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Poetic and philosophical, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life guarantees that any attempt to characterize it, or describe it at the least, could be left as a chimera. The sensorial distinctions of the film are not meant to be interpreted, but are left to impress. It has different levels of meanings. It attempted to metaphorically deal with spiritual, philosophical themes. Tree of Life answers some of the most difficult questions ever fathomed by mankind. Particularly, it situated the nonchalant life of an ordinary American family in sequences of cosmology, biology, and utterances insinuating religiosity. In this essay, I intend to evaluate the Tree of Life through the lens of Leonard Shlain’s contentions on reality, time, and space in his book ‘Art and Physics’ (1993).
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Alfajora |Page 1 of 14
On Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (2011)
By John Christen M. Alfajora
UPLB
Introduction
Poetic and philosophical, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life guarantees that any attempt
to characterize it, or describe it at the least, could be left as a chimera. The sensorial distinctions
of the film are not meant to be interpreted, but are left to impress. It has different levels of
meanings. It attempted to metaphorically deal with spiritual, philosophical themes. Tree of Life
answers some of the most difficult questions ever fathomed by mankind. Particularly, it situated
the nonchalant life of an ordinary American family in sequences of cosmology, biology, and
utterances insinuating religiosity. In this essay, I intend to evaluate the Tree of Life through the
lens of Leonard Shlain’s contentions on reality, time, and space in his book ‘Art and Physics’
(1993).
The Tree of Life opens with an epigraph lifted from the Bible in which God humbled
character Job by showing him his ignorance on the palpable perfectness of his creation. ‘Where
were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... When the morning stars sang together and all
the sons of God shouted for joy’ (Job 38:4, 7). In Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible (1748), he
noted that this particular passage indicates that man (as represented by Job) is at the state of
“nothingness, of mere nonentity” when God laid the scaffoldings of the universe.
The 38th Chapter of Job is a challenge more than a response to Job’s inquiry concerning
the earth and the fabric of it (Job 38:1). In this passage, God declared that although Job had an
understanding of entities that exist in nature and in spiritual realm, he had no understanding of
what he questioned about, of where he stood and where he was when earth was founded. The
passage presents a dialogue between God and the inquisitive Job who, after series of misfortunes,
Alfajora |Page 2 of 14
threw questions to God concerning the world (verse 1); the sea which is compared to the
embryonic infant (verse 8); the lightness and darkness of the world (verse 16); the influence of the
lightning and stars (verse 22), among others. To understand the instigators of things, man should
be present at their origin, God argues. It is contestable then that a finite creature like Job cannot
fathom the infinite creation of God.
It will later be revealed that Job’s calamity is the same calamity that the O’Brien’s
experienced upon the death of Jack’s brother. In a sermon, pertaining to Job, the minister of their
unnamed town notes that ‘misfortune befalls the good as well… we can’t protect ourselves against
it, like [an innocent] tree [is] rooted up.’
This tussling between the force of nature and futile efforts of man is best reflected in
Shager’s (2013) observation of the staple characteristics of Terrence Malick’s oeuvre. He writes:
“reflective voice-over from multiple characters that is often at odds
with the visuals; rapturous magic-hour landscape shots; cutaways
from the action proper to images of trees, sky, insects, water;
swelling orchestral-and-organ music of Wagnerian import; and
contrasts between the majesty of nature and the shortcomings of
man.
Taking that in consideration, the film’s plot is indeed unrewarding. To be blunt, it’s ambiguous.
The sudden shifting from different time frames may beguiled, if not entirely fascinates, the
viewers. The film is a metaphysical exploration on the position of mankind in the grand schemes
of configuration. It contrived how a recurring childhood memory could stand in perfect harmony
with the musing of Earth’s creation.
Although at one point, I suppose that a more conventional storytelling could help the film
delivers its complicated story. The first half of the movie features seemingly unconnected scenes
that are occasionally peppered by unsolicited voice-overs. The sequence showing the creation of
Alfajora |Page 3 of 14
the earth and formation of land forms and life steered the formation of a dreary family in a boring,
tree-filled town.
Viewers either worship or abhor Tree of Life. Usually, film narratives follow a singular,
coherent flow of information and viewers find it easy to link a scene with the scene before it.
However, with Tree of Life’s attempt to aggregate montage of lyrical images, this task became a
challenge. Rudely, viewers were treated to scenes that have no immediate connection with the
struggles of the character. Yet, viewers were framed to search for meanings and associations
among these scenes.
