The Tree of Life

I was hesitant to watch this movie, but was convinced to by popular media and the constant badgering of a friend who decided to put himself through it. Indeed, thanks to Entertainment Weekly and a whole host of other "top ten of 2011" lists that put this film on the map, I couldn't help but check it out. I'm certainly glad that I did, although you would be hard pressed to call this a movie. It's more a film. You see, this film lacks the traditional narrative a movie has, and this can be quite jarring to the viewer; it's certainly a reason why I was hesitant to check it out in the first place.

Some people are describing it as a presentation of memories, and leaves the viewer to build the narrative themselves. I would tend to agree: the movie starts out in a point of time, with some horrible news (a death) but it's never clear who exactly it is, and throughout the movie you are left to wonder. Then you realize it doesn't overly matter, although it's easy to determine who it is not. After this, the movie goes on a 2001: A Space Odyssey style exploration of imagery. All I could keep thinking was how beautiful everything is, and what a demo for your television set. And again, you seem to be viewing scenes of nature on Earth, then slowly transporting yourself into space, then back to the very beginnings of Earth. We even get some dinosaurs, of all things, then we are brought back to the memories of this family, following their lives as the three boys grow up.

So where do we go from there? The memories start off wonderful, and you get the impression that this is the perfect family. These memories primarily come from the perspective of the eldest boy, Jack. As we progress, things are not as good as we thought they were. He loses innocence, first with the death of a friend, and his world grows darker as we explore the father's relationship with his own family. It's quite gripping, and I won't go into much more detail. We get a weird ending, that I suppose is left up to the viewer to decide what they're watching: I understood acceptance.

It's rather fitting then, that I took in an hour or so of 2001: A Spacey Odyssey earlier in the day. Each have sequences (one could argue the The Tree of Life is one giant sequence) where the viewer is left to interpret as they see fit. I can see how this would be unpopular, and why 2001 struggled so much upon release: it's non-traditional. The movie is not throwing it's message in your face, nor even a regular storyline. People are left thinking for themselves, evaluating their own childhood and lives. It's a very powerful film, and definitely one of the best of the year.