Among the Oscar contenders this year, The Tree of Life stands out for inspiring awe and wonder. That was the intention, I'm sure, but audiences mostly express awe about the stupendous visuals, which depict the cosmos from the scale of an amoeba to the scale of the Big Bang. What's gotten ignored is the spiritual argument that Terence Malick, the writer-director, clearly poses. It's a very old argument but one that resists acceptable answers today.
Yet the entire story is about Jack's spiritual confusion, because his Job-like father and his saintly mother stand at two poles. An Old Testament God pulls him one way, a New Testament God the other. The beauty of this dilemma, which could seem artificially schematic, is that it feels so American. Malick made an earlier film, The New World, that explicitly showed America as a land of rebirth, a new Eden. For him, as in all of his movies, the American dilemma is about that ideal beginning and where it has led us. Is it our role to find a special grace that the Old World cannot deliver? Or did the new land turn us into Mr. O'Brien, missing the glory of God because we are fixated on materialism?
I think The Tree of Life is serious enough to legitimately ask these deep questions and powerful enough to make us think about them. It would be fascinating to hear what other viewers feel.
Essentially, the spiritual side of the movie is encapsulated by a short voice-over. The speaker is the mother in the film, who is unnamed except as Mrs. O'Brien. Her son Jack is experiencing his past as a boy in Texas, living on a leafy block that evokes the essence of Fifties America. Despite the nostalgic images, this is a spiritually mysterious and troubled world. It gives rise, some years later, to the tragic death of Jack's middle brother, who may or may not have died in war.
Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien are devastated by their loss, so much so that the mother no longer wants to live. She calls out for her dead child, as the adult Jack echoes when he seeks his lost brother. In the midst of her anguish, his mother tells us that there are two ways of living in this world, the way of Nature and the way of grace. Much more gets said as the story unfolds, about sin, redemption, guilt, the war between fathers and sons, which is almost biblical, and about Mr. O'Brien as Job. In that role, he tries to live a virtuous life, only to be fired from his factory job. In his worst moments Mr. O'Brien declares that he has wound up with "zilch," and he recriminates himself for chasing after worldly success and missing out on "the glory."
Mrs. O'Brien plays another Biblical role, that of Mother Mary. She is innocent, pure, forgiving, nurturing. In this way we get to see the way of Nature portrayed by one parent - if Nature means fighting to survive against the forces pitted against you - and the way of grace by the other. Malick provides a mystical ending in which the O'Brien family is united on the shores of an eternal sea, and the film's final image is of a bridge, implying that this world is connected to the next.
Watch the official Tree of Life trailer:
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The Tree of Life (2011) - IMDb
Tree of life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
we see our truths and they become the only truths. truths come in degrees as we are able to absorb them into our awareness.
much discord when we try to teach a truth to a person that has their own set of truths. every path unique every soul on a journey and no one is left behind. the law of progress is one of the greatest of truths. :-)
as far as the bible there is profound wisdom and also profound unawareness. advanced spiritual teachings and the human ego all in one book. the religious fundamentalists accept it all as truths and the materialists reject it all as illusions.
our beliefs become our truths. our theories become our truths, our religion becomes our truths and anything outside those beliefs is rejected before any investigation. it matters not guru or ordinary seeker if there is such a thing as an ordinary seeker.
Solomon wrote of "Wisdom" saying "She is a Tree of Life to them that lay hold upon Her. And Wisdom is far better than weapons of war.”
The apostle John in the book of Revelation wrote also of the "Tree of Life which bears 12 manner of fruits, and her leaves are for the healing of the nations.
Black Elk and other Native American Indians also spoke and wrote of a sacred "Tree," as did Native Central and South American prophets.
Just sayin' that the "Tree of Life" is actually a symbol for that which is spiritually great -- which we all need and should strive for.
http://cjcmp.org
http://talkingtalkies.com/2011/11/21/the-tree-of-life-2011/
The ostentatious, (mawkish), presumptuous Christian symbolism in the face of a rather breathtaking, (but ultimately too literal) a rendering of the enormity of the drama, beauty, and mystery of creation, sank it for me.
The movie, ironically, demonstrates how grossly sentimental (and irresponsible) contemporary Christianity is at it's base, and I don't think it was the director's purpose at all to make such a parable.
You need to be able to trust the director's powers of analogy and I realized Malick doesn't really have very dependable judgement of esthetic/narrative scale. It doesn't really work to sandwich this boys existential wound between the vast sublime cosmos, and this deluded, corrupt institution, which is specifically the Roman Catholic Church.
I was very glad to see the attempt. But saddened by critics who, due to the intellectual poverty of American film, were unable to say what needed to be said, which ultimately infantilizes the movie going public. It was all ... "Gosh ... gee whiz ... hmmm ... yeah ... what can we say ... Terrence Malick, you know. Hey. Wow. Go see it, it's really something!"
Malick's movie was hollow, pretty but silly and embarrassing.
The stereotyping alone in Tree of Life made me wince. No new message or images, it hits every touch stone in the tritest of US aesthetic values - from Disney to some cosmic noodly gumbo that somehow involves Love.
There was no "there" there. The characters are cheap imitations. The message is mushy. I was sorry I saw it because I've loved so many of Malick's previous works.
"the part of [Clinton's] speech that most attracted public attention jumped from the scientific perspective to the spiritual. "Today," he said, **"we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift."**
Was I, a rigorously trained scientist, taken aback at such a blatantly religious reference by the leader of the free world at a moment such as this? Was I tempted to scowl or look at the floor in embarrassment? No, not at all. In fact I had worked closely with the president's speechwriter in the frantic days just prior to this announcement, and had strongly endorsed the in- clusion of this paragraph. When it came time for me to add a few words of my own, I echoed this sentiment: "It's a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God." ... http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2192678&page=1#.TyjbQsWonIc