Tree of Life (2011)

Terrence Malick’s latest ruminating avant-garde cinematic riff is “Tree of Life,” a 2 hour 20 minute drama about the creation of the universe and life itself, a 1950s small-town Texas family and the tragedy that befalls them, and a man seemingly lost or aloof in a city seemingly made of glass, steel, concrete and little of anything organic. That is, of life.

It ends on a beach in a wondrous scene that makes the finale of “Lost” seem as straightforward as a Hallmark card. Without the plane and dog, naturally.

It’s taken me more than a week – almost two to be exact – to even collect my thoughts on this voyage through Malick’s view of God, the universe, life, birth, family and death. Words failed me. Still do.

The movie is that good. Maddeningly so.

Then I realized the answer was in front of me, staring at me in the face. It is in the film’s poster, which I luckily snagged from the local artsy movie theater. (I got connections, don’t hate.) The poster contains 70-some images from the film, stills that represent memories of the film like snapshots from a family album, memories, a group of postcards from the universe’s beginnings to the film’s end.

Finally, I got it.

“Tree of Life” is about memories, the aloof man (the family is his, from childhood) and maybe God’s memories. Or Malick’s version of God, looking back at the universe He created out of nothing and then brought to an end. (That’s my theory on the end, it is the rapture.)

In its editing, “Tree” eschews linear design, dialogue, action and time. We witness dinosaurs hunting in a river that we later will see the Texas children traipse through as they play. This is pure Malick -- a polarizing, perplexing, maddening (that word again) and utterly fascinating filmmaker, maybe the best one of our day. (David Lynch being the top. In my book.)

“Badlands” and “Days of Heaven” are among my favorite films, and I’m still mesmerized by “The Thin Red line,” Malick’s World War II drama. The man would rather show forest animals and birds fleeing a South Pacific gun battle than show the men fighting and bullets whizzing by. It is that view that fascinates me, not just outside the box, but outside the world the box is in.

Here in “Tree,” more than any other film, he is saying we humans with all our dramas are part of something much larger than ourselves. As a friend wrote on Facebook the other day, referring to a Rick Warren book, “It ain’t about you.” Or something to that affect.

This is not a film for everyone. Its legion of fans may be rivaled if not well outnumbered by its detractors, many fine and decent (and some stupid ones I’m sure) folks who have walked out lost or outright angry at the inscrutable images of God’s first light breaking the darkness of space, giant fish, cells, blades of grass, waterfalls, cars, bi-planes, and fields of sunflowers. And then much of 2 hours of children playing.

Yes, God figures into this film in a major way, as the Creator of our world and the seemingly absentee Father that he now appears to be. (Go on, debate away. I debate myself on it.)

Sean Penn is Jack, the aloof man/architect in the city, looking back on his childhood, with his overly strict father (Brad Pitt) and his luminous, angelic mother (Jessica Chastain), and two brothers, the most innocent of who will die years later. For reasons never shared.

(News interruption: Malick grew up in 1950s Texas, and had a younger brother who committed suicide at 19. The brother dies at 19.)

Adult Jack lives with a woman, maybe his wife, who he does not look at. Jack’s childhood scenes take up the majority of the film, and they are among the best of Malick’s work: Snippets, chunks and wide-swaths of Jack’s memories and barely recalled dreams are all innocent, terrible and scary. Rebellious, too. As is childhood, no?

Young Jack (Hunter McCracken) climbs trees – the title tree is in the family’s front yard – and swims, and talks his little brother into sticking a metal wire in lamp (it’s not plugged in) and putting his little finger over a barrel of a bb-gun (oops, it’s loaded).

I’ve never seen a film the better captures interaction of a family. The beautiful simpleness. To Jack, the mother is the perfect loving God(dess), and in one scene she floats in the air above the family tree. Like God would.

Dad is not that by far. He will toss the dinner table over to hit one of the children who dares disobey him. He is wrathful. In one scene young Jack sees an opportunity to kill his father. He leaves it be. We can take this as a troubled child reacting to his parents, or as one friend (go Dana!) suggested, mother is the New Testament God, father the Old Testament. My father wasn't Dick van Dyke for sure, and, man, that scene hit close to home. Been there. Dreamed that.

Indeed, church is a major part of the family’s life, and when a child friend drowns (it is shown from afar, but still packs a stomach punch) or a polio-stricken man walks by, the children are confused, befuddled, and ask their parents why God would let such things happen. As do all or most children. As did I, as many of the themes and actions in this film I directly experienced. I at age 9 watched a child drown. It still haunts me. When the youngest boy later dies as a young man, the mother asks God the same question, why?

Malick reaches far. The dinosaurs are too damn much. I only think the ending is the Rapture, some Christ-like figure appears. But the man is reaching. Who does that nowadays? To make a film that will divide audiences and get a group of adults talking about a film for more than a week, as has happened in my circle of friends?

No one is making films like this right now, going for such high themes as God, daring to freely mix the theories of creation and evolution, the universe and our place in it. Children playing, pranking and smashing windows.

This is what filmmaking is supposed to be out, right, the art form of our time? Abstracts welcomed. Love it or hate it, just see it. And see it on the big screen where it belongs. A