Movie reviews
Set for the most part in the US in the 1950s, it stars Brad Pitt as Mr O’Brien, an authoritarian father who repeatedly clashes with his eldest son, Jack (Hunter McCracken). An older Jack (Sean Penn) frames the narrative, as he reminisces about his childhood memories, and particularly those featuring his younger brother RL (a show-stealing turn from Laramie Eppler), whose early death triggers the film’s exploration of life, loss, faith and love. It’s no exaggeration to say that The Tree of Life attempts to incorporate life, the universe and everything. The oblique, impressionistic tone of Jack’s memories are spliced with jaw-dropping imagery taken from the microscopic and macroscopic ends of the universal spectrum, so that we find ourselves watching a human egg being fertilised, and that image then being contrasted with the almost unimaginably vast vista of cosmic gas clouds and nests of galaxies. Not content with that, Malick also offers a poetic reinterpretation of evolution on planet earth.
While there are times when you might wish Malick had focused more on the personal, and provided Penn in particular with a more rounded character to work with, the film is a wonderful example of what is possible when cinema is pushed to its furthest limits. Strong performances from Pitt, McCracken, Eppler and Jessica Chastain, as O’Brien’s wife, make flesh of the dreamy imagery, which seems to float off the screen in an authentic recreation of the way thoughts and memories waft through the mind. Their existence is dwarfed by the jaw-droppingly beautiful images of the universe at its most majestic, but it is their suffering and hard-earned consolation that endures long after the credits roll.
