After seeing this film there were a series of images still left in my head. Images of space, and the creation of Earth as a product of the big bang. Molten lava and rock formations. Deep sea and the first organisms that inhabited this earth. During the film I was confused on what this meant.
In The Tree of Life there is an extensive amount of time spent on Malick's imagery of depicting the history of Earth as we know it today. This imagery showcased his poetic talent as he captured specific features of nature and related it to the lives of every human being. His timeline of Earth's history is slowed down with a set of images to capture the true beauty of our world through a transcendentalist point of view. As if we were looking at life through the eyes of Whitman or Emerson. By intertwining the reflection of a man's life it is not hard to see the relationship between humans and their natural environment.
The main theme of the film is living life through nature or through grace. And in expressing this we have a family of three boys, a demanding father, and a peaceful mother. A father who wants nothing more in this world than to reap the benefits of the material world, and a mother who only wants her family to live in harmony. And a boy who is pitted against his father because of his harsh treatment and constant criticism. But through the reflection of the boy as a man around the age of 50 we see that in the end the answer to all the questions that life throws at us is happiness. Happiness through recognizing the true beautiful things we already have and should be thankful to have. Happiness found in grace and not material possessions. Because if your life is a constant struggle to increase individual status, then you will miss out on what really matters in family. And by the end the antagonist father (Brad Pitt) realizes this huge mistake and reveals to his son (Hunter McCracken) that he regrets not paying attention to the only thing he has to show for in his life.
By the end of the film i had a complete sense of why every image Malick chose to portray was there. Every image of beauty and destruction in nature was perfectly compiled to fall in line with the overall theme of the balance in this world of melancholy and joy. A potential epiphany of how every human should live their lives in complete serenity.
Grade: 90% (A-)
Rating: PG-13
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