The Independent News Source
NCR on Kindle - NCR classifieds - YouTube - Twitter - Facebook - Email Alerts - RSS
Printer-friendly version
PDF versionCatholics see the same thing differently: Malick's "The Tree of Life"
by Sr. Rose Pacatte on Jun. 06, 2011
A couple of weeks ago "The Tree of Life" won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival though some audience members booed the film while others applauded it. Robert De Niro, the president of the international jury, said "It had the size, the importance, the intention, whatever you want to call it, that seemed to fit the prize…. Most of us felt the movie was terrific."
Peter Bradshaw, writing in The Guardian on May 15 said the film was "mad and magnificent."
One of the core concepts of media literacy education is that people can look at the same film or television program and interpret it in vastly differing ways, all of them valid. How is this possible? Because each viewer, if one might follow a Thomist principle, "receives according to the mode of the one receiving."
On May 23 National Catholic Reporter's Rich Heffern got a jump-start on Catholics reviewing Terrence Malick's latest film "The Tree of Life" that opened this past Friday in limited release. Heffern is obviously taken with the film and concludes, "Terrence Malick's films always reward with cinema that is unlike anything else ever brought to the screen. This film is alive and electric with a hybrid spirit that's part D. W. Griffith, part Juliana of Norwich, part Thomas Berry. It's about all of us humans, and our deep kinship with the Mystery that got us here."
My written review appeared on June 3 on AmericanCatholic.org (I also did a brief review on video). I appreciated the film as well and wrote, "'The Tree of Life' is about mystery and about grace, about certainty and the questions, and about the complexity of human freedom in relation to the Creator, to creation, and to one another."
Fr. Robert Barron, writing on "The Seeker" Blog of the Chicago Tribune wrote that "A basic message of the Bible is that, in the play of good and evil, in the tension between nature and grace, God is up to something beautiful, though we are unable to grasp it totally. The way to life, therefore, is a path of surrender and acceptance. I think that 'Tree of Life' is communicating this same difficult but vital lesson."
Subscribe to NCR
Want to read more about important issues in the life of the Church? A subscription to NCR will keep you up to date and informed.
Then John P. McCarthy, writing a review for Catholic News Service (reviews were formerly issued by the now closed United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcast), reviewed the film on June 3. His praise is faint indeed as he calls the film "New Age" and "spiritual rather than religious" and believes that Malick's "agnosticism appears to win out."
Helena Burns, FSP, also leaked an early review on May 25, writing an enthusiastic if rambling review of "The Tree of Life" on her blog "Hell Burns": "It is the primal, primordial Theology of the Body movie. The masculine and feminine principles are so clearly delineated, and one of the film's taglines seems to be: 'O father, O mother, forever you wrestle within me.' Of course, the principles are witnessed and told from a male perspective (both the writer/director and main character are males). We see that we need both in our lives, in our heads, in our hearts."
But on June 3 she took rousing issue with McCarthy's characterization of the film, stating emphatically that "'New Age' seems to be the favorite Post-it Note that is swiftly slapped on anything that emphasizes God's Creation."
These reviews from Catholic writers bring their own lenses to "The Tree of Life." The one sure conclusion, if you Google reviews of the film, is that "The Tree of Life" has already launched at least a thousand conversations, with more to come, I am sure.
Click here for the trailer for "The Tree of Life."
Get some gorgeous nature
Get some gorgeous nature footage: woods, beaches, waterfalls, volcanoes, interstellar space and, of course, the obligatory Antelope Canyon shots. Throw in some dinosaur footage for good measure and for soundtrack some classical music and Latin hymns... Intersperse these nature shots with some deep-sounding quotations and insufficiently fleshed-out fifties family scenes played by well-known actors, and you too may win the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Every time you feel like walking out of the theater, there is a hint that something meaningful is about to happen, but believe me, it won’t...
Can the high ratings this film is getting be explained by reviewers being afraid to give this film a bad rating for fear of being seen as a country bumpkin?...
Or was I just not in a very spiritual mood on Friday, when I saw this film?...
Your reflection reminds me of
Your