The Tree of Life (Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken) – Did you ever want to know your IQ score? Not me. But after watching this Oscar-nominated film, I decided that it is lower than even I thought. I just didn’t get it. There is so much symbolism in this story of a 1950s’ family that I couldn’t connect all the dots. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, both Oscar nominated this year but not for this film, play the O’Briens (no first names), a middle class family with three kids in a small Texas town. He is a strict disciplinarian; she is a devoted, submissive wife. Their kids are nicely spaced and close. As the film opens up, we are faced with the tragedy of their lives, a telegram reporting that their middle son has died. Here is where the fun (that’s irony) begins. We see spectral lights, skies, colors, super novas, and far away galaxies straight out of the Hubble telescope, Disney Nature Films, or Lucas animation. We are transformed back to what seems like the birth of the universe, the origins of the planet, the dinosaur era, the evolution of man, etc. Beautiful colors; neat graphics; symbolism galore; and total bafflement.
Moving millennia forward to current time (not the ‘50s), we see Jack (Sean Penn), the oldest son, as an adult. He is sitting in his high-rise office, contemplating, and phoning his father apologizing for something he said. Then suddenly, Jack is walking through some seemingly non-earthly terrain, in some kind of an alternative universe or existential world, obviously exploring some previously uncharted mental ground.
Flash back to the ‘50s where we see young Jack (Hunter McCracken in an excellent performance by this first-timer), the obedient, quiet elder son who takes a lot of crap from his father but who is adventuresome and troubled as a young man. He is close to his brother; they are best friends, it seems. We wonder how Jack took the death of his brother. Most of the film is about young Jack and his relationship with his parents. Pitt is very good in this departure of a role. Brad is the opposite of Billy Beane, his character in Moneyball for which he is Oscar-nominated. He is nothing like his Ocean’s 11 cocky persona or his action characters. He is the epitome of tough love. He really does love his kids but is somewhat ambivalent toward his wife, who is seen as vulnerable except around the kids.
As the movie approaches its closing (more than two-and-a-quarter hours later), we know that we’re in for more of that symbolic stuff, lights and all. And the movie delivers it in a closing sequence that tries to bring it all together with the older Jack seeing his brother, father and mother in what must be his brain on LSD or nirvana, or heaven (or is it Iowa?). We are left to decide it all for ourselves.
All of this was concocted by writer/director Terrence Malick, who has been nominated for Best Director (he was previously nominated for director and writer of The Thin Red Line). While the performances are good and the pacing is fine, this is clearly not my kind of movie. You might need to be taking mind-altering substances to truly enjoy it. Or, maybe you just need a higher IQ than I have. This movie was compared in vision to 2001: A Space Odyssey by no less than Roger Ebert, whose IQ must be higher than mine. In giving it four stars, he called it “a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. He writes: “The only other film I’ve seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it lacked Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling.” High praise indeed, but not from me. Good luck deciding if you want to see it.