[I am pulling this review out of the archives, because The Tree Of Life goes into limited release in Canada this weekend. Chime in with your thoughts on this folks, it is a film that sparks much conversation (as evidenced by the hour we spent on it in the recent cinecast episode.)]
As with any piece of cinema, first there is darkness, then there is light. Terrence Malick opens his latest film with a pulsating nimbus before jumping headlong into one of the films many “Big Questions:” Why do we die? From there it is a mere cut to the beginning of the cosmos, the big bang, before settling on the O’Brien family, or at least Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) knocking up Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain). Now it might seem cliche to compare the universe to a womb, or a volcano to sex, or asteroids colliding into planets as pregnancy, hell, there is a fish shaped like a vagina and a fish shaped like a penis, but indeed, it feels fresh here. Hell, it feels holy. A friend of mine remarked on a recent viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, that it was the most depressing movie ever filmed, that the only way humanity could ever fix its problems was to evolve into another life-form. Malick’s take, despite opening the film from a quotation from the book of Job, is a much more positive outlook: Life is all around you. Drink it in. This is as good as it gets. Indeed, it is a mighty thing. And suffering is a part of the joy (a profound part, apparently). Consider it the antithesis of Gaspar Noe’s Enter The Void, although there are similarities there enough to make one consider a hobby-graduate thesis.
The Tree of Life is a collection of the wondrous memories of childhood, when we look up at everything (for we are smaller than everything else and must crane our necks). The film spends a lot of time with the camera on the ground and the sun peaking into the frame in one fashion or another. The three O’Brien brothers grow up in the white picket fences, big cars and endless summers of the 1950s. Baseball, running through the wilderness unsupervised and blowing up frogs round out their days. In between this wild abandon is the discipline imposed by their father and the ethereal fragility of their mother who offers love silently. There are scenes when the boys bear witness to a man being arrested and also attend the funeral of a friend who drowns. There are attempts, to parse what (and why) violence occurs and what (and why) is pain woven into life, mainly they do as children do: move through events with a playful ignorance, the effects of bearing witness come out in other ways. These are the images and experiences that wedge themselves in your brain and linger on into adulthood. The film spends most of its time with Jack O’Brien, the eldest child of three played with nuance (and screen presence) by Hunter McCracken as a child of about 10 and by Sean Penn as an older man who is still coming to grips with his father and his childhood. His eventual awakening (and rebellion from) the man his father is, is the backbone of the film. A struggle.
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but that doesn’t mean someone has to like it or that it couldn’t have been done better. I personally happen to like 
