Why I Didn't Like The Tree of Life

WARNING: Spoilers Ahead

Period setting with overt Americana imagery. Check. Meta-cosmic themes that imply the transcendence of suffering through gratitude. Check. Beautiful cinemetography. Check. Famed director (and actors) whose previous movies I've loved. Check.

Terrence Malick's Tree of Life is a movie that I should love. To list its elements is to describe exactly what I would want out of a movie, a dream project to anticipate with adolescent, fanboy suspense. I should leave the theater feeling invigorated, alive, yet reflective and perhaps bitersweet, ready to both take on the world and find acceptance in its failings, to Appreciate my own existence in such a way that adds a skip to my step and a bit more compassion to my heart. So after having seen Tree of Life last night, I'm left wondering, what went wrong? Why didn't I like this movie?

I'll begin with the ending. The last twenty minutes, after the close of the main plot line, show a seemingly endless parade of loosely connected mini-segments filled with lush beaches, deserts, skyscrapers and the same edge-lit trees that fill the rest of the film. Each shot is beautiful. Each shot is a bit confusing. At first, I probed around in corners of my mind, trying to make sense of it. "What does the beach symbolize? Why are his older self and his child self both there? Isn't that the guy from his hometown?"  As three minutes extended into ten, I began to wonder if Mallick's "newest masterpiece" could go on forever, each fade-to-black followed by yet another image of some awe-inspiring landscape, another shot of Sean Penn seeming tired and nostalgiac, another nervous leaf again proclaiming the grandeur of existence. It was visually beautiful. It also felt like fluff. All I wanted was for it to end.

My problem with the ending mirrors my problem with the film as a whole: it is so thoroughly saturated with a sense of self-importance that it fails to realize the need to grab the audience and make them feel why it is so important. Twenty minutes in, during the dancing planets sequence, we hear a mother's heartfelt voice whisper over a shot of an ocean, "Light of my light" to her dead son. It could be powerful, but we've barely seen either of them yet, and so it feels like you're being sold on it. You are so beaten over the head with depth and importance, your attention made to focus so much on what a great film this is, that you can't properly think about the content of the film itself.  Between the (admittidely gorgeous) visuals, the in-your-face opera score that plays over much of the film, and the constant snippets of voiceover, much of it spoken in whispers, it often feels like you're watching a 138-minute advertisement for the film, rather than watching the film itself. I'm reminded of an episode from season two of the Simpsons, where Smithers takes a job as the announcer at a greasy racetrack ("Get ready for Action! Action! Action!"). Feeling awkward at the constant enthusiasm required by the position, he complains, "The people are already here, we don't need to keep hustling them like this, do we?"

To be fair, Tree of Life does have a lot going for it. The performaces are amazing, as are the shots (nearly every single moment is gorgeous), and it does have some genuinely touching and disturbing moments. I expected these things. But I also expected to be drawn in, moved, made to think- about the subjects that the film is about: the universe, our place in it, the connection between the personal and universal, the unarticulable power of life. Instead, I felt like the film wanted me to think about how awesome the film was for being about those subjects.

I could be wrong though. And the next thing I'm doing is seeing it again.