This is an attempt to look beyond the shadows on the screen and figure them out. It's just one guy's take. Subjectivity, remember? Maybe I can sprinkle a few bread crumbs for others — you know, Doc Jensen-style — or maybe I'll lead you right into a dead end.
The first thing that struck me on a repeat viewing of the movie was what Brad Pitt's aging father character is doing in one of the first scenes he shares with the mother, played by Jessica Chastain. He stands in the yard, clutching a hose in the middle, kinking the flow off. Something terrible has just happened to them. So okay, let me explain why this seemed noteworthy the second time I saw it The movie opens with them learning about the death of their middle son played by mini-Pitt look-alike Laramie Eppler.
It's later in their lives, much later than what the majority of the movie dwells on, and we find out the boy — R. The news is delivered via telegram, which is also the way many families found out their sons had died in combat. It's one of the miracles of this movie that nearly everyone who has seen it deduces that's how he died, though we never get any confirmation.
We really don't even learn right away that he's dead. She reads the telegram, begins to sob, mentions her son — and calls the father, who is away on business at an airstrip, plugging his ear to hear over the phone what the audience does not.
It's easy lipreading. Again, we don't explicitly learn that a death has occurred. The next scene is Pitt and Chastain together, doing what they did a lot of as a young family — hanging out in their yard, walking the neighborhood. We hear her say in voice-over that she wants to die, to be with her son — which is as plain as the movie makes it.
And this is where I noticed Pitt's character doing something that helps explain his personality, though it's easy to overlook. He's shooing away neighbors, telling them he and his wife are all right, they? Chastain is pouring her heart out to an older woman Fiona Shaw playing either her mother, or her mother-in-law, or possibly just a kindly aunt or neighbor. She turns up in flashes in some of the memories, so she?
She offers some pale comfort while the mother of a lost son weeps. What does Pitt do? He stands by, clutching a hose — but it's what he's doing with the hose that is noteworthy. The water is running, but it's not flowing out. He has it bent in half, kinked shut. Of course! His wife clearly needs some comfort, but he has pinched his emotions shut just as surely as he has the flow of water from that hose.
As the rest of the movie plays out, we see that most of his conflict with the sons occurred over the lawn — had the boys done their yard work? He didn't think so. And many hard scenes of scolding the oldest boy, Jack, took place over the bare patches in the yard — an outlet for the father's own pent-up hostilities.
In another sequence, the father is sharing a rare moment of joy with his boys. What's he doing? Spraying them playfully with that hose. Near the end of the movie, but many years before the scene with the kinked hose when the father is truly laid low by failure, he has a heart-to-heart with Jack, apologizing for his harshness, saying he isn't proud of it, and explaining why he wanted to make the boy tough.
In that scene, the only one where he truly lets his feelings out, the hose is also present, hooked up to a sprinkler that is gushing, sending a plume of water into the air, and scattering it wide. When does the father spill it, and when does he hold it back? In the times he erupts in anger at the dinner table, it's usually after pouring a glass. Water may turn out to be the father's tell, a peek inside his deeply suppressed emotions.
And it also reveals something about the boy who becomes a man. The first images we have of adult Jack are of Penn waking up, going to his faucet, turning on the water to full flow and running his hand underneath. Not only that, but in moments of extreme emotion, Malick flashes to images of a powerful, crashing waterfall. A little obvious? But in a movie about life, what better to stand in for the emotions we keep secret than water, without which this world would be as barren as its neighbors in the solar system?
It's clear from her opening narration, presented in the trailer for the movie too, that Malick is using the father and mother to explore the ideas of ''nature'' — that is, the philosophy of the brutal survival of the fittest — and ''grace,'' the choice to be merciful, gentle, and nurturing.
The father is ''nature,'' and the mother is ''grace,'' though each depends on the other, and I'd say they simultaneously crave and loathe each other's qualities. The very first shots of The Tree of Life are of a barn door opening, and a very young girl pushing through to find and cradle a tiny baby goat. Who is she? The movie holds back identification, though my guess from the freckles and ginger hair is that this is the mother as a child. We only see the father as a grown man, but Malick allows us to see the mother as a girl, and I think it informs how we see her the rest of the movie.
On screen for most of The Tree of Life , it's the beautiful, very womanly Jessica Chastain — but I think Malick plants the thought in our mind with those early shots of the little redheaded girl that the mother is still very much a child. When we see her frolicking with her boys — flying back and forth on a tree swing, being chased around the house by her boys with a lizard, and sitting helplessly at the dining room table as her husband rages at the family By not specifying who the girl from the barn actually is, by leaving that question open, Malick creates a vacuum.
We want an answer, and fill in the blank with the mother because of the physical similarities. It's a way to subtly position us to see her in a certain way, without explicitly judging her. The father is someone who squeezes shut the pressures inside himself, building to bursts and explosions, while she's harmless, and helpless, and as innocent as Mary with her little lamb well, little goat.
The movie's very first image is what some people are calling ''the flame,'' though it looks to me more like light refracted through water — a hazy, flowing glow. No available picture, sorry.
Instead, this canyon shot, which kind of parallels its shape. What is this glow? We hear the voice of a boy when we see it I think it's Jack, the eldest saying ''mother'' and ''brother'' in a prayer-like intonation.
This shapelessness appears periodically through the film, usually when there is a major transition — the opening, the final shot, the switch from the news of the death of the boy to a flashback of epochal proportions: the very origin of the universe.
I've read some theories that this flame is supposed to be the Creator — call it God if you like, or think of it any other way. But my theory is that it's the soul — Jack's soul specifically. Remember the bit about subjectivity?
