Comment

Oct 07, 2018Nursebob rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Not since Kubrick’s hairy man ape threw that fateful bone at the moon in "2001" has a director had the audacity to paint such a simple story across so vast a canvas. With a narrative that stretches from the dawn of creation to the threshold of eternity, Terrence Malick’s grand opus takes man’s ceaseless quest for truth and meaning in a seemingly indifferent cosmos and distills it down to one unhappily middle-aged businessman’s childhood memories. We get the impression that here is a man who’s achieved great material success but is now all too aware of the yawning spiritual void at his feet, and therein lies the film’s central enigma: is this the story of one world weary man’s attempt to reboot his priorities by drawing upon his earlier sense of wonder? or is it all but a momentary flash before the eyes of a wandering soul journeying towards that ultimate light? Awash with soaring arias and portentous visions of parting clouds and swirling galaxies, Malick examines the endless cycle of life and death and life through a curious admixture of Darwinian realism and Judeo-Christian allegory which give rise to some striking scenes---a host of proto-planets silhouetted against a newborn star or a young child swimming through an underwater nursery on his way to being born. Some critics have dismissed "The Tree of Life" as being pretentious and overly ambitious and I can’t completely disagree with them. But unlike the clinical austerity of Kubrick’s vision (still my sentimental favourite) there is an underlying sense of humility to Malick’s film as if all the trials and tribulations of one human family pale to insignificance when set against the majestic universe in which they’re suspended.