Movie Review: “The Tree of Life” (-)

June 6, 2011

This picture received across-the-board rave reviews. If you read A.O. Scott’s review in The Times – the longest that I can recall his having written – one would conclude that anyone not liking this film must be a clod. When I saw it, the audience applauded at its conclusion. I wondered why they were clapping and felt like the child who cried out, “The Emperor has no clothes.”

With great loving care, scenes are set forth of a family that includes the father, Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt), Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain), and their three sons: the oldest and leader of the pack, Jack (Hunter McCracken), R.L. (Laramie Eppler), and Steve (Tye Sheridan). Sean Penn plays Jack as an adult, and I wouldn’t have recognized him if I hadn’t known he was in the movie. Pitt is made up to portray an ordinary, middle-aged man from the suburbs. The best actors were McCracken and Sheridan with Penn providing the least impressive performance.

The photography is wonderful and the music is majestic, as if announcing the presence of God. Everything in between, however, is inexplicable. I think we were being told that we must appreciate the cosmos – maybe the Big Bang and the ultimate Rapture – a return to God. I thought the events depicting the cosmos were better suited to the Rose Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History and that the writer and director of “The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick, had denied me an evening of entertainment or even a learning experience.