Imagine staring at an impressionist painting for 139 minutes, all the while trying to make sense of its seemingly random shapes, lines, and textures. Your eyes trace a thread of blue across two-thirds of the canvas, only to see it stop without provocation; you momentarily spot what you believe is a cluster of triangles, only to watch it disappear into disarray.
While you’re gazing at the painting, one of two things happens: you either gain nothing from the experience, or you see something no one else has. Either way, you’re glad when your time is up. Now imagine the painting is a 139-minute movie. That’s what it’s like to watch “Tree of Life,” the new film from Terrence Malick, a celebrated director who specializes in cinematic tone poems. Granted, the presence of movement and sound probably make watching his movie more exciting than staring at a painting, but the end result is the same: you will either walk away upset over having wasted your time and money on nonsensical, self-indulgent art house twaddle, or you will take away something unique.
I experienced both extremes. On one hand, I felt as though I had watched a pointless montage of beautiful images. On the other hand, I gained a sense of humanity’s grand quest to understand its reason for being. Like the Earth, which is still groaning from the effects of its creation, we lack inner peace, so we spend our lives reaching toward a supernatural power we cannot see, all the while struggling against the natural forces that surround us.
At this point, it should be obvious that “Tree of Life” is not for the 3D glasses and popcorn crowd. It appears the movie consists of two sets of memories. First, there are the memories a middle-aged man has of growing up in the 1950s. These scenes take the form of half-shaped recollections, and provide more of an impression of events than specifics: his father was a hard man; he loved his younger brother, who died presumably while in the Army; he also adored his mother, but grew rebellious when he began to sexually mature.
It seems the Earth has memories as well: memories of rocks being born out of fire, of life taking shape in its oceans, and of dinosaurs. These scenes are visually stunning, and appear to suggest we did not have a creator, but that we arbitrarily evolved. Malick is not trying to convince people to discard their faith; rather, he’s saying we’re all reaching toward something we cannot comprehend, whether we take the path of science or grace. The key to unlocking this theme is found in the way he shoots the movie. His camera spends a lot of time looking up – up at trees, up at tall buildings, and up at the sky. In many of these shots, Malick shows the sun hiding behind a branch, or a steel beam, or a cloud, and then providing a moment of illumination as it temporarily peeks out at viewers. Perhaps he believes our search for the meaning of life is one big tease.
I could be wrong, as several scenes went over my head. In one, a grotesquely tall figure towers above a small boy in a weirdly disproportionate room; in another, a wrinkled old man stares at the camera and says, “We’ll be back in five years”; and in yet another, older and younger versions of the same individuals walk along a beach and embrace one another. By taking his characters to the source of life, Malick could be saying we’ll find peace when we stop reaching beyond ourselves and accept the impenetrable randomness of our existence.
Whatever it all means, one thing is certain: Malick is a visionary. In an age when marketing teams painstakingly calculate what will appear in a movie to ensure the highest returns, his films are bold, artistically rendered expressions of his thoughts and ideas. That does not mean they’re always enjoyable to watch. While deeply evocative, “Tree of Life” is also agonizingly dull for long stretches of its running time. As another person who has seen the movie said to me, “It requires a lot of patience.” That was the understatement of the year.
Rated PG-13 for thematic material. Two-and-a-half stars out of four. Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.