The American Spectator : The Tree of Life

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The Tree of Life

By James Bowman on 7.18.11 @ 6:02AM

Pretentiousness never had it so good.

In a recent number of the Times Literary Supplement, Peter Singer paid an extravagant tribute to Derek Parfit, the ethicist whose magnum opus, On What Matters, he calls "the most significant work in ethics" in more than a century. Whether he is right or not, I am not competent to judge, but I do notice a blemish on the great man's splendid surface that has apparently escaped Professor Singer's attention. See if you can spot it.

Parfit also asks a less obvious question about all of human existence. If a massive asteroid hit Earth tomorrow, ending human history, would it have been a good thing that humans existed at all? Our answer may depend, Parfit thinks, not only on how we balance the suffering that has resulted from human existence against the happiness it has brought, but also on what weight we give to the badness of the fact that some people suffered greatly without having anything to compensate them for their suffering. Parfit answers his own question affirmatively, holding that human existence to this point has been a good thing, but he acknowledges that this may be wishful thinking.

Yet first of all, surely, our answer must depend on the fact that we ourselves are human, and that questions of value such as this are questions that only human beings are equipped to answer. They are therefore meaningless apart from the very humanity which is supposedly the matter under debate. In other words, it would not be possible for human existence to have been other than a good thing, since without human existence there would be no knowledge of good and therefore no good things. If the notion of a good thing is itself a good thing -- as how can it not be? -- then human existence must be a good thing. Indeed, the first and indispensable good thing.

Both of these professors are guilty, in my view, of a category mistake, and I bring it up because a director considered by many to be as great in his field as Professor Parfit is in his has made a similar mistake in his (inevitably) great movie, The Tree of Life, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year. This is Terrence Malick, director of previous pretentious movies like The Thin Red Line and The New World whose new movie, for all its visual splendor, outdoes even them in its pretentiousness. Like the poet John Milton in Paradise Lost, Mr. Malick sets out "to justify the ways of God to man" but seemingly without any recognition of the same disproportion between question and questioner that eludes Derek Parfit and Peter Singer. Like them, Mr. Malick is a man who does not know his own place in the scheme of things -- which is inevitably one of humility before the Creator or at least the reality principle. And just as we suspect they cannot have much to tell us about ethics, so Mr. Malick has little to tell us about God, save for a few banalities about bigness.

Theodicy implies this essential recognition of disproportion. God, we must understand, simply by taking up the subject, is our Judge and not to be judged by us -- by putting "God in the Dock" in C.S. Lewis's words. The most we can hope for is to give some account of Him that will make Him marginally less inscrutable to our fellow creatures. There is no such humility or sense of proportion in The Tree of Life. Terrence Malick himself assumes the role of God, his camera showing us what only God could see, including the formation of the earth's surface from primordial volcanic eruptions, the early aeons of evolution and the destruction of the dinosaurs by the silent impact -- perhaps since none but dinosaurs are around to hear -- of what we surmise is the asteroid supposed to have caused the Cretaceous extinction. Mr. Malick's CGI dinosaurs smell of popcorn and Junior Mints, however, and look annoyingly like Jar Jar Binks. No wonder God smote them with the asteroid.

There are also various star-scapes and space-scapes placed side-by-side with what appear to be microscopic views of life on earth ("The ant's a centaur in his dragon world/Pull down thy vanity," as Uncle Ezra Pound once put it in words that Mr. Malick should take to heart), but such insistence on disproportion between man as questioner and the cosmos does not bring God any closer to us and to our human understanding, as Milton seeks to do, but instead just drives us further apart from Him. The justification of God to man here is that God is too remote from man to be justified. Like Derek Parfit, Mr. Malick is reduced to asking questions of the cosmos only to show us that he's wise enough to know there are no answers. What's the use of that? It looks like disingenuous posturing to me.

And where he and his everlasting voiceovers wax sententious it too often comes out in pseudo-profundities like this: "There are two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow." Really? It's always seemed to me that most people follow both at different times. And to say that "no one who lives the way of Grace ever comes to a bad end" is absurd -- unless he's teasing us about what we're meant to think is the end. Or how about: "The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by." But love doesn't always bring happiness, and anyone of Mr. Malick's age must know that your life will flash by even if you don't love. Most remarkably, I suspect we are supposed to take seriously the child's reproach to God: "Why should I be good when He's not?" In the same way, his dad tells him not to put his elbows on the table and then does it himself. Not exactly a Miltonian reflection.

