose which one you follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Nature only wants to please itself; get others to please it too, likes to lord it over them, and to have its way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when the world is shining around it and when love is smiling through all things.”

            This is a movie where an older Jack O’Brien struggles with his life failures and with a sense that there was grace calling him throughout his life. He struggles to see a place for that grace as he feels the impulse to live in the way of nature wanting to live life to please itself and manipulate others also to live life in a way that pleases Jack. It is that struggle to choose either the way of grace or the way of nature. There is a sense that both grace and nature seek us in the midst of a vast creation.