http://www.movingimagesource.us/flash/mediaplayer.swf?id=169/985
http://www.movingimagesource.us/flash/mediaplayer.swf?id=170/985
By Serena Bramble and Matt Zoller Seitz
Press Play contributors
Still the most divisive major studio release of 2011, Terrence Malick's fifth feature The Tree of Life is a dream film, a special effects extravaganza, an experimental movie, a rueful reflection on love and pain, and a memoir of small-town Texas life in the 1960s. Since Malick's movie has a deliberately open-ended, perhaps unfinished, quality, I've conceived this two-part video essay along similar lines. It does not purport to be a definitive or even comprehensive take on the movie, but more of a loose personal reaction to it, one that could very well be revised or revisited in the future. It is intended as Chapter 5 in the Moving Image Source series All Things Shining: The Films of Terrence Malick, which ran earlier this year.
The first half of this chapter concentrates on the "creation" sequence of the film, paying special attention to the work of effect master Douglas Trumbull (2001), the influence of experimental filmmaker Jordan Belson, and the connection between the cosmic vistas and the more intimate human drama. The second half delves into the subjective and free-associative nature of the storytelling, the film's portraits of the mother, father and narrator characters, and the possible meaning of the film's much-debated final sequence.
I wrote and narrated the piece and Serena Bramble, a regular contributor to Press Play, edited. To view the piece in its original context at Moving Image Source, or to view other chapters in the series, click here.
Serena Bramble is a rookie film editor and publisher of the blog Brief Encounters of the Cinematic Kind. Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for Salon.com and the founder of Press Play.
Press Play Video Blog 
Thanks for a wonderful essay, Matt.
I wonder about the depiction of Jack’s father as a metaphor for a relationship with God — such sternness in the living of life, and yet the occasional glimpse of glory, be it in a hug or a passage of music. And likewise, if Jack’s father is The Father, then Jack’s relationship to his mother shows the awe and majesty of Nature, the Universe Herself. So much blue and green in what She wears.
I love your notion that the whole film is from Jack’s point of view, that the “pov” of the other characters is Jack imagining their pov. Thanks for that — it makes sense, and helps me to find some ground in the work. And that even ties into Jack’s request to “see what you see,” to gain insight into others.
As the movie came to a close, I thought that Jack had died, but then we return to the field of sunflowers, so complex, always somewhere between living and dying. And then the elevator descends, and Jack is once more in the world, present, here and now, and I realized that Jack didn’t die so much as he *ascended*. Hence the title, the Tree of Life — a reference to so many things, including a way towards theophany, an experience of death and rebirth.
And in that experience, the conjoining of so many opposites, like you’ve pointed out. Two sides, brought together, bridged.
Not the easiest movie for me to watch, but worth it in the end. If anything, I think I’ll enjoy it more with subsequent viewings.
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“I don’t think those feelings for other women “contrast” with Jack’s feelings for his mother, but are instead a classic example of projection or displacement onto an appropriate (not mother) object.”
Fair enough. That works.
I guess my point was that the “Oedipal fixation” is extremely overt if people see the montage of relatively sexualized female images as shots of Jack’s mother, rather than shots of women in the neighborhood; and from talking to other people, and reading many of the initial reviews, I think many people assumed that most if not all of the shots are of Jack’s mother, which I don’t think is the case.
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Jason, there may be some confusion in the way Malick cuts between the mother and other women in the neighborhood, but I think it’s all of a piece with the Oedipal fixation, which is developed pretty pointedly in the film (we have a clip in there of Jack talking to his mother about his father like a would-be suitor criticizing a woman’s current choice of beau). I don’t think those feelings for other women “contrast” with Jack’s feelings for his mother, but are instead a classic example of projection or displacement onto an appropriate (not mother) object.
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I’m with you on the creation sequence: that it belongs, that it’s part of what makes the film so distinctive, and part of what makes it feel so purely Malickian — the most Malick that Malick has ever been.
I saw The Tree of Life four times in the theater, although I’ve held off watching my Blu-ray quite yet. In watching this essay, I see the best film of the year (thus far), and also one that maddens me with some metaphoric images — as you call them — that I just find so pedestrian, so obvious and yet so meaningless. The end sequence, alas, is my least favorite Malick; and nothing else is close.
One quibble both with this essay and with with a lot of chatter that has surrounded the film: In the essay there’s a shot of a woman standing in the sprinkler. The narration and video implies it’s Jack’s mother. I can’t tell if it is or not (is that Jessica Chastain? maybe), but it sure isn’t their front yard: if you compare the front door in the background of that scene with other shots in this essay (like the one of Jack’s mother sitting on the porch with the cat), you’ll see it isn’t the same; at least to the left of the door (looking from outside-in) there should be a window that isn’t there in the sprinkler shot.
Jack’s feelings for his mother were called “Oedipal” in many a review, but I believe that actually what we see is Jack looking at other women in the neighborhood; including of course the one down the street, whom he spies on out of one eye while drinking from her garden hose. If so, what we’re witnessing is simpler: Jack’s sexual awakening, which then seems to contrast with his feelings for his mother, rather than being an outgrowth of them.
Again, I haven’t reviewed my Blu-ray, but I think the only slightly sexual shot in the film that I’m confident is of Jack’s mother is the one when she bends down to kiss him (seen in this video) and in doing so slightly bares her cleavage. I think many of the original reviews of this film were off-base in this regard, which given Malick’s lack of hand-holding isn’t too much of a surprise: several of the early reviews also suggest that we don’t know which brother dies.
Anyway, great film, and great final chapter to this series.
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