Well, I think Malick is giving us license there to interpret everything as we see fit, but the entire focus of the movie is told from one subjective perspective: Jack's. Even the flashes of his mother as a little girl.. Can't you imagine your mother as a child, though none of us were alive then? It fits with the idea, by the way, that we're supposed to think of her that way if it's how her son does too. But there's another possibility, too.
We see the ''flame'' — or soul — image again when Malick begins his long flashback to the Big Bang, the origin of galaxies, and the formation of the earth. All things Jack couldn't witness, of course, unless Well, it's the soul, right? Removed from earthly ken.
Maybe it CAN see all those things, and the mother as a child, and everything else. I think the entirety of The Tree of Life is not ''adult Jack'' reflecting on his life, but Jack's soul reflecting on its place in existence, looking beyond the shadows of Plato's cave. This includes the very strange beach scene at the end, taken by many to be heaven. Could the flame be God?
All options are on the table, but as I said, I think it's Jack's spirit. Perhaps God turns up elsewhere in the film. More on that later. Probably the biggest ''What the hell? Not only are there dinosaurs in this movie, which is ostensibly about a suburban Texas family in the s, but Their interaction is just as peculiar as their presence.
So we see the galaxy forming, the sun, the earth emerges from the haze. Then things start to bubble and boil. Bacteria form, then we see some jellyfish — as simple as a multicelled life-form can get — and then a soft, pink axolotl swims along a modern animal that looks like one of nature's prototypes and assorted other certified Weirdos of the Deep, indicating that life on Earth is chugging along nicely. Then a lovely shot of the lapping surf turns to reveal a massive dinosaur of the Loch Ness Monster variety, perhaps an elasmosaurus, which has pushed up onto the land despite its possession of flippers instead of feet.
The camera reveals a massive, bloody bite taken out of its side, and the next shot is of a school of hammerheads swarming in the tide. But then we get our second view of dinosaurs, these being land dwellers.
A tiny one wanders the primeval forest, clearly small and most likely lost, given its plaintive noises and desperate glances. We next see it alone on some pebbles beside a stream — not necessarily wounded, but obviously in pain and probably exhausted and starving. Some other dinosaurs in the background hear something and run off as a larger one emerges into the stream.
Not a roaring tyrannosaurus or anything, but a bigger, presumably hungrier prehistoric badass. It finds the worn-out youngster and slams its foot down on its head. Surely, the little one is about to become a snack. Then lifts it again. Then down.
Its hesitancy almost becomes like a comforting pat. Obviously, the big dinosaur doesn't say, ''Hey, buddy, where are your parents?
Let's go get you something to eat. But it doesn't kill the weak little one, either. Top cast Edit. Brad Pitt Mr. O'Brien as Mr. Sean Penn Jack as Jack. Jessica Chastain Mrs. O'Brien as Mrs. Laramie Eppler R. Tye Sheridan Steve as Steve. Fiona Shaw Grandmother as Grandmother. Jessica Fuselier Guide as Guide. Nicolas Gonda Mr. Reynolds as Mr. Will Wallace Architect as Architect.
Bryce Boudoin Robert as Robert. Jimmy Donaldson Jimmy as Jimmy. Kameron Vaughn Cayler as Cayler. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father Brad Pitt. Jack played as an adult by Sean Penn finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.
Rated PG for some thematic material. Did you know Edit. Trivia Dissatisfied by the look of modern computer generated visual effects, director Terrence Malick approached veteran special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull , who was responsible for the visual effects in A Space Odyssey , to create the visual effects for the film using bygone optical and practical methods.
This marks the first feature film Trumbull has provided the effects for in 29 years, his last being Blade Runner Goofs When Mr. O'Brien receives the terrible news at the beginning of the movie by phone, the camera and camera operator are reflected in the handset. Quotes Mrs. Crazy credits There are no opening credits. Alternate versions In September , Criterion Collection released the minute extended version, which restores several vignettes and additional scenes.
The additions are as follows: When Mrs. O'Brien learns of R. L's death in Vietnam, there are more shots of her in the bed. After that, a neighbor's boy brings over some food. There are additional shots of adult Jack walking around the office building including walking into a masked ball. Adult Jack visits the museum. He is always accompanied by a woman, while he seems to lose himself more and more in the past.
There is an additional montage of adult Jack encountering shady characters before it ends of him sitting in the airplane in panic. Steve and R. L look at the chicks that have fallen off from their nest. An additional vignette of Jack and his mother, which establishes the insight of his activities including lassoing and weeding. Dad then checks on Steve whether if he has finished. In the dining scene after that, Mr. O'Brien drinks from a bottle of Tabasco. O'Brien learns of a mishap that befell his father.
Jack talks to the other boys about his experience with the three-legged dog while the children played with it. L tells his mother that she's not old yet, then while mixing she accidentally mixes with her hand. Jack goes out to the lawn with his father while Mother watches from the inside longer. The Uncle Roy Mrs. O'Brien's brother vignette is put back and his presence excites and makes the three boys happy.
However Mr. O'Brien is not happy about his brother-in-law and unceremoniously kicks him out of the house because he makes the boys turn away from him. Note: This is one of the two longest restored sequences Another vignette has Jack and his friend ravaging the latter's house.
Some viewers may find this conclusion moving; I was instead reminded of the finale of Lost , a comparison that can in no way be construed as a compliment. Malick has been down this road before. When woven into a narrative, his extraordinary visual eye and reliance on introspective voiceover can bring depth and power to even the slenderest story. But without that tether, his talents can meander, as they did in the errant middle portion of The Thin Red Line.
Structurally, The Tree of Life is an inversion of that film: an engrossing central tale bookended by preambles that never quite adhere and a conclusion that, rather than help unify the whole, spins it into another dimension altogether.
The result is a beautiful, messy film: at times lyrical, intimate, and uplifting; at others, vast, inscrutable, and maddening. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe.
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