TOL: Tell Me A Story

Is this a common question children ask of their parents? "Tell us a story from before we can remember."? I don't know if it is or not, but I know that I myself asked this question many times over as a child. R.L. might have wanted his mother's story for the same reasons I remember wanting mine's- for the merit of a story told from a time before my own when things were different; a time and place before my mother thought of me perhaps as even a possibility; a time when my mother was not a mother but somebody's child, a child like me wandering the world in place of somewhere to be. Actually I never addressed this line as significantly extraordinary- at least within the film- because it seems a perfectly natural question to me. There's the history you learn in school, and then there's the history of your parents who, when you're small, are omniscient and wise beings. 

What does it mean that R.L. asked this question and not Jack? That R.L. is the child that wonders about these kinds of things? Does it mean that he has a greater sense of grace, asking for stories, becoming adept at guitar and painting? R.L. seems to care about these things and appreciate their beauty (their "goodness"/grace?) more than Jack ever does.

If we go along with the idea that Jack, if not the main character, is at least the central character of ToL, perhaps his journey is about realizing that he too has followed the way of nature, like his dad, but perhaps completely by accident. His journey then is to figure a way to find the way of grace, the path that his mother and R.L. followed. It gives us then an idea to tackle about what beauty is in the film- there is beauty in grace, but there's also beauty in nature- the thing of it is that it's how you approach it that matters.

Going into again what I said in class about Dad's music: classical music is a lot like designing a building (see what I did there?). You build it from the ground up and it's a stoic kind of thing. On paper it's all bars and keys and lines, structured and exact. The father reads from sheet music and listens from records from the great classical composers- among them Brahms and Bach. I'm not saying there's not beauty in classical music, because there is, but you're not going to find it by conducting with it or staring at the sheet music of it like Dad does. And Bach's Fugues aren't exactly lullabies.

R.L., when he plays the guitar, doesn't read sheet music. He plays with his father by ear in the piano/guitar scene, and it's interesting how nature and grace overlap in that scene. They coexist harmoniously for a little while, and yet they're still independent of each other. Dad plays by the sheet music and R.L doesn't, but they're playing together.

A Second Look at TOL

There's so much crammed into Tree of Life that I'd honestly forgotten the light-thingy- the lumia- at the beginning of the movie. Honestly, I was with the people in the class that thought it was, at first, a womb, partly because of the colors, but also because of the whispered aspects of the character (Jack? brother? God?) speaking. "Brother, mother, it was they who led me to your door..."

But (and this is going to be hard to admit) maybe the lumia doesn't have to necessarily mean something symbolically. Maybe it's just there to be beautiful and thought-provoking and transcendent. As the light moves and interacts with itself, we're watching it and noting its beauty, but we're also listening really hard to the speaker's whispering. When's the last time you took such notice of someone's whispering as when you had little or no other sensory input? Maybe Malick wants us to pay attention to the speaker, but he's not just going to give us a black screen and some muttering, he's going to present something rare and beautiful because that's what's really going to get the audience thinking.

'Kay, that was painful. I want everything to be a symbol so that I can explain it all away and go to bed happy that I've cracked the secrets of Tree of Life forevermore. But life isn't that easy and neither is Tree. So on to something I might be able to explain better.

Names. Who cares if the characters have names or not? They can be anonymous. It doesn't make them any less individual, and it increases their impact by making them anyone. They could be anybody. They could be that family down the street. They could be yours or mine. Perhaps "Jack" only appeared because he's more of a central character, or perhaps it just ended up that way, or maybe his lone naming is supposed to make you aware that none of the other characters have names- why not? I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that this film wants us to ask questions, and not all of them are going to have answers.

I can't quite hack into the mother and father's roles as far as the ways of "nature" and "grace". I really like the concept, but I think either of the parents could be either of the virtues. The mother is kind and submissive and faithful, and the father is forceful and callous. The father goes through the motions of having faith- saying prayers, going to church, lighting a candle, and the mother through her voice overs seems to have a faith that's more... real? Genuine?

I'm sure there's some irony in that the "way of nature" characterized most by the father is represented through loud noise, planes, and technology like telephones, which in a normal conversation you wouldn't consider natural at all. Is that something significant? After all, the mother is the one floating and climbing trees and lying in the grass with her kids. What is natural? What is grace?

...

By the way, are they Catholic? "The nuns taught us there are two ways to go through life..." Nuns, i.e. Catholic school, would probably lead to a Catholic marriage... I don't know if that's important, because I get the feeling that in this film faith is faith is faith, but the thought occurred to me that while the parents are faithful, it's interesting that they may be Catholic because doesn't (and don't quote me) Catholicism have a lot of rigid rules on how to have faith and talk to God? Interestingly it's the mother that strays from this structure, especially when her son dies. Or is she straying?

I could go on but I think I'll end it with this.

Tree of Life Review

It was either really lucky or really wise that I decided to watch "Tree of Life" with an open mind. Nothing was quite what I expected, but then, what was I expecting?

Some other people didn't like the natural/Creation scenes in the beginning of the movie, but I did. Besides being stunningly beautiful, they told a story of how small we actually are in the great scheme of the universe, and the next "chapter" of the film with the family explained how colossal we are. The last half hour or so got me lost, though. What's with the desert? The people? I can't remember at which point the mother was floating around, but what's up with that, too?

I was brought up on classical music, so the entire soundtrack simply blew me away all by itself. The part with the father and son playing together was really sweet, and I liked the scene with the organ. On another day it might have been sensory overload, but time and place.

About suffering there were some interesting points. I liked how the point was not to get over suffering, but that suffering happens, how it happens, the question of why it happens, and how it affects everyone. The oldest child, when we see him as an architect later on in life (if that's who he is, you never really know) is still grieving over the death of his brother, but the story arc doesn't care about healing him or absolving him from his childhood. We follow his childhood point of view for a while, but I don't really think it matters what happens to him. We're just supposed to see how he looks at things and puts them together as he grows and makes discoveries and gets acquainted with suffering.

I think the thing I liked best about Tree of Life is how it faces reality even while tilting it on it's head. You're not sure whether you're watching a home movie or a documentary or a film on philosophy or even a lecture on religion. You get all of those things doused in real characters, characters that could be real, and I think this is really important and send every point Malick wants to give us right home. And even that Malick's not giving us something to believe in, or shoot us a specific point of view that he thinks everybody has/should have, but that he sort of presents the question and leaves you to figure it out on your own. I love that.