Nature and Grace
The film then initiates the viewers into a flickering light, resembling a flame. Then we were
transported to the time when Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien had Jack. The rendering of the birth process is
particularly interesting as it portrayed a child swimming through a steeped house. The portrayal of
the birth of the universe and the birth of a man seemed entirely unrelated at first, but it is evocative.
As their family grew bigger, Mr. Obrien’s planting of a tree in the family’s backyard is a vital
establishing element of the film.
The striking contrast between the mother and the father – the ways of grace and nature – is
portrayed at the initial sequences of the film. As Mrs. O’Brien said, ‘a man's heart has heard two
ways through life. The way of nature. And the way of grace.You have to choose which one you'll
follow.’
Alfajora |Page 4 of 14
The wrestling of the Mother and the Father, and the values they embody, is strikingly
palpable in the film. Yet, Tree of Life does not intend to persuade anyone.
The father constitutes nature. He is a typical American daddy who would say, ‘If you want
to succeed, you can’t be too good’. He works in a factory, plays the piano at home and church. He
commands respect and turns eccentric when aggravated. He dislikes his neighbors and he often
badmouths them. Jack and his brothers developed a slight ambivalence to the father due to his
autocracy. With his disciplinarian attitude, Mr. Obrien was portrayed with intense personality. At
one scene, he even provokes his children to hit him in the jaw.
Mrs. O’Brien, on the other hand, personified grace. Her love is unconditional. She is
passive, but not constricting. She embodies the purity and sanctity of religiosity. In the initial
sequence, she’s portrayed to have gave birth to her son in white clothes, an allegory to the Virgin
Mary of Christianity. Her voice-overs towards the end of the film similarly confirmed this
assumption. In the open air, the sacred Mrs. O’ Brien, in her submission, said, ‘I give him to you,
I give you my son.’ When their father have gone to a trip, they had a sense of liberation with their
mother. They could slam the door and run through the house. Jack even developed an oedipal
complex towards his mother.
Alfajora |Page 5 of 14
Such upbringing has left a huge mark in Jack’s psychological consciousness. He
experienced chronic conflicts between the graciousness of his mother and the ruthlessness of his
father’s nature. There came a point when Jack’s anger towards his father reaches a point when he
wishes him to just die. When his friend died, he turned to God. But at one point, he attributed the
misfortune to his father.
Apparently, there is a juxtaposition between the father of Jack and God the Father. He is
blamed: ‘Why has he hurt us? Our Father?’ He solicits worship: ‘Give your father a kiss.’ He woos
unqualified trust: “Without having to ask what it is? Just have the confidence in what your father
asks you is right?’ He exalts himself: ‘I wanted to be loved because I was great’
For Shlain (1993), such overriding appositions of nature and grace corroborates the two
perspectives on the ‘investigation of reality' (16). In his terms, nature and grace is best embodied
in science and art, respectively. Arts and science have a very specific lexicon. They both have their
unique lexicography, which in turn estrange them from the reality they wish to represent and to
each other as well. Yet, Tree of Life complicates these mutually exclusive constructs as it renders
art and science in the film as a spring of transcendental values. The spiritual and religious themes
have been depicted in the film in various ways.
Alfajora |Page 6 of 14
The film even lifted Biblical verses and integrate them into the common utterances of the
characters. This is especially true with Mrs. O’Brien’s lamentation over the death of her son. She
uttered words such as: “I shall fear no evil” (Psalm 23:4); “Be not far from me, for trouble is near”
(Psalm 22:11); and, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away” (Job 1:21). Interestingly, Mrs.
O’Brien asked out of despair: “Where were you?” Presumably, that question is directed to God.
Yet in the opening epigraph, it was God who is asking the same question to Job.
The contradiction between religiosity and nature is also apparent with little Jack’s sudden
gush of sexual urge when he rallied through the lingerie of their neighbor. When Jack felt sexual
urge over a neighbor’s lingerie that he has stolen, he felt a sudden guilt and so he threw it on the
river.
Malick’s striking cinematography seemed to corroborate the film’s commentary on
religiosity and the existence of divine providence. In most of the scenery sequences, Mallick used
extremely wide shot taken from below which seemed to suggest the existence of a higher being.
The film was obviously devoid of theological conventions despite it being spiritual, but it
was obviously driven by a philosophical speculation. The plot of the film foreshadows the
philosophical questions it wishes to forward: the contention between the ways of grace and of
nature.
Alfajora |Page 7 of 14
Experience and Images
Tree of Life accompanies the viewers to Jack’s journey into his thoughts, memories. As he
retreats through the past, the film’s wide lenses attempted to create scenes that capture the nostalgia
of childhood and the striking pleasure in the voyeur of nature. This echoes Shlain’s presumption
that thinking about understanding reality begins with the assimilation of unfamiliar images (1993,
p. 17). Image, after all, is better than other senses; hence, man inherently begins with pictures in
constructing and re-constructing his experiences (Shlain, 1993).
