Not Your Ordinary Hollywood Film - It’s Magnificently Extraordinary
If you are looking for that ordinary Hollywood screen experience, you know, grabbing a bag of popcorn, a pop (I am from Chicago) and venturing into a dark theater to escape from your cares and worries, with Tree of Life, you will have an extraordinary experience. You might find yourself at film’s end still with that full bag of popcorn/pop, sitting in awe, because you just encountered something (or should I say, someone) extraordinary – that which is much more fulfilling and thirst quenching. In the words of St. Ambrose, "That than which nothing greater can be thought." Director Terrence Malick gets us close to thinking about and feeling “That” which in fact accompanies, consoles, and strengthens us through our cares, worries, and grief.
Tree of Life is not your ordinary escapist form of Hollywood entertainment; rather as part of our earthly journey, it is a meditation and an encounter with Divine Love. Nor is Tree of Life your ordinary propaganda “Christian” film. Flannery O’Connor wrote, “You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.” Tree of Life communicates to us a metaphysical experience because a story with conventional plots and characters arcs would be inadequate. Tree of Life’s dialogue is essentially prayer, its soundtrack is a soaring and triumphal celestial symphony, and its silent sequences (if you are patient enough to listen) speak volumes to the depths of the human heart.
The movie opens with a quotation from the book of Job: “where were you when I founded the earth…while the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38). Malick’s film opens with a couple, the O’Briens (played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain), who have been informed that their 19 year old son has died. They begin to experience a Job-like confusion and crisis: It begs the question, “Why God have you done this to them?”
How does Malick seem to answer that and a few other other transcendent questions that haunt every human soul? He presents to us a glimpse into the grandeur of the cosmos. He also gives us a view into the human lives of the O’Brien’s, years before the tragic news, a family of 5 (3 boys), living in 1950s Waco, Texas, and how those lives interrelate within the universal drama of creation. The father, Mr. O’Brien (played exceptional well by Brad Pitt, a father too) is represented as the human response through nature: strong, conflictual, hard-edged, and violent. The mother, Mrs. O’Brien (also an exceptional performance by Jessica Chastain), represents the response through grace: gentle, loving, and forgiving. And young Jack (Hunter McCracken)/Adult Jack (Sean Penn) represents the struggle, not to choose one way over the other, but to reconcile the two with each other – as young Jack says in this most profound line from the film, “Father, Mother, always you wrestle inside me.” Is that not a reality of the personal drama of every human person - namely, how we reconcile nature and grace?
Some early reviewers have criticized Mailck for basically not getting to the point with his long nature scenes (one is at least 15 minutes long). But when one browses through an art gallery and stumbles upon something profoundly magnificent, do they quickly want to move on, or sit in its truth, beauty, and goodness? Do not our souls thirst for savoring that which penetrates to the depth of our souls, rather than just fast “soul-food service” which just selfishly fattens one’s belly of fleeting sensual pleasure? Does not God give us a lengthy Psalm on his creative majesty in scriptures, for one, Ps. 145? I recommend meditating on this passage from Romans in response to the criticisms of Malick’s lengthy “Discovery Channel” sequences [Rom. 1:20] – “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made.” Maybe in Malick’s view, there are just too many excuses today dismissing God’s loving Providential Design above all things.
NEW ETHOS EXCELLENCE AWARD
Overall, a New Ethos branding on quality entertainment weds beauty and grace, strength and sublimity to perfection of technique. Tree of life has done that.
The New Ethos Perspective on quality entertainment is not just awarding entertainment because it’s “great Catholic” or even “Christian” content while sacrificing the artistic value, because then it’s essentially propaganda and where is the truth, beauty, and goodness in that? St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “A work of art is good in itself (not in its utilitarian value).” The New Ethos award criteria accounts for a sense of mystery, characterized by faith, hope, and love, combined with a sense of manner. In other words, New Ethos looks for films that do not sacrifice “technique” for the sake of the message.
The New Ethos ”perspective of faith” is more an expression of man’s ultimate concern rather than identifying it with Judaism, Christianity, or with “going to church.” It is a perspective of film that is always reaching for the universal transcendent value of things inside, outside, above and beyond the world of the seen and unseen.
The New Ethos “perspective of hope” is always fresh, innovative, and open to the depths of reality and the possibilities of the mystery of all being. It is a perspective that is always new in any age.
The New Ethos “perspective of love” views a successful journey or story as one that exemplifies serving and sacrificing oneself for the good of another. It is a love that suffers for the sake of the good of another and desires that they be touched by the immutable and eternal transcendent values of truth, beauty, and goodness.
“We have not discovered the true beauty of any work of art until we have brought to light its eternal implications, which may be present even apart from the intentions of the work's creator."
-Flannery O’Connor
Tree of Life meets all New Ethos criteria with magnificence and it is why it is awarded the New Ethos Logo of excellence for truth, beauty, and goodness in entertainment. Hurray for Hollywood! Hurray for Terrence Malick! And Hurray for “That than which nothing greater can be thought!”
In 1987, The late Pope John Paul II, speaking to the entertainment industry in Los Angeles said entertainment media can be a principal agent for uniting the human race through truth, beauty, and goodness. Well, I look forward to seeing this film with my friends from other faith traditions. When was the last time you heard of a priest, rabbi, and eman going to the movies together (other than in a joke)? In the Tree of Life, there is something profoundly common we can share and rejoice in. St. Bonaventure wrote, “Not simply to be a knower but a lover of truth, beauty, and goodness.”
There Something more powerful than the creation of the universe that exists around us – As Jessica Chastain (Mrs. O’Brien) says in the film, “Unless you have loved, your life will flash by.”
-Fr. Don Woznicki, Founder, New Ethos
