The Tree of Life (2011)

Jessica Chastain and Tye Sheridan, The Tree of Life (2011)

Directed by: Terrance Malick
Starring: Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain

The world is not ready for The Tree of Life. It is just that simple. When you see the previews for this film, you wonder -- what could it possibly be about? The ambiguous title, the big name stars Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, and then standing right alongside them, critically-acclaimed actresses such as Fiona Shaw (Aunt Petunia of the Harry Potter series) and Jessica Chastain (the socially-ostracized Celia Foote in The Help) all point to something magnificent, but does The Tree of Life deliver?

That's arguable. Is it beautiful? Absolutely. Malick paints a deliciously gorgeous picture, using images of nature to help illustrate a metaphor that is still mildly hazy at the end of the film. However, there's no arguing that he has vision, and in this reviewer's personal opinion, having vision at all is the most important quality of being a director.

Malick's vision is broad -- he's giving us not just a commentary on Jack (Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken) and his life, but also on life itself, and the different things that we put into it. There's a sequence near the beginning of the film that literally chronicles, bit by bit, the creation of world as scientists have put it. And these beautiful images serve to reinforce the broadness of Malick's message in the film, which he then proceeds to pound into our head with every shot and every line of barely audible dialogue for the next hour and a half of our lives.

Put plainly, the one main complaint I have about this film is that it feels very detached. It almost feels superflous because of that. Throughout the film, as you watch, you find yourself not fully engrossed in what's going on -- as if every event that happens is an out-of-body experience for you. I am of the opinion that a film like this should reel you in, and make you feel completely in the moment, but Malick takes a distinctly different turn as he almost isolates the viewer from the action.

Going along with that theme, most of the dialogue in the movie is barely audible. You can't watch this movie without subtitles, because the majority of the lines would be lost unless you were blaring it on full volume. Sean Penn's adult Jack seems to be the worst; Jessica Chastain does a good job of projecting the breathy whispers that her lines are supposed to be, and Brad Pitt's character is one whose loudness is meant to break the detachment we have from the film. He's such a presence that in the midst of everything else that seems so far away, he hits close to home, and he does an excellent job of it, too.

The movie's pretty. And it's meaningful, no doubt. It's unlikely that you'll understand every bit of it the first time you watch it -- I've yet to bring myself to watch it a second time, meaning I'm sure there are still gaps in my understanding -- but it's not a bad film. It's comparable to Sofia Coppola's Somewhere of 2010 -- except done much more cleanly, and in my opinion, much better. A survey of life at its finest? Perhaps not. But beautiful, artistic, and moving? I'd say it definitely has that going for it.

Final Rating; 8.0/10
Notable Performance: Brad Pitt as Mr. O'Brien