THE TREE OF LIFE – review

IT WALKED AWAY with the Palme d’Or – the most coveted of all film trophies – at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, and screened here just last week, at the Sydney Film Festival. Yet its epic, sprawling narrative has opinion split squarely down the middle. Is this grand opus actually any good, or is it merely one director’s vision allowed to run wild, in whatever direction he likes?

The story itself is straightforward. It focuses on a 1950s middle-American family: a tough, disciplinarian father named Mr O’Brien (Brad Pitt), his dreamy wife (Chastain) and their three boys, the eldest of which is named Jack (played by Sean Penn, years later).

In amongst the kitchen sink drama: a time shift back and forth (Penn is seen years later, as a slick but troubled businessman), a first act spent largely in outer space (no joke), and a bizarre series of sequences that wouldn’t look out of place on the National Geographic Channel.

This is poetic, impressionistic filmmaking, then, on a grand scale. As a result, little is explained of Jack’s modern-day situation (or that of his younger, surviving brother), and it’s questionable whether the abstract inter-planetary montages really warrant inclusion. Terrence Malick, the film’s highly regarded director (considered by many to be the finest alive today), could easily have made three films – but opted to mesh them into one.

The effect of this is both mesmerising and frustrating. Visually, it’s a sumptuous feast of colour, camera angles and drama, woven together like a giant mosaic in time. And musically, it soars with a grandiose score, from celebrated film composer Alexandre Desplat (whose list of credits includes The King’s Speech) which only accentuates its ambition.

It’s a bold and epic exercise, and one that Malick comes close to pulling off. It may not stack up against his best (ie The Thin Red Line), but it doesn’t fail to incite feelings of awe in its audience, either.

Critical Rating: 8/10.

THE TREE OF LIFE is in cinemas from Thursday.

ED GIBBS


First published in The Sun-Herald.