The Tree of Life
It’s common for
screenplays to show a significant incident, then revert to a point in time
prior to its occurrence, and then to describe how the incident came about. It’s
how Citizen Kane’s story is told, for
example. Pulp Fiction shows how
events transpired from multiple perspectives. Tree of Life takes us back to prehistoric time, and does its best
to encapsulate the story of the origin of the universe and life itself before eventually
reaching a point in time merely several years before the initial incident.
As can be said for the
movie as a whole, all these prehistoric and evolutionary sequences are fairly
dense and could merit and sustain more than one viewing. However, you may not
feel this at the time, particulary if these sequences
begin to remind you of 2001 : A Space
Odyssey, or if you have a scientific background and are already familiar
with the so-called Pillars of Creation or the patent weirdness of some
deep-sea creatures. The swirls of coloured smoke that are perhaps representative of
a soul might even remind you of Orson-related sequences in Mork and Mindy. Even so, there is an ineffable sense of quality to much
of what goes on in these ambitious sequences, and the same can be said for the
photography in the more conventional parts of the screenplay.
This more conventional
part concerns itself with the childhood of three brothers living in a Texas
town in the 1950s. More specifically, it deals with their “growing up”, having
followed their development to their early teens, (from, as noted, the Big
Bang). Curiously, little or no emphasis is put on the physical appearances of
the characters as time passes. Their parents appear unchanged from the time the
children are born to a point in time more than twenty years later. We know from
photographs what Sean Penn looked like when he was fifteen years old, and so we
know that that is very dissimilar to the actor whose adult version he is
supposed to be. To my mind it’s not even close. Perhaps all this lack of
emphasis on physical appearance is supposed to say something about the quality
and reliability of childhood memories. From my individual perspective I found this
more distracting than enlightening.
The childhood scenes
are gripping and apparently true to life. One wonders if their impact is
heightened by the dramatic scenes of the origins of mankind that preceded them.
We could characterise three themes in the screenplay as relating to what
science has discovered about the makeup of our universe and how we got here, a personal
recollection of a precarious and brief existence of an individual, and a speculation
as to what happens when our hearts cease beating. For me, the childhood scenes
were the most enjoyable, even if they reminded one of the intensity of emotion with
which some children struggle. As of this point in human history, notwithstanding some quibbles, this is surely
what we must call an extraordinary movie.