The child in this case is the apparently autobiographical figure of Jack O'Brien (Hunter McCracken), a boy of ten or eleven whose story (such as it is) dominates the middle part of the film before and after the much bigger events and images of the beginning and the end. Jack is one of three boys living in Waco, Texas, in the 1950s, the sons of a partly tyrannical and partly sensitive and loving father, played by Brad Pitt, and an entirely loving and strikingly beautiful mother played by Jessica Chastain. But these people just are. They have no place to go. In keeping with what is now standard Hollywood procedure, the movie is all mood and no narrative. There is almost no story and what there is is carefully flattened and purged of shape and meaning. Typical scenes from a 1950s-era boyhood are well observed but have no obvious connection to anything else, let alone everything else -- life, the universe and God.

There is, it's true, an implied narrative involving the death of an unidentified boy by drowning and, later, that of one of Jack's two brothers at the age of 19, or about a decade later than the time in which the rest of the film's events (apart from the cosmic ones) are set. Both deaths set up a questioning of God, but the latter exists only as a flash-forward to the parents' reactions to the news -- and those of an otherwise absent grandparent played by Fiona Shaw. We don't know how he died or even what happened as a result of his death, apart from the initial shock of the news, but we are informed of it by cinematic telegram only so that periodic whispered voiceovers asking God (or Whomever) "Why?" have the bare minimum of context -- if still no answers.

No, I take that back. There is a kind of answer. The grown-up Jack, an architect in Houston and in our own time who is played by Sean Penn, is depicted near the end of the film walking on the beach like Richard Nixon, in a suit and tie, and encountering lots of other people on the beach similarly just milling about, though they are not so well-dressed as he. As these others include mom and dad and brothers as they were decades earlier (though Jack remains his grown-up self), I assume that we have here a representation of eternity, if not one that promises very much in the way of consolation for Jack's losses, let alone ours. It's nice to know that everybody's still around, somewhere. Perhaps Jar Jar and his extinct pals are as well, though we don't see them on the beach. But none of this makes any more sense of existence than we had before we paid our ten or twelve dollars. Maybe it's movies like this that make people wonder whether human existence can really be a good thing.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (22) | Leave a comment

gearjammer| 7.18.11 @ 8:05AM

I can't wait not to see this one.

Alan Brooks| 7.18.11 @ 11:19PM

All been done:
there will never be a better film than A Man For All Seasons (and naturally since we wont see the Tree Of Life, we can't discuss it).

HOWEVER, A Man For all Seasons is not a Protestant film no matter what anyone says. More wanted to stop Henry from breaking with the Church-- you can't get around that; no way you can square that circle.

Cosmo| 7.21.11 @ 12:44AM

James Bowman is a terrible writer...
His aritcles give me a headache...
He doesn't review the movies, he goes on and on
about his opinions which are worthless to the
average person...Get a better movier reviewer,
please...

Appleby| 7.18.11 @ 10:11AM

Miss it if you can.

C Smith| 7.18.11 @ 10:26AM

"God is too remote from man to be justified"?

That was true. God was too remote. I remember as a child looking into the darkness, looking for God and seeing nothing. Then I discovered Yeshua:

"...the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist... who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven" (Col 1:15-20).

Peter McGrath| 7.18.11 @ 10:33AM

This film evoked memories from my own boyhood and, despite somewhat grating gnostic ruminations aside (noted by Mr Bowman above), the film is wondrous. No other film maker has ever depicted human life from such a broad perspective - life seen through the prism of the creator and his evolving creation.

Kubrick's "2001" took us from the dawn of man to a newer version of humanity. Malick takes us from the origins of the universe to life in 1950's America and, then, to the afterlife(!). It's heady and miraculous and, for me, was a reminder of the miracle of my very existence.

I saw "Tree of Life" a second time trying to unlock its mysteries.

