The Tree of Life

If I can describe The Tree of Life, director Terrence Malik's fifth film of his forty-year career in two words, it would be “um, what?”

Believe me, if you saw this film, you'd ask the same question.

What story there is concerns a Texas family, the father being played by Brad Pitt. A son dies in 'Nam, but that's not important. Kids play around as DDT gets sprayed from trucks. Again, that's not important. There's also some guys getting arrested. Guess what? It's not important.

What is important is the out-of-order history of not just the family, but of the entire world. Along the way, the family's eldest son (Sean Penn as an adult) and others ask existential questions in the narration. And neither they nor the audience get clear cut answers thrown at them.

What Malik has created is 2001: A Space Odyssey in the real-life year 2011. As with the older film, this film's visual effects are supervised by the revered Douglas Trumbull. This is his first film since Blade Runner; the effects he's created are perfectly surreal.

Rather than use surreality to bludgeon its audience, the film uses it to soothe them. It takes off slowly, and lets the cinematography by Emanuel Lubezki do much of the talking. Its five editors, headed by Mark Yoshikawa, make human life itself as surreal as the big bang. While it is definitely confusing, it's definitely the good kind of confusing.

And in the midst of all the scenery, Brad Pitt gets the best performance. A nice man one minute, an utter tyrant the next. Believable all the way.

It's not the kind of movie that you can "get" in a day. You might not get it all. But don't worry if you don't get it. I think that's the whole point; for that, Malik's film works.