TREE OF LIFE

Allow me to be frank. Tarence Malicks new film Tree of Life is wasted on the big screen. It is a film that, especially in it’s wilder moments, demands an IMAX presentation. However, since Tree is not a big-budget tent-poll like Super 8 we are going to have to make due.

The film is slightly off-putting in it’s boldness. Near the beginning there is a breathtaking 15 or so minute sequence that is just the creation of the universe and the evolution of life on Earth. But the film is not simply about making the human experience feel insignificant next to the colossal sweep of time. It is about youth, and innocence.

The film eventually settles down a little bit an becomes about a boy named Jack (Hunter McCracken) growing up in 50’s Texas, from the moment of his birth till about the age of 10. Through the eyes of a child, the grown-up world is as strange and secret as God is to an adult. The world of this film is full of fragments. A baby playing with bubbles. The aftermath of a fire. Playing after school. The father (Brad Pitt) playing the organ at Church.

Yet the film is not frustrating in any sense. Everything is clear and unclear at the same time. It is an ode to the mystery of life. A meditation. A prayer. It is achingly intimate and auto-biographical, yet it never selfishly so. I find it fascinating that the film leaves room for the audience to think about their own childhood. How it compares and contrasts to the boy in the film. It is a childhood transcribed moment for moment onto celluloid, with all the purity, fear and wonder achingly intact.

Grade: A