Deconstructing "The Tree of Life"

My friend Jo Ann and I saw the movie The Tree of Life last week. The audience was small since it was an art film but starring two of Hollywood's high profile actors, Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. After watching about forty-five minutes of beautiful cinematic scenery of the "big bang" theory, two young women in front of my friend and me turned around and said, "Are you thinking what we are?" I said, "What, leaving the theater to see another movie." They then replied, "This is not the movie we came to see" and promptly left the theater. Several other young people behind us stayed the full length of the film, which had no plot but was just a series of shots of a family with three sons during the nostalgic days of the '50's. Upon the rolling of the film's credits, one young man stood to his feet and shouted, "Did anyone here understand what that movie was about?" I believe I understood the movie.

The premise from the beginning was a choice--that between nature, science, and atheism vs that of grace, faith, and spirituality. The eldest of the three boys, later played by Sean Penn as an adult, illustrated the developmental stages of a Christian's life. The boy, being the firstborn of his parents, is the true center of attention until his two brothers come along. It is at this point that he begins to show some evidence of naughtiness and jealousy in order to get the attention he has lost in the family. As he grows older, he begins to notice that crime is followed by punishment as he witnesses the handcuffing of a criminal in his hometown. He has learned to expect punishment if one is "bad." He prays to be a "good" boy. Later, when a young boy drowns in a swimming pool, he begins to believe the idea that, if good people (and innocent ones) die, perhaps one does not have to be good. If God is not good, he reasons, why should he be either? What follows is a series of cruel acts to his younger brothers. Eventually, he develops a conscience and a sense of right and wrong and apologizes for his actions. As he grows into adulthood, and confronts the death of one of his brothers at age nineteen, he again struggles with the big existential questions of life, "Why am I here? What is my purpose?" By the end of the film, there is a final affirmation of life after death. The director Terrence Malick has simply presented a pictorial portrait of the spiritual struggles most of us encounter as we attempt to deconstruct the tree of life for ourselves.