Tree Hugger: Part 2

Terrence Malick, true to his reputation as a “devout Episcopalian”, begins The Tree of Life with a quote from the Book of Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” An ethereal mass appears on the screen, a glowing composition of light and energy, moving gently in the darkness. We hear birds, waves lapping at a distant shore, and the voice of Jack (Sean Penn). “Mother. Brother. It was they who led me to your door.”

Is this image intended to represent God? Is Jack saying that his mother and brother helped him to find God? That is for each viewer to decide. One of the most amazing things about The Tree of Life is how differently it has been interpreted. There are those who claim that it shoves Christian propaganda down our throats with all the subtlety of a snuff film (no, that would be Courageous). Others believe the film is “spiritual”, but not specifically about the Christian God or a Christian world view. People have debated whether the film is theist, deist, or pantheist in its approach to God and the natural world. Some have accused the film of supporting the Big Bang, evolution, etc. and of being a “there is no God” piece of trash propaganda.

Personally, I lean toward the Christian reading of the film. If this ethereal light is meant to be “the Alpha and Omega”, then such a theory is supported by the fact that the movie ends as it began, with this same strange image fading in, then out. “The first and the last”. Throughout The Tree of Life, Malick takes interest in the questions and expectations of mankind with regard to a higher power. This image of God, if indeed we are meant to see God in the image, is suitably mysterious for a being we will never even begin to comprehend here on earth. The vision of God as an old, bearded white man in flowing robes seems to me a rather boring simplification of something which should be glorious, all powerful, and well beyond our ability to fathom. This is, after all, the Creator of the universe.

Job was baffled by a God he worshiped, but failed to understand. He was a good man, a man of genuine faith, who nonetheless endured incredible suffering and had the audacity to ask God, “Why?” God went on to put Job in his place, humbling him, proving that he knew nothing of what it meant to be the ruler of the universe. Job wasn't there when God laid the foundations of the earth, no one was, so what can a man know of such things? God revealed to Job just how tiny he was in the infinite scope of existence.

With that opening quote and image in mind, we are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain), who have lost their middle-born son. We don't know the cause, and little does it matter. We see these two parents consumed by grief, filled with doubt and regret. Mr. O'Brien, embodying the harshness of nature, questions his actions. Was he too severe? He laments the fact that the time to make amends has passed. Recalling a moment when he criticized his son over a minor infraction, only to witness the boy striking himself over and over, he mournfully realizes, “I made him feel shame. My shame. Poor boy.”

Mrs. O'Brien, the epitome of faith and grace, is consoled by her mother-in-law: “Life goes on. People pass along, nothing stays the same... The Lord gives and the Lord takes away and that's how he is. He sends flies to wounds that he should heal.”

After crossing a relatively small span of time, we find ourselves in a more modern period, with Jack, the eldest son of the O'Briens. He wanders through his home, which looks about as sterile and disconnected as his marriage. There are no children, both man and wife appear to be focused solely on their careers. Taking a seat at the kitchen counter on what must be the anniversary of his brother's death, Jack lights a blue candle and remembers. “I see the child that I was. I see my brother. True. Kind. He died when he was nineteen.”

Jack, who we infer is an architect based on the blueprints he alters, appears equally disoriented and depressed in the workplace. He finds himself daydreaming about his childhood. This world of glass, steel, concrete, and office cubicles jammed together reminded me of Jacques Tati's Playtime (1967), which focused on the absurdity of it all. In The Tree of Life, it's about the isolation. Nothing natural exists here, nothing of God or a higher power, this is all man-made, and Malick seems to believe this distances mankind. From what, exactly?

In my view, Malick is saying this modern metropolis puts a wider gap between man and the Garden from which he has been expelled. In Genesis, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were banned from the Garden by God and denied the fruit of the Tree of Life, which granted immortality. Christians, as well as people of other faiths, believe immortality can still be earned, however. Life, essentially, becomes a quest for immortality, The Tree of Life, the Holy Grail, whatever you want to call it. Most people, including Jack, seem to be getting further and further away from it. In a physical sense, Jack's world of skyscrapers is far removed from the natural world of God's Creation.

