The Tree of Life

You might heard it is a master piece but The Tree of Life is a difficult movie to see. It is probably something like Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries in the 50s, a really difficult film to which praise because everybody does so. I am not sure what The Tree of Life is about, because I did not understand much. It is a slow movie, the longest 2 hours in many years. Sometimes, you hear the crack of the wooden floor in the house of the O'Brians and so do you hear the crack of the wooden chairs of the audience, as they try to find a comfortable spot to give the film another opportunity.

Why is it a master piece?

Indeed Terrence Malick and Douglas Trumbull are not kids. They are almost 70. That's what keeps me surprised and searching for a meaning. Visually, I guess the movie is great, but I don't know anything about that. I caught a few things, that's true. To me it is a film of deep Christian message, if the modern movie groupies condone my insolence for saying so. It tackles the problem of suffering. And it solves it in a beautiful manner, Christian way, like not many have done. Everything passes away, nothing will remain, life is a journey we must travel on and on, it is said in the movie, repeatedly. But, indeed, pain seems to stay. The story of the past and the future is unfair and painful, from the time of the dinosaurs down to two generations of Americans. (Did you noticed? What does it mean the scene of the dinosaurs?). Pain is an unchangeable reality. So, against the question so often pronounced by men to God: "where are you, motherfucker? What do you have to say to this mess?", the author settles, from the beginning of the movie, a beautiful passage from the Book of Job; now, God is speaking: "Where wast thou when I layd the foundations of the Earth?" (Job 38, 4).

Rev. Rowan Williams talked about that in The Guardian this weekend: that God can be without Men, that Creation is totally a free gift.

The character of Brad Pitt is great. Oh, what an evolution from his times as a Southerner in Thelma & Louis! The work of the boys, great. But the movie is difficult, a festival of images without a script. The aesthetics of the modern world, with those huge buildings where Sean Penn works, are great, though. And Penn makes them worth a million more. I wish to have had more than that.

"Help each other, love everyone", says the Mother at some point. But, indeed, even though Love is the answer, the only source of happiness, this conviction is shaked to ruins by the only visible argument in the movie: the lost of a children by their parents. If this is not Love, what else can it be?

As I said, Malick and Trumbull are getting older, death is not a far-away possibility after they enjoyed the mambo-jumbo, the breathless ride of the trip of life... The Tree of Life, probably an excursion for men of success and money, a caprice of image and visual aggression.

I don't know.

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