Hence, the movie sets off with seemingly unrelated images that launches an inquiry more
than a spectacle. Ironically, Jack is a cartographer of images. It can be inferred that Jack is working
in an architectural firm as reflected in some sequences where he was portrayed working with
schematic designs.
At one point, the random death of his brother is irrelevant and utterly trivial and is not
enough to be a catalyst for epistemological discourses on time and space. Yet it appears later that
the stochasticity of the death of a person is a ferocious blemish in itself.
But Tree of Life is not a movie about grief, albeit it tackles how one bereaves and how man
could still be revisited by the horrors of the tragedy of yesterday. It shows the transiency of life
and our immaturity towards life and death. There are a lot of people who died without a reason.
Alfajora |Page 8 of 14
They were innocent people and the laments of the voice-overs seemed to invite the viewers to
question with them what do these people have done in order for them to deserve such demeanor.
Malick explored in this film the interrelationship between the most infinitesimal elements
in the universe to the most colossal creations, from the most trifling to the most momentous events
of the cosmos. The tenet that small things evolve into larger ones is very prominent in the film.
The death of Jack’s brother remained bothering him for years in the very same way that a single
light paved the way to the formation of universe.
Memory played a huge part of the narrative. At Jack’s present times, he is continually
reminded by stimulus that transported him back to his memory. Jack lit a candle and it triggered a
memory in him and he was transported to his childhood reminiscences. As he stared at a tree being
planted in the center of skyscrapers where he worked, he remembered the tree that was planted by
his father. Memory of his childhood neighborhood came gushing in.
Despite the film’s frequent reference to cosmic origin, it did not attempt to validate nor
discuss which views of creation is the most logical way to follow. As it traced the creation, the
manifestation of Grace is found as Mrs. O’Brien enquires into the death of her son. It is in the
creation that we found grace and it is in creation that we see death. That tiny light has to be created
to make it explode so that that the universe will be created. Dinosaurs should be made extinct
through an asteroid hit so that human forms will form from the microscopic creature. Jack’s brother
has to die, so he would have life.
Subjective Reality
With Malick’s inherent taste for artistic rendition of filmic elements, Tree of Life has a
substantial fascination for shadows. In many sequences, Malick portrayed action and inaction
Alfajora |Page 9 of 14
through shadows creeping through the ground. While no accurate inference could be deduced
therein, the inclusion of shadow as a vital element of the film’s mise-en-scene stood in harmony
with its portrayal of a subjective reality. It reflects how a certain image could be interpreted in a
variety of ways, how an outline of a shadow can mean a complex image.
Many instances in the film reflect its contention of a subjective reality. Jack reduces the
details of his external world and translate it piece by piece to his inner consciousness.
Concurrently, he was able to fashion his own world which fundamentally exists within the bounds
of his thoughts. This is of course reminiscent of Arthur Schopenhauer’s famous adage: the world
is my idea (Shlain, 1993).
One of the predominant themes in the film is the apparent deconstruction of what is real
and unreal. The depiction of natural phenomena where portrayed in sharp contrast with the remorse
and struggle of Jack as he traverses back his memory. Say, Jack’s reminiscing of his brother is no
longer a reality, but a memory. ‘How did I lose you,’ Jack asked while strolling along the dreamlike
desert and amidst the tall skyscrapers. It thus follows that the punctuated sequences of natural
phenomena – the unfolding of the universe, the cycle of the sun, the flocking of the birds, the
inhabitant of archosaurians – all gave an impression of being unreal.
Alfajora |Page 10 of 14
Apparently, inclusion of those sequences does not seem to fit the diegetic temperature laid
at the start, hence viewers were coerced to relegate them to surrealism. These scenes have little
concerns with the diegetic narration of the characters in the film, but viewers were made to believe
that this is part of their struggle. That as the O’Brien’s mourn over their loss, the universe is
exponentially expanding; as Jack O’Brien struggles to suppress his childhood memories, flocks of
birds populate the skies of metro.
Inarguably, it is difficulty to create an immediate association between these sequences.
These dreamlike sequences gradually stirred from the occasional aggregation of unrelated scenes
to the puzzling reunion of the old Jack to his younger self and to his entire family who does not
seem to age. Amidst the imposing tall skyscrapers, it is almost surreal that a flock of migratory
birds were flying as if it was a green field. Here we see a portrayal of a contrived Jack in a contrived
world. Before he was framed by trees, now he is contrived within tall buildings.