In fact, we see a close-up of a lonely tree planted at a construction site in the moment when Jack says, “How did I lose you. Wandered. Forgot you.” Jack has lost sight of God and everything the Tree of Life represents. We discover later that his brother was, for him, a gateway of sorts. A guide. This too was lost. We hear his brother's voice, “Find me.”

Jack imagines himself in his parent's home shortly after his brother's death. Mr. O'Brien closes the key lid on the piano; did he stop playing after the death of his child? “How did she bear it,” Jack wonders of his mother. He caresses her hair by the window. We hear her cry out in grief.

Despite all consolation, all words of encouragement, Mrs. O'Brien struggles mightily to accept the tragedy of her son's passing. What did God gain, she wonders, by taking him away from her. “Was I false to you,” she asks. She finds herself questioning God, as Job did. We see the strange mass of light and energy again as she gives voice to her plight. “Lord, why? Where were you?”

At this moment the screen goes dark, and one of the finest sequences in recent film history begins. As the score turns to Preisner's “Lacrimosa”, we witness the birth of everything. The universe itself. A celestial tapestry of beautiful nebulae, planets, stars. We see the young earth, a primal landscape of shifting masses and opposing forces; water and fire. It seems the world is taking baby steps of its own; growing, learning. Soon, the first signs of life: a lovely view of jellyfish, predatory sharks, and yes, dinosaurs. This cycle of existence (birth, growth, death, extinction, rebirth), of nature and grace, on such a vast scale serves to humble us as it humbled Job. In the infinite ocean of time and space, even a Caesar or a Napoleon may be lucky to register as a speck on the canvas. Our lives pass by in a cosmic flash, seemingly important to only a select few individuals, and even then for the briefest of instants.

Again, we hear Jack's voice. “You spoke to me through her. You spoke with me from the sky, the trees. Before I knew I loved you, believed in you. When did you first touch my heart?” If Jack asks this of God, then his answer comes almost immediately. We see Mrs. O'Brien's pregnant belly, as Mr. O'Brien places his hand upon it. Then, in a surreal moment Bunuel would have adored, a fully clothed child swims through an underwater bedroom, passing through the door (a symbolic birth canal) that will deliver him into loving arms. Welcome to the world, Jack.

In another fine montage, we see all the simple little moments that shape every being on this planet. Learning to walk and talk. Fear of the unknown, when the toddler is afraid to venture into the attic. The child hiding behind his mother from a barking dog. “Are you afraid,” she asks. The introduction of boundaries, as Mr. O'Brien draws an invisible line in the grass between their yard and the neighbor's. Mrs. O'Brien reads Peter Rabbit to the youngsters, “You may go into the fields and down the lane, but do not go into Mr. McGregor's garden.” Selfishness, when Jack yells at his grandmother, “It's mine!”

Jealousy, of course, rears its head for baby Jack when his brother is born. Unable to monopolize the attention of his parents, he shows his frustration by toppling a box of his brother's toys. Echoes of Cain and Abel, perhaps? People often desire attention and favor, not only from parents, lovers, friends, and co-workers, but from their Heavenly Father, as well. We would like to believe we are that important, as Job did, and Malick is certainly not done ramming this point home.

The boys grow older in this perfectly rendered small southern town (Smithville, TX standing in for Malick's hometown of Waco), under two very opposed parental influences. Nature and grace at war, if you will. Even the tiniest scenes add to this conflict; notice the way the mother playfully wakes her children with ice cubes, while the father storms into the room and rips their bed sheets off. We see playful summer days, but we also notice how carefully Jack (brilliantly played as a youngster by Hunter McCracken) maneuvers around his father at the dinner table, as if one wrong move may set him off. Mrs. O'Brien tries to compliment Jack, but her husband interrupts. He's more interested in Brahms, whose music plays on the record player.

