The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick’s fifth film and the winner of the 2011 Palme d’Or (in 2010, it was Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s brilliant Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives—this decade’s cinema opens on a very loud metaphysical note), is composed of four sections. The first section has two parts: One is set in the past (the 1950s), and the other is set in the present. In the past, a couple (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) deals with the death of one of their three sons; in the present, one of the sons (Sean Penn) remembers the death of his brother. This section as a whole moves swiftly (the camera gliding, swirling, swerving in and out of rooms and hallways) and is severely fragmented—now we are in the small town, now we are in an elevator that’s rising up the spine of a skyscraper, now we are with the mother being consoled, now we are in a conference room with a view of other corporate towers, now we are next to an airplane that’s preparing to fly at that hour of the day when the owl of Minerva spreads its wings.
Though this section wrongly associates modern architecture with loneliness, alienation, and spiritual emptiness, it has its moments of beauty. And this beauty is able to overcome the director’s poor thinking and associations. The next section is about the history of the universe—the big bang, the formation of the earth, the development of life in the earth’s seas, the development of life into sea plants, sea creatures, and dinosaurs. This section ends with the birth of morality: One dinosaur decides not to kill another wounded dinosaur. The dinosaur suddenly feels pity. It very well might be the first thing in the universe to feel pity. This new feeling gives it a sense of pride. The moral dinosaur raises its neck to the sky. But an asteroid falls from the sky and kills it, its new feeling, and the old world.
And here is where everything falls apart: the third section. The first two sections about loss, the meaning of life, human memory, and the birth of the universe lead to the dead end of a family drama. Worse still, the meat of this family drama is a Freudian struggle between an authoritarian father and a sensitive boy. The boy loves Mommy; the boy hates Daddy. Daddy demands love and respect from the boy; the boy wants to kill his dad and live with his mom. This goes on for nearly an hour and a half. I was expecting at least some Heidegger, and all I got was “the Viennese witch doctor.”
The last section of this film is dreadful. After giving us loads and loads of this Freudian nonsense (the American family is not the center of the universe), we’re shoved into the hell of a new age heaven. God does not exist. 
You’re taking exactly the message from the dinosaur sequence that I think he wants you to take (which surprises me), but here is the entirely more likely sequence of events, insofar as dinosaurs had ability to reason: “Here’s a thing to eat! This thing is not running. It must be sick. I’ll stomp on it a little. Not fighting. Better not risk eating it.” If the raptor had truly felt pity, it would have kicked the pleisiosaur back into the water.
Don’t assume that the ending is a heaven.
And no love of the music used?
And don’t forget the whole thing was BORING as shit.
I actually read Charles’ review of The Tree of Life based on acutally seeing the movie, and it was worse than I expected.
Any chance The Stranger can get Terrence Malick to see and review Charles Mudede’s film ZOO? I would be equally interested in reading that.
Walk into something with the bad attitude you’ve been harboring for it for how many weeks now, and OF COURSE you’re not going to have a good time, you silly writer you.
Slow clap Mr. Mudede, slow clap. I, too, felt the “new age heaven” was so heavy-handed as to eclipse for 25-minute-long creation sequence (which was incredibly heavy-handed) in art film pretense. This was a film I wanted to like, but couldn’t.
Yeah, you’d already decided that you weren’t going to like it, so I don’t know why you bothered seeing it. If you’re just going to sit there with your arms crossed and not even give it a chance, there’s no point.
The family section – and yes, the American family is not the center of the universe – was also a retelling of the book of Genesis. Also, I don’t think the dinosaur stepping on the head of the sick dinosaur was suppose to be the first moral act….but that’s just me.