With the extremist portrayal of un-real and hysteria, viewers tend to believe that the ways
of arranging the scenery and property of the film are reflective of the psychological condition of
Jack. For Mallick perhaps, the life of a human being is much like the life of the universe. What
Malick is trying to create in here is that we all have our own subjective reality. Our memories
exists in non-identical time and space capsules.
Alfajora |Page 11 of 14
Space and Time
It makes sense to argue that the film persuaded the viewers to think that the present is a
congregate of all the historical, cosmic events that had occurred in the past. Towards the end of
the film, we saw Jack walking along a deserted, arid land with unspeakable bewilderment in his
face. Then he sees a vision of himself and all the people he had encountered throughout his life.
Such stretched and bizarre portrayal of time corroborates how metered time ‘isn’t enough to
capture reality’ (Shlain, 1993). The film traverses (and deconstructs) time and space
unceremoniously. Visual cues reveal that at one point, the movie is set at a post-war middle class
household, then at one point we are seeing dinosaurs
How Malick suddenly jumps from scene to scene is entirely unimportant since it has been
established from the start that the film would not subscribe to linear narratology. A huge chunk of
the film’s message was not meant to be narrated by words, but conveyed allegorically by the
putting of the elements of the scene.
Throughout The Tree of Life, there is a conscious manipulation of spatial and time
dimensions. For example, Malick relied on visual cues to tap mental stimuli in the character of
Jack. When Jack saw a tree in the middle of towering buildings, he was then transported to the
scene where he remembered his mother and father lamenting over the death of his brothers. It’s as
if they exist in the same spatial configuration, but in entirely different time frames. This is also the
scene where Malick’s intention to create a contrasting portraiture of nature and science, of the
simplicity of nature and the grandeur of man’s physicality, transpired.
When Jack saw the tree being planted at the midst of the skyscrapers, it hinged a slight
memory from him. He was reminded of something that is missing in him. His mother, the grace,
Alfajora |Page 12 of 14
which used to fly along the trees. Although her flying is only metaphorical and an attempt to
ascribe divinity to the mother, what this scene accomplished is to justify the decision made in the
end: to recognize that the way of Grace is fulfilling.
The injection of sequences portraying cosmic creation in the middle of narrating the
tragedy of the O’Brien’s is spiritual and metaphorical. It was made to present the viewers with
something abstract, something that they can’t handle. So disjointed, the viewers were left with no
other option but to relegate anything unexplainable to the divine.
Conclusion
In the end, it could be inferred that Jack, despite of his attraction to the ways of grace,
ended navigating the ways of the nature. This scene is very palpable when we see the old Jack
walking across a bridge with metallic bars. This is reminiscent of the father’s walk in the factory
where he used to work. The railings were composed of sharp edges.
Alfajora |Page 13 of 14
The ending does not provide a remedy, but hint on a reconciliation. As Jack passes through
a doorway in the midst of the arid terrain, he was transported to the seaside where everything
seemed perfect. The door then appears as an allegory to a portal of the afterlife. That after all of
the struggles and the calamities, nature and grace can be reunited.
Jack’s mysterious smirk at the end of the film is not meant to resolve his enigmatic
contemplation of how his life had turned out. Neither did it attempt to imply which path he chose.
Insofar as his intentions and psyche are unclear throughout the film, The Tree of Life warily refused
to consign a resolution to the complexities it presented. It prompted its absurd story and out-of-
this-world rendering of filmic elements permeate the consciousness of its passive spectators.
There are a lot of unanswered question in the film. Say, the reason for the death of the child
was not revealed to the audience. But the story is not about the loss and how we are invited to
grieve over the loss. We are instead invited to speculate on the struggle of Jack to reconcile the
gracious death of his brother and the lessons imparted to him by his parents.
In the end, after all has been done and destroyed, the viewers gaze at the same flickering
flame at the start of the film. It is indeed an undeniable allegory of the One who claimed to be the
same yesterday, today, and forever; who was exalted to be the first and the last.
Alfajora |Page 14 of 14
References:
Gill, J. (1748). “John Gill’s exposition of the entire bible.” In FreeGrace.Net. Retrieved from
http://www.freegrace.net/gill/ last 2 February 2014.
Schager, N. (April 24, 2013). Hands brushing against wheat, or the many mimics of Terrence
Malick. In Vulture.com. Retrieved from http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/imitation-of-
style-the-terrence-malick-effect-to-the-wonder.html on 12 March 2014.
Shlain, L. (1993). Arts and physics: Parallel visions in space, time, and light. United Kingdom:
Harper Collins Publishers
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