Terrence Malick’s hugely ambitious fifth film is also, amazingly, his best.  It focuses on a family in 1950s Texas and holds them as an embodiment of grace.  Their oldest son, Jack (played by an adult by Sean Penn), has to manage their challenging, failed father (Brad Pitt, pretty outstanding) and his movement into adolescence.  The family’s middle child dies at age 19 and much of the film is a flashback in the mind of Jack trying to reconcile the loss with both his faith and his existence.  Early in the film, there is a sequence by Douglas Trumbull that imagines the early development of the universe and Earth, including a sequence with dinosaurs.  At the end, Jack’s reminiscences lead to a reuniting of the family in a post-Earth world (perhaps heaven?).  Both the first and the last shots are of a glowing light.

Probably the most openly spiritual art film since Bresson, The Tree Of Life overwhelms the viewer with style and content.  Malick’s camera is constantly moving and his narrative flows like the many river shots he provides-turbulently.  While the film can be frustratingly oblique, the image’s beauty and the generally outstanding performances more than make up for it.  Malick makes a case for life as a struggle between grace and nature with Jessica Chastain, as the mother in the family, representing the former and Pitt representing the latter.  Penn’s adult character, who is only minimally explored, appears dissatisfied with his fast-paced modern life and is struggling with that choice.  The film made me feel insignificant as it moved through layers of pre-history and then as though I had lived the life of the family as it showed their development.  This juxtaposition of two timeless themes, one corporeal and one spiritual, makes the experience of the film universal and provides a compelling argument for the presence of grace in the world.  In a century that has sorely lacked for ambitious films, The Tree Of Life has ambition to spare and largely delivers.  It is a masterpiece.  ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰.

MJM  11-24-2011