Dai Alanye| 7.18.11 @ 11:23AM

As for displaying the creation of Earth, this has already been done in the first Fantasia, and to the accompaniment of evocative music.

For the rest of it: "Presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man."

This fellow wants to have it both ways.

masly| 7.18.11 @ 12:28PM

The imagery, cinematography and music are awe-inspiring. The individual performances are compelling (especially Ms. Chastain and the children). I strongly recommend this remarkable film to all at TAS.
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A Balrog of Morgoth| 7.18.11 @ 7:22PM

LOL at that masterful segue into a non-sequitur, "Doctor."

Goofy| 7.21.11 @ 12:46AM

Dr.Lydia: Please go away...You are a boring old hag and a prostitute...

canuckistani| 7.18.11 @ 12:58PM

After seeing the absurd praise for Atlas Shrugged Part one on here, it is clear the AS has no right to a franchise on movie criticism.

The worldwide reviews of the film ranged from wondrous to an epic failure. If one follows Malick, then he accomplished precisely what he was looking for. He does not do interviews meaning his work alone is his voice, and that takes guts to not even attempt to qualify it in the media.
"No apology" truly is his mantra as opposed to some observers here that use it as a punchline.

mames| 7.18.11 @ 3:24PM

This is one of the most unhelpful, confused and verbose reviews I have ever read. I'll go see the movie just to unravel the confusion you created.

Mark Edward Edens| 7.18.11 @ 1:03PM

James Bowman should have kept in mind that Terrence Malick almost certainly doesn't believe in God, at least not in any traditional sense. "The Tree of Life" is an attempt to justify existence, not God, to man. The mother and father in the movie are religious, but the son (Sean Penn) finds himself unable to share their faith, but has nothing to take its place.

What Malick offers to fill that spiritual void is an awareness of our part in an on-going act of creation billions of years old. The choice is between being angry at or overwhelmed by our individual smallness, impotence, and brief time of existence, or surrendering to the tide (lots of shots of moving water) of life that inevitably carries us away but also created us. The shot of Sean Penn looking up at what might seem a soul-less, machine-like steel and glass skyscraper and noticing the beautiful sky reflected in it sums up his conversion: as an architect (no coincidence), he's also a creator. What he needs to do to find happiness is to embrace his small role rather than curse his relative powerlessness. In effect, to love God (the creative universe), rather than criticize His creation.

Bowman should also keep in mind that the voice-overs are the characters speaking, not Malick (a shockingly elementary mistake for a reviewer to make). The choice between "nature" and "grace" that the mother mentions, with the expectation that nothing bad will happen to the person of grace, is one made by Christians of limited understanding -- those who find their faith shattered when something bad happens to a loved one. The movie suggests that nature and grace are the same: the challenge is to accept both (and it's a tribute to Malick's maturity that he doesn't present it as an easy challenge to answer).

The same is true of the son's question of why he should be good when "He isn't" -- or "he isn't": the question can apply to both God and the boy's father. This is in a nutshell the human problem that arises from modern science: if God (or "the universe") is amoral, what basis do we have for choosing one behavior over another?

Bowman's remark about the dinosaurs resembling Jar-Jar Binks is just a cheap shot, and unworthy of a reviewer who over the years has led me to a number of excellent movies that I might not have discovered otherwise.

Having said all this, "The Tree of Life" is far from a perfect movie. The scene on the beach at the end (which is purely metaphorical -- hence the suit) is an over-sentimental intrusion that seemed to belong in "The Six People You Meet in Heaven" -- and may have have misled the audience into thinking that Malick really was showing a vision of heaven, instead of a metaphor for life. It would and been braver and better story-telling (and would have shown more faith in the audience) to dramatize Sean Penn's acceptance in the real world, with his change of heart resonating in how he led his life. Images like the skyscraper shot I mentioned earlier would have been enough to convey the philosophical content.

The creation sequence seemed to belabor his point as well -- it's an interesting idea to put a personal story in the context of all of existence, but after a couple of eons, you get it, already.

The decision to have the one son (who looked amazingly like an eight-year-old version of Brad Pitt) die at nineteen was baffling from a story-telling point of view. It made his death less emotional and less real for the audience.

