A Journey Through The Tree of Life.

The lights turned on.

Jeers rang through the theater. I had just been sitting in the darkness thinking that a film like this was never again going to be released in my lifetime.

Had we seen the same film?

Those were the thoughts that ran through my head as I exited the theater. Apparently, others mocked Terrence Malick’s latest masterpiece for exactly the same reason I had loved it — for its grandiosity.

Critics agree with me in this case. In a recent poll for Sight and Sound, The Tree of Life was one of the only films from this decade to be selected as one of the best films of all time. A titan of film criticism even went so far as to insist that the film resembled Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. That critic, Roger Ebert, even had the temerity to suggest that Malick’s film surpassed Kubrick’s in the realm of emotions. It was more human.

Those are the critics, but who cares about them, right? The truth is that most moviegoers saw The Tree of Life as a disheveled mess of ideas.

They’re not completely wrong, but I wouldn’t go so far as calling it a mess.

One reason why the film alienates most of its audience is because it actually has a lot to do with finding one’s place in the world. About living an authentic life, or at least, about finding meaning in one’s life.

That’s why religion plays a major role in this film.

Religion bookends The Tree of Life. The film begins by citing ‘The Book of Job’ from the Old Testament, specifically God’s response to Job’s lamentations.

Job has just lost many of his possessions. Bereft, he asks why God allowed for this to happen to himself, a devoted follower.

The God of the Old Testament responds in the enlightening way he always does: who the hell are you to ask me that question?

Or, as Malick quotes at the beginning of the film, God asks “where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding … when the morning stars sang together and all the sons shouted for joy” (Job 38:4; 38:7 from KJV).

This should all start seeming familiar now. Played by Jessica Chastain, Mrs. O’Brien asks the exact same question after her son dies. Why did you let this happen? Where were you?

The response is the movie’s most idiosyncratic moment, and likely the reason why users of the internet movie database (IMDB) utterly loathe the film.

But what should become clear now is that Malick’s film is in many ways a contemporary account of ‘The Book of Job,’ a major reason as to why the film misses its mark with moviegoers today.

In an age when university students have trouble identifying allusions to Pontius Pilate and Revelation in Shakespeare, there’s no surprise that the central importance of ‘The Book of Job’ was missed by many.

That said, The Tree of Life does not only offer rewards to those familiar with the culture of Christianity. In fact, it’s even more important for secular viewers. Its single most important theme is its investment in existentialism.

Plenty of films are existential in nature, you might reply. Sure. But Malick’s film doesn’t just ask the same questions a high schooler might when going through puberty or an early life crisis.

Nearly every scene somehow asks us to question things that we already take for granted, things so simple such as our own natural surroundings, and to remind us that we are not simply lifeless instruments going about our daily endeavors: we are individuals living in a world, carrying a web of complex identities, motivations and goals.

The first shot of the film spells that out perfectly. It’s a shot of a younger Mrs. O’Brien looking through a window into the world. Like a great novel’s first sentence, the first shot is a thematic summary of the entire film. It’s a film about looking at the world.

The way we perceive our own reality is exactly what The Tree of Life asks us to question.

Infamous German philosopher Martin Heidegger once insisted that philosophers should ask ideas that are never asked. To rethink questions about our place in the world. By doing so, his thinking went, we could better learn about our own nature as human beings, and from there, we could learn how to live an authentic life.

Heidegger also brought attention to a concept he referred to as the they-self. This is a type of herd mentality — a mentality that we take on when we’re working our day jobs. We act like machines, almost as if we are functioning by remote control, only conscious of our tasks and never entirely conscious of our selves.

We often aren’t even aware of how programmatic our actions are, until we’re disturbed. If we’re walking across the street and a car zooms by and nearly crashes into us, chances are we’re going to be abruptly shocked back into a truer form of reality.

We’re going to realize that crossing the street can be a fatal endeavor, even though just a moment ago we were doing the exact same action as if we were on autopilot and had absolutely no care in the world. Maybe we were even thinking about that meaningless formal email we were going to write as soon as we sat down at our desk.

But all of that is gone now. Our encounter has shattered the way we experience our daily life.

Christians call it revelation, and alcoholics may call it a moment of clarity, but for Terrence Malick’s characters, it’s an authentic encounter with the world.

It happens when the mother, played by Jessica Chastain, tearfully questions God. It happens when the father (Brad Pitt), loses his job. The mother’s untimely death. These are all moments of both rupture and revelation for the characters of Malick’s film. Their very perception of the world drastically alters after these events. Death is the harbinger of these moments.

These are the obvious moments. They’re the moments that Brad Pitt refers to when he says that we might, some day, fall down and weep, and understand all things.

Malick teaches us another essential point. The film’s protagonist, Sean Penn, is somewhat of an idle daydreamer. But his dreams do not consist of random fantasies.

His internal world is full of vibrant thoughts about nature and his own surroundings. During one of his monologues, he thinks about how his father and mother are always imminent, even after they are long gone.

Even as an adult working in a corporate setting, he stops and stares towards the camera and drifts away in contemplation. He arrests his work and thinks about his own life. Perhaps he even reevaluates himself.

If anything, maybe the major reason why The Tree of Life disagreed with its audience was because adolescents and young adults didn’t come to the theater wanting to think about these grand questions. We often sleepwalk through life without actually stopping to think strongly about our choices, and with good reason — for many it’s terrifying to do so.

The Tree of Life asks us to think about those questions. It shocks us out of our mind-numbing routines and tells us to think strongly about how we envision the highway of our lives.

Terrence Malick was a smart guy, he graduated at the top of his class from Harvard with a degree in philosophy and was subsequently awarded with one of the most prestigious scholarships in the world — the Rhodes Scholarship.

After that, he went to Oxford and worked towards his Ph.D in philosophy. His dissertation was on Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

He never completed his degree.

He mysteriously left the academy and went into filmmaking.

Who knows why he decided to do that. Did he experience some sort of revelation and realize he no longer wanted to lead a life of teaching?

Maybe The Tree of Life can help us understand those things.