The Tree of Life
Posted in Analysis, Feminism on June 29th, 2011 by Sarah – 1 CommentSarah guest posts with her thoughts:
For me, the challenge in developing a semi-thoughtful opinion about Terrence Malick’s latest work, The Tree of Life, is this: how do you fairly evaluate a film that is so clearly sensory and subjective? How do you render a judgment on a film that is so intertwined with an individual’s experience and perception of the world if you yourself cannot entirely relate to that experience, and are even, in some ways, put off a bit by it?
There is so much that I love about The Tree of Life. This film is not prose, but poetry. I’d have been content to spend much longer than the film’s 2 ½-hour running time simply letting Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s images wash over me. These are truly stunning images, whether they’re of the creation of the universe, or of a long summer afternoon in the backyard. I can smell the cut grass of those long summer afternoons. I can feel the sun on my shoulders, and the soothing coolness of the river as I dip in a toe. I can share the bewildering, frightening confusion as you overhear bits and pieces of your parents’ argument, as you begin to realize the significance of very grown-up things like death and sex. On a sensory level, I can love a lot of The Tree of Life.
It’s when I start thinking about it, however, that I hit a wall. Maybe you’re not supposed to think about a movie like this – maybe you’re supposed to feel it –but senses have their limits, especially when you have a different perception of the world than the protagonist. Despite originating from the same primordial ooze as Jack, my experience and perception of the world is very different. Instead of a man who grew up in 1950s Texas, I’m a feminist, non-religious woman who came of age in the very different world of the late 80s and early 90s.
From the very beginning, I disagreed with Jack’s heteronormative, simplified, almost hackneyed binary concept of humanity – tumultuous, unyielding, forceful Nature (as embodied by Jack’s father) vs. kind, gentle, beautiful Grace (as embodied by his mother). I find it impossible to separate this idea from its gender implications. Men and women as opposite sides of the coin. Contrasting,but complementary. The Masculine and the Feminine. The Yin and the Yang. While there is, admittedly, a certain poetry to this line of thought, I simply don’t see human nature (or gender) as so fixed, so black and white. I think all of us have those stereotypical “masculine” and “feminine” traits, to varying degrees.
However, I recognize that our memories are often exaggerated or embellished representations of what may have actually happened. An interesting point was made to me that we sometimes have a tendency to remember our past (especially our childhood) in extremes. We remember the very best and the very worst. There is often little room for nuance in the narrative of our personal history.
But again, while I recognize this is Jack’s story, my own differing perceptions keep me at arm’s length. I’m nagged by questions like, why is Mr. O’Brien allowed more complexity than Mrs. O’Brien? While we see his roughness and strictness, we also see a tender side emerge from time to time. We find out that he has unfulfilled dreams of becoming a musician, and indeed, has considerable musical talent. We see him at work in the world, away from hearth and home. Mrs. O’Brien is not allowed this degree of depth.
To be fair, this was pre-The Feminine Mystique, 1950s America. Generally speaking, a woman wasn’t allowed to harbor many dreams outside of becoming a wife and mother. She wouldn’t have corresponding scenes away from the home, without the children, because this was the limited world she lived in. She would exist pretty much only in relation to her husband and her children.
But even despite the acceptance of this fact, we still never see much nuance in Mrs. O”Brien’s personality. We really know nothing about this woman except that she is the embodiment of “grace” (which apparently involves such stereotypically feminine traits as warmth, nurturing, playfulness, and the ability to walk at all times like a dancer). Unlike Mr. O’Brien, who exists at times on his own, Mrs. O’Brien exists solely in relation to Jack. She is never anything but a good mother. She is saintly almost to the point of martyrdom. If this is how Jack remembers his mother, then I have to say that I feel sorry for his wife, who surely must find herself struggling against an impossible standard.
Read through the lens of this being one man’s remembrance of his childhood, and that childhood taking place in a culturally different time, it’s hard to criticize any of these things. I can’t say the movie is sexist, although mainstream Americain the 1950s certainly was. And to some extent, I can’t say its view of human nature is too simplistic, because it’s simply portraying one man’s interpretation. However, these are the very things that keep me feeling distanced from it. So perhaps the answer to my question of “how do you evaluate a film like this?” is that as a compelling, utterly believable portrayal of one man’s coming to terms with his childhood, his family and his place in the universe, it succeeds beautifully. But since this man’s experience and point of view is so different from my own, it lacks a lot of the emotional resonance for me that it seems to have had for others.
