You know how sometimes there's a film you really want to see, and nothing's really stopping you from seeing it other than circumstance or your own tardiness, and sometimes you take so long to get your act together that you grudgingly either wait for a revival somewhere like The Astor or, god forbid, the DVD release?
(Speaking of which, sort of, we were talking last night about how long it used to take for movies to "come out on video", and that sense of sadness as you left the cinema, since there was no way your parents would cough up to let you see that film again, and you had to endure an aeon before you could rent the bastard. Those were the days.)
Well, it took me nearly the entire release run, but I'm proud to announce that this week I pulled my finger out and finally got around to seeing Terrence Malick's
The Tree Of Life.
I had been dragging my feet the whole time.
Malick is one of those directors - blame his "relaxed" schedule of output - for whom the accompanying fanfare upon the release of his films tends to deaden my drive to actually
see his films.
As the cinephiles whipped themselves into a lather as soon as a cameraphone-shot bootleg of the first trailer for
Tree Of Life hit the internet, I found myself drifting into a deep sleep. "Just let
me see it," I thought, "and then decide if it's a masterpiece or not."
I'm perfectly happy to admit that at the time, based on that trailer, I didn't have the faintest clue what the film was about. I mean, did
anyone?
It felt like some sort of riff on
Baraka or
Koyaanisqatsi that happened to also star Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain.
Of course I'm more than happy to admit that I couldn't have been more wrong.
What is it about? Well, God, I guess, or life, or something like that; it doesn't really matter, in the end. It's less a conventional narrative (though, in a way, it is that, too) than it is a sort of visual tone poem about life; its meaning, its point, its cruelties and beauty.
Visually it reminded me of the work of the Hudson River School artists, whose paintings I stood dumbfounded in front of in San Francisco, tears tumbling down my face.
Among The Sierra Nevada, California, 1868 - Albert Bierstadt
Their belief in the American landscape's being a manifestation of God's glory in creation is pretty compelling when faced with their paintings - Bierstadt painted, in Romantic fashion, the way he believed things "should" be, hence his work's remarkable intensity - and likewise, Malick's
Tree finds God's magic in Waco, TX in the '40s and '50s.
And yet is
The Tree Of Life expressly a "Christian" film? Not really. Or at least, not traditionally.
For one, Malick's vision of God's work on Earth and throughout the universe subscribes to the theory of evolution: gloopy microbes give way to fishes and, later, dinosaurs. There is a beautiful banded sea-snake making its way across the ocean, mirroring the inverted shadows of children playing in the street at the beginning of the film.
In spite of their Christian faith, everyone in the film questions God's work. "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away" just doesn't seem to cut it.
And yet in that way, it seemed closest to what I know of faith; the popular depiction of Christianity is the unblinking, unquestioning faith of the mega-church set. The reality for many people is a lot more nuanced. It's not unusual to spend a life locked in argument with God.
I've always liked the Southern Baptist (etc) approach typified in traditionals like
Jesus On The Mainline; "Well if you're sick and you wanna get well/Tell him what you want [...] Call him up, and tell him what you want".
It's hard to imagine the Hillsong set
telling Jesus anything.
In a way, however, I almost think
The Tree Of Life is better experienced as, well, an experience; an immersive work of cinema art rather than a treatise on anything in particular.
The audience on Tuesday was stunned silent throughout the entire film. Yes, some bolted as soon as the credits rolled, but there's no denying that Malick's vision held them captive for those two and a half hours.
(Funnily enough, the only other recent film I can recall having that sort of effect on its audience was
Avatar; when Neytiri snuffed out Jake's torch and the forest's bioluminescence became clear for the first time, the audience's silence was broken by a massed "Ohhhh".)
Through its scenes of rolling oceans and sea creatures and occasional whispered voiceovers, I kept thinking of another misunderstood - though far less heralded - piece of cinema art about life on earth: Werner Herzog's
The Wild Blue Yonder (2005).
If Malick is all about the glories of nature, then Herzog sees its conflict.
In
Yonder, Brad Dourif plays the Extraterrestrial, who came to Earth from his planet - the eponymous Wild Blue Yonder - only to find himself stuck in urban wastelands among malls and shops. In between Dourif's to-camera monologues, Herzog repurposes documentary footage - particularly of dives beneath the ice in Antarctica - to create a strange, otherworldly visual narrative.
You couldn't get two places more far apart than Niland and Slab City, CA (the former a low-desert town hanging on by a thin thread, the latter a nearby off-grid community of drop-outs, eccentrics and various wastoids in an RV wonderland) and the ethereal glories of Malick's fondly remembered Waco, TX.
Despite that, I couldn't help feeling that the two films were, in an odd way, well-suited as companion pieces (and not just because I wanted to get blazed and kick back going "ooh" and "ahh" at the visuals). Both films are, in a way, experiments. Certainly both films have confused audiences, though
Tree's audience is much larger; some people have never heard of
Yonder, even though Herzog's prolific nature is in direct opposition to Malick's inaction.
Perhaps because - at the risk of turning my Ricky Fitts gene up to 11 - there's so much beauty in both worlds, Malick's warm and benevolent and Herzog's cold and alien.
And there's something to be said for immersing yourself in beauty every now and again. Godly or otherwise.