The boys learn what happens when boundaries are crossed. Two men in chains are shoved into a police car. Mrs. O'Brien, instead of passing judgment, gives one of the condemned men a drink of water. The youngest brother asks, “Can it happen to anyone?” Jack prays for the Lord to make him good, but receives a conflicting message from his own father. “Your mother's naive. It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world. If you're good, people take advantage of you.” As an extension of this lesson, he teaches the boys to fight one day in the yard.

Mr. O'Brien is one of those men who had big dreams, he was going to be "a great musician”, but now finds little to be passionate about in life. He speaks about men of whom he is surely envious. He talks about how company executives got where they are (“floated right down the middle of the river”), and about a friend who owns half the real estate in town, despite modest beginnings. He is condescending toward a wealthy neighbor who inherited his fortune. Again, he influences the boys: “Wrong people go hungry, die. Wrong people get loved. World lives by trickery. If you want to succeed you can't be too good.”

Jack sees his father's hypocrisy. He is told not to put his elbows on the table, but his father does. He is told not to interrupt or insult others, but his father does. He is told to be good, then advised otherwise. Jack can not help but question why he should be a good kid when his own father, between occasional bouts of affection, seems a liar and a villain. When the children witness the drowning of another young boy at the river, Jack asks these same questions of his Creator, “Where were you? You let a boy die. You'll let anything happen. Why should I be good if you aren't?”

The other boys respond to death in their own way. The youngest son asks, “Was he bad?” The middle son, whose question resonated the most with me, asks his mother, “Will you die too?” In church, the middle son sees an image of Jesus in a stained glass window as the pastor asks, “Is there nothing which is deathless? Nothing which does not pass away?” The implication being, as I see it, that Jesus is both eternal and the doorway to eternity.

I was seven years old when my father died. Death was something I had heard about for years, I had seen it on television. At that age, one can know of death without having the faintest comprehension of it. This was my wake-up call, when it struck my own family. I instantly discovered that my father was mortal. This could only mean my mother was too, as was I. The shock of this revelation at the time when it occurred can not be stressed enough, and these scenes really spoke to me.

Not long after the boy's death at the river, a fire destroys another boy's home. He survives, but will forever bear the physical scars. Again, Jack is dismayed by the calamities God allows to strike his children. He begins to rebel. The seeds of sexual awakening are planted when he eyes a woman hanging clothes in her yard, washing her bare feet with a hose. She gives him a drink. Later he watches her through a window.

We hear Mr. O'Brien bragging to his children, “Twenty-seven patents your father has, it means ownership, ownership of ideas. You gotta sew 'em up, get 'em by the nuts, if you pardon my French.” He portrays himself as an important man, a man deserving of recognition, reward, and wealth. However, we see Mr. O'Brien in a courtroom failing in his endeavors. “We'll get 'em next time,” his lawyer says. As he's leaving, he reassures himself, “I'm not done yet. Can't say I can't.” Disappointed, he walks alone down a hallway of the courthouse as we hear Jack ask, “Why does he hurt us? Our father?” This question seems to be directed not only at his father on earth, but also his father in Heaven.

In the very next scene, Mr. O'Brien arrives home, showing tenderness initially to the boys. “He lies. Pretends,” Jack says, as he distorts the beautiful music on one of his father's prized records. Then at dinner, Mr. O'Brien's resentment and frustration erupt. He takes his anger out on his children, and later on Mrs. O'Brien. “You turn my own kids against me. You undermine everything I do.” As noted earlier, it would ultimately take the passing of his son to make Mr. O'Brien realize that the shame his children felt was his own.

When Mr. O'Brien leaves on a lengthy business trip, the children celebrate, enjoying a tranquil respite with their mother. We see moments of happiness, boys at play, carefree days filled with laughter, as the mother's grace takes hold. “Help each other. Love everyone. Every leaf, every ray of light. Forgive.” Unfortunately, Jack can not resist the other temptations his father's absence permits. So begins an adolescent rampage that Mrs. O'Brien seems ill-equipped to stop.

With a group of boys from the neighborhood, Jack blows up eggs in a bird's nest, throws rocks through window panes, launches a frog into the air on a firecracker. When his mother tries her hand at discipline, the other boys taunt him. “They're just trying to scare you. Keep you ignorant.” As Jack succumbs to peer pressure, we hear his thoughts, “Things you got to learn. How can we know stuff until we look?” Though Jack is particularly rebellious, this is a natural progression, more or less. Our parents told us not to do things, we did them anyway, and we learned from our mistakes. We hope our children won't make the same bad decisions, but they always do. Such is life. I'm reminded of a Delmore Schwartz quote, “Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.” Only the passage of time can grant us wisdom, and once wise, we die.

Jack sees his mother washing her bare foot in the yard sprinkler. This reminds him of the woman who gave him a drink that day. He walks to her house, spies on her from behind a tree, then enters the home after she leaves. Inside, he goes to her bedroom and holds her hairbrush, touches a mirror, picks up a pearl bracelet. He removes a nightgown from her drawer and places it on the bed.

In the next scene, Jack is outside running with the gown, desperate to hide it. Clearly terrified of being caught, he sends it down the river. There is a strong implication here that Jack did something resulting in “evidence” being left on the gown. The first couple times I saw the film, I thought, “Surely not.” Now, I firmly believe this is exactly what occurred. When Jack returns home with a guilty conscience, he wants to confess but can not bring himself to do so. Unable to bear his mother's piercing look which seems to have a direct line to his soul, he tells her, “I can't talk to you. Don't look at me.”

It is clear Jack fears his own immorality. “What have I started? What have I done?” He begins to notice and resent the relative grace of his brother. In Jack's eyes, the middle son is favored by his parents. In a lovely, earlier scene we see Mr. O'Brien playing the piano as the middle son, sitting out on the patio with his guitar, picks up the tune and plays it himself. Mr. O'Brien stops, takes notice, and appears pleased. Jack's brother also enjoys painting; he has the artistic connection with his father, and the graceful demeanor of his mother.

So it happens that Jack begins to test his brother. They race and wrestle in the yard. Jack sees him painting at the kitchen table and pours water all over the paper. His mother demands that he come back and apologize. “No!” Jack screams. “I'm not gonna do everything you tell me to. I'm gonna do what I want. What do you know? You let him run all over you.” Jack knows he is doing wrong, and does it anyway. “How do I get back where they are,” he wonders.

When his father returns, Jack can no longer run wild and free. Mr. O'Brien says, “There are things you can't do? Well, there are thing I can't do either.” When Jack talks back and gets shot down, he says, “It's your house. You can kick me out whenever you want to. You'd like to kill me.” He asks his mother, “Why was he born?” Later, he sees his father working underneath the car and considers pulling out the jack. “Please God, kill him. Let him die. Get him outta here.”

Finally, Jack's descent culminates in a betrayal of his brother as they are out shooting a BB gun in the forest. “Put your finger over it. Come on.” Hesitant, but trusting, the boy places his finger over the muzzle. Jack fires, and his brother runs off to cry alone in a field. Jack explains, in a direct reference to Romans 7:15, “What I want to do I can't do. I do what I hate.” Later he hands his brother a board and says, “You can hit me if you want to.” Instead, his brother does not answer violence with violence, he simply forgives. “I'm sorry,” Jack tells him. His brother, standing over him, gently touches his hand, then his shoulder, and finally the top of his head.

At that moment, we see a strong, healthy tree in the yard. Jack has taken a step toward grace. We see the river, once after the betrayal and again after the act is forgiven, which links us to a similar incident in a distant time. This river, much more shallow during the Creation sequence, was the site of a moment of grace within nature. A dinosaur came upon a weaker, wounded dinosaur lying on the rocks. The dominant dinosaur stomped on the weaker dinosaur's head, then relented. In a surprising turn of events, the dominant dinosaur did not destroy the weak one. He simply walked on, and let him be.

“What was it you showed me,” Jack asks. “I didn't know how to name you then. But I see it was you. Always you were calling me.” In another simple, poignant moment we see Jack playing with the neighborhood boy scarred by the fire. They are hopping on cans tied with rope, but the scarred boy's rope comes loose. As the boy tries to fix it, Jack intervenes, repairing it for him. Then he tenderly places his hand on the boy's shoulder, as his brother had done to him. Afterward, he returns home and helps his father in the garden. Jack is moving toward a state of grace, following in the footsteps of his mother and brother. We already know that once he grows older, he will become distant, he will forget. This is what he lost along the way, and what he wishes to find again.

Mr. O'Brien too begins to see the error of his ways. The plant where he works is closed down, and his only option is a transfer to an undesirable job in another city. “I wanted to be loved because I was great. A big man. I'm nothing... ...I lived in shame. I dishonored it all and didn't notice the glory.” Sitting outside on the curb, lost in thought, Mr. O'Brien still wonders how it could have happened to him. “I never missed a day of work. I tithed every Sunday.” When he tells Jack he knows he has been tough on him, Jack replies, “I'm as bad as you are. I'm more like you than her.”

The boys mourn, all three together and separately, knowing they will be saying goodbye to the only home they have ever known. A small Texas town that was, for them, the universe. As their grandmother said, “Nothing stays the same.” The universe is in constant flux. The house is empty, someone else will move in. Left behind are only echoes, memories. Buried mementos under the tree in the yard. Their mother offers a parting message, “The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by.” Human lives, for all their brevity, are made meaningful and worthwhile through love, family, acceptance, kindness. We hope these are the echoes future generations will hear.

It may seem that I have summarized most of the film, that I've “spoiled it”, perhaps. Not so. I have seen the picture four times now, and I'm still picking up on things. There are countless riches I have not revealed here. This is an intensely visual film whose images mean different things to different people. I can only offer my reading of the The Tree of Life, I can not predict yours. The “plot” of the film can not be spoiled as there isn't one. One can not point to this movie and say it is about anything specific. It is, quite honestly, about everything. It's about what everything means to you. Your outlook on life? Your religion? Your lack of religion? These factors can make your eyes see The Tree of Life differently than mine, and therein lies its beauty as a work of art.

As I mentioned in my last article, those who do not see film as anything more than simple entertainment will not be ready for The Tree of Life. This is a picture that expects much from its audience, one's mind must prepare itself for that rare thing in a movie theater: intelligent thought. Even though I see The Tree of Life as a Christian film, I'm not sure many Christians will appreciate it. Christians have been inundated for so long with bad art, bad music, etc., I can not help but question whether they will recognize something that isn't spelled out for them. I think too many Christians place a value on the intent, as opposed to the result. For example, if a song praises God in an obvious manner, then it is great by default. I disagree. I think God deserves better music, better films, and so on. Courageous was spoon-fed to a specific audience, but The Tree of Life is an infinitely superior film that can speak to all humanity.

Keep in mind as you watch the final scenes, where characters throughout the film meet again on a seashore; they are only as trite as you choose to interpret them. If you see this as a vision of Heaven or the literal afterlife, then yes, it may follow that, “Malick dropped the ball here.” Personally, I am convinced this is not Malick's vision of Heaven. This is Jack's reverie, after passing through the doorway, and metaphorically completing his journey. For me, this is where all the people who were part of that life's journey, from the most inconsequential to the most instrumental, have gathered. Loved ones, in an ageless state, are reunited. Young, old, there is no time in this place. Notice the hand, aged and withered, becomes young again. It is here that Jack finally understands his mother's resolve. Her heart healed. She gave her child to God, willingly. This is the culmination of one man's spiritual journey through memory, reflection, and introspection to find God and eternity in a world filled with contradictions.

In the end, we see something surprising from this man who, until now, has seemed so cold, so lost. We get a little smile. We see a bridge spanning a river. One state of mind has been left behind, another has been attained. It is accomplished.