Malick's movies are more enjoyable and I think more effective when he has a strong story or extremely dramatic situation to propel them (war in "The Thin Red Line," a love story and clash of cultures in "The New World," criminals on the run in "Badlands.") The images and philosophical considerations that James Bowman finds pretentious don't overwhelm a movie when presented in the midst of G.I.'s storming hills or colonists fighting Indians. The dream-like childhood memories and intense family drama in "The Tree of Life" are brilliantly done, but the artsy meditations feel like an intrusion, despite how integral they are to the larger "meaning" of the story.

Margie| 7.18.11 @ 1:36PM

"For He did not put the world, the one
coming, under angels, about which we speak,
but one fully testified somewhere, saying,
“What is man, that You are mindful of
him; or the son of man, that You look upon
him?”" Heb. 2:5 & 6.

e track from saq| 7.18.11 @ 7:23PM

The world that was.That somehow we let slip away.Oh,what peace that generation of children where blessed with.Funny how those same little devils grew up and pissed on this country with their leftist ways.Am I the only person who felt they wern't spanked enough?

June deChin| 7.18.11 @ 8:09PM

>In other words, it would not be possible for human existence to have been other than a good thing, since without human existence there would be no knowledge of good and therefore no good things.

That's terrible logic. At a minimum, it's begging the question.

POST American| 7.18.11 @ 10:08PM

---With all that's unfolding and unlooked at
all around us here and worldwide ----is this the
'best' Hollywood has to offer?

Pitt's gotten more 'earnestness clotted' than
an AT&T public service announcement.

Still another reason why movies, in 2011
--are nowhere.

C Smith| 7.19.11 @ 1:25AM

People milling about on the beach, a representation of eternity?

This is not a valid portrayal, either of this side of eternity or eternity to come. The destination of the clueless beach wonderers is an intermediate abode between death and the final Judgment. The abode of The Congregation of the Damned:

Under our feet this very moment is a subterranean world. The Hebrew Scriptures refer to it as the pit, the abyss, the nether parts of the earth, Abaddon.... No, it is not Hell. Hell is not yet. The Judgment must come first. The name of this present shadow land is called Sheol.

"Asshur is there and all her company... all of them slain, fallen by the sword... which caused terror in the land of the living" (Ezekiel 32:22-23).

"There is Elam and all her multitude... fallen by the sword, which are gone down uncircumcised into the nether parts of the earth, which caused their terror in the land of the living" (Ezekiel 32:24).

There is Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude... they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen... which are gone down to Sheol with their weapons of war: and they have laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living" (Ezekiel 32:26-27).

There is Edom, her kings, and all her princes, which with their might are laid by them that were slain by the sword: they shall lie with the uncircumcised, and with them that go down to the pit" (Ezekiel 32:29).

"There be the princes of the north... with their terror they are ashamed of their might; and they lie uncircumcised with them that be slain by the sword...." (Ezekiel 32:30).

"Sheol from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to Sheol, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee" (Isaiah 14:9-11).

Joseph Hewitt| 7.19.11 @ 5:18AM

It is a North Carolina Fraser Fir. Is what I was told true? What is the best way to care for a live tree?
http://brainformation.netnetnet

Mistral| 7.20.11 @ 4:30PM

On viewing this film (the British word) I felt in its vast postmodernistness that it was satisfying on an emotional and visual level. The evolutionary overtone made me grin cynically & Brad Pitt as the ultimately repentant father was a nice gratuitous touch which did not fool my intensely aroused sensibilities for one moment. As wife abuser I have to admit I was as convinced by his role as I was his ulterior motives. Chastain is beautiful and I loved being with her throughout the entire cinematographic ordeal. The soundtrack is really very good and I particularly enjoyed the aimless immensity of the entire episode from the big bang through the big asteroid to the big Pittian ego. If I was asked to recommend this movie (the American word) I certainly would as it is like losing one's conscious intellectual orientation for over two hours allowing us to escape the ever-swelling unemployment queues; the still-declining value of our national and supra-national currencies together with investment portfolios and the apparent daily hopelessness of our material situation in the face of increasing masonic control of the international economy and body politic.
Anything is worth escaping all that even if only for a couple of hours.