TREE OF LIFE (Blu-ray) Review

A quick warning that this review gets personal really quickly, but I feel that the only way to respond to this film honestly is to go from the gut. Tree of Life may not be my favorite film of 2011, but it is certainly on my list of end of the year favorites. What I can say with absolute certainty is that this film emotionally impacted me more than anything I've seen in many years. Seeing as how this is a review of the Blu-ray of the film, there will be brief notes at the end commenting on the disc's quality (spoiler alert, it is mind blowing), but the vast bulk of this review will be my response to this film which affected me far more viscerally than I'd expected.

This stunningly original triumph from visionary director Terrence Malick stars Academy Award Nominee Brad Pitt and Academy Award Winner Sean Penn. The epic, yet intimate, story follows the life journey of Jack O'Brien (played as an adult by Penn), the eldest son of a fractured Midwestern family. Pitt delivers a powerful performance as the cataclysmic force of nature in Jack's world, his complex and rigidly authoritarian father. Hailed as a visually breathtaking masterpiece by critics and audiences alike, 'The Tree of Life' won the Cannes Film Festival's highest honor, becoming one of the year's most talked about film.

Tree of Life may be the most polarizing art house film of the year. The latest from Terrence Malick has overwhelming critical support, but among those who dislike it the backlash is fierce.  One man's transcendence is another man's pretentious. As a person who prides himself on being able to approach every problem in his life with objective distance, I can see both points. Tree of Life actually inspired my favorite headline of this year from reviewer Greg Christie on this very site. His review was titled, "Daddy Didn't Love Me. Hey Look, A Dinosaur!" While his dissection of the film is far from my own, I can certainly see the film hitting some viewers that way. That's not how it hit me.

In 1986 my parents split up. It wasn't pretty. My little sister and I became the products of a broken home.  One of my most vivid memories from my early youth was the day in the summer of that year when my Dad came to my bedroom and told me he was moving out. I was six years old. I remember very clearly asking if I could go with him, I didn't want him to leave. I'm not clear exactly when he told me I could go, but within a couple of months I had moved away from my mother and two sisters and was living in a bachelor's apartment a few blocks from my grandparents' house in St. Helena.  Mom and my sisters moved into a two bedroom apartment in Dixon, and that was how we spent my year in second grade.

Any child who goes through a divorce at that young of an age inevitably questions their part in the dissolution of their parents' marriage. As an adult, I can look back and logically realize that it wasn't me that caused their divorce, but at seven years old it was my reality. That first year apart was almost like an extended summer camp. Dad and I lived together like brothers. I have fond memories of that time. I remember us sitting down once a week to watch Alf on TV. I remember Dad showing me Plan 9 From Outer Space for the very first time. I remember being so terrified by the film that I built a ray gun out of Legos to protect me as I slept. I remember not having much, but being mostly happy.

The next year I moved in with my mom and sisters as my dad moved to Napa and moved in with his girlfriend. My mother was always the disciplinarian.  She wasn't mean, but she also wasn't the gushy type. I knew she loved me, but she was under a lot pressure taking care of two young children and working full time while keeping up with our schedules of soccer practice and after school daycare. Sometimes that pressure bore down so hard that I'm sure she was near breaking.  When I was eight years old, I was a pretty normal, good kid. My sister and I were both exceptionally bright, and as such we created high expectations for ourselves, and my mother wanted us to succeed, so she reinforced those expectations. Sometimes when things got heavy with Mom, I would sit and wish I lived with Dad again.  He was more of a free spirit, even though we sometimes didn't get along.

In 1988, the band Mike + the Mechanics released the song The Living Years. The song is about a man who was never able to reconcile with his father before he died. Something about that song made me feel things I had never felt before.  I felt separate from my father. We didn't live together and the lyrics of The Living Years crushed me, even at nine years old. The reality that my father and I lived apart was very potent at that time.  The next year my mom took a job at her corporate headquarters, and within a few months we moved across the country to suburban Atlanta.  This did nothing to calm my irrational worries about losing my dad. To this day I can't hear that song without crying.  I fucking hate that song.

Over the next eight years until I graduated from high school, my sister and I flew back and forth between Napa and Atlanta about every six months. We would uproot ourselves and our lives to spend six month living with Dad and then six months living with Mom. It was a nightmare. I never stayed anywhere long enough to make friends that I could keep, and I had a really hard time socializing because of it. I don't think my parents realized how much it would affect us, but it did. When I was 15 they decided that I should finish my last three years of high school in the same place, so that my credits wouldn't get screwed up. I was given the responsibility of choosing where to stay. All of those years of feeling the dread of losing my dad without knowing him caught up with me in that decision and I stayed with him in California to finish school. The decision crushed my mother. My little sister had to make the same decision when she hit thirteen, and she stayed with my mom. We never lived together again after that.

We saw each other during summers and on winter break, but we were never really a family again.  Even today my sisters sometimes feel like strangers and my parents still reel from the reality of their decisions. I am a living result of my parents' decisions, and it is hard being me sometimes. I have trust issues, I suffer from depression, and I have considered suicide on more than one occasion. I am also a father.

When I was twenty, I met the woman who would be my wife. When I was twenty-two, we married, and at twenty-five my son was born. I know it's cliche, but it is true: the moment I saw his face my world changed. Whatever I was before my son was born was now secondary, because now I was his father. You imagine what it will be like for the entire time the child is gestating, but nothing can really prepare you for the reality of it. Everything else fades into the background and he is all there is and all that matters. It took a little while after that, but soon enough I began to remember my own childhood. That's when things got complicated.

This is where Tree of Life comes in. I know that most people rightfully appreciate this film as an exploration of nature versus nurture, the way of nature and the way of grace. Nature is cruel, nature is cold, and nature is unforgiving.  Grace is love and kindness, grace is support and fluidity, grace is caring. When I watched Tree of Life, I saw my past, I saw my present, and I saw my future. I see everything that I could be to my son, everything that I fear becoming, and I recall my own childhood. Is my father Brad Pitt's Mr. O'Brien, or am I? Are we both? Am I young Jack? In Tree of Life I see possibilities, and they aren't all good.

In my lifetime, the one thing I want to leave behind is a memory of a happy family for my son. I want him to know he is loved and cared for and protected. In spite of his often harsh demeanor, that is all that Mr. O'Brien wants for Jack. The Father in Tree of Life is often vilified in critical responses as a monster, but I can see life through his eyes. I can see the desire to leave a strong son behind. I can see where he sees his toughness as preparing his son for a world that will be tough on him. I can see the differences between the parenting styles of mother and father and I understand the need for both. Mr. O'Brien isn't a monster. He isn't a man with no heart. He is a man trying to protect his son from the evils of the world by teaching him to protect himself. He is just doing it in a way that will leave behind scars that neither father nor son will see or understand for years.

In my seven years as a parent, I have already confronted that slippery slope numerous times. Knowing when to comfort and when to press forward isn't a science, it is an art, and I admit to not being much of an artist. I only have one father, and I can only draw my experience with him. That experience wasn't all fun and games, it wasn't all supportive, and it wasn't all rigid guidelines.  It was fluid. Sometimes I hated him, other times I wanted him to care for me even when he wasn't there.  I still struggle with that relationship, it hasn't entirely been resolved, and I know that my father struggled with his own relationship with his father until he passed away last year.

In Tree of Life, I saw many of my own experiences mirrored, both as a father and as a son. This was both disturbing and empowering. I know that, of course, I'm not alone in my fear of becoming a bad father, but I also think that when I'm trying my hardest, I might still be failing. I find myself saying and doing things I promised myself I'd never do. I wonder everyday what kind of life and memories I'll leave for my child. The memories I have from when I was my own son's age are generally unpleasant, the leaving, the crying, the separation, it all lingers. It wasn't all my dad's fault, but it sticks with me. I know that sometimes I am hard on my son, and I sometimes regret the mistakes I have made, but I always try.

What I fear most in this world is leaving behind someone like Jack. A son who struggles with who he is, and with who I was. It isn't impossible.  I endeavor everyday to overcome my shortcomings and my sometimes irrational behavior. I question my abilities as a father, just as I once questioned my abilities as a son. I fear my own culpability, and each day I hope that I am a better man than I was the day before. Jack's father did the same thing. He worked hard, he endeavored to improve his and his family's station in life, but ultimately he failed. He left behind a son who was doubtful of himself, even as he rose to the level of success that his father dreamed about.

I love my son more than anything on this Earth. I will do anything in my power to ensure that his life is as good as it can be. So why do I let myself down so often? Is it the specter of my own father and my upbringing that keeps me from feeling successful, or am I actually destined to leave my son with emotional scars. We all have good and bad memories of our parents, we each live according to their values to some degree. Every day I try a little bit harder, and every day, at least once, my son comes up to me and tells me he loves me. Every night before he goes to sleep he tells me that I'm the best Dad ever. Every day I try to reach that goal, but I know that sometimes I fall short.

Tree of Life understands my pain, my struggle, and my indecision about what kind of father I want to be. I know that preparing my son for a world that can be cruel and unforgiving is my job. It is as much my job to help my son be strong at those times because he has a father that loves him. It is my job to make him feel safe, and to make him feel secure, while at the same time teaching him to protect himself. Terrence Malick's film takes my fears and expands upon them in a way that is both reassuring and humbling. I am not alone in this world. My fears are not only my own. Thank you and fuck you.

The Disc:

Tree of Life on Blu-ray looks and sounds perfect.  That's it. This is reference quality.

There is only one extra on the disc. It is a thirty minute behind the scenes featurette with several performers, and crew, as well as admirers of Terrence Malick. Malick himself, though, it notably missing.  The most interesting part, I thought, was a brief section with effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull (Silent Running), who runs us through the building and completion of the dawn of existence sequence of the film. Nifty stuff.

I cannot recommend this film enough.  I know that it will rub some people the wrong way, but I also know that it made me feel more deeply than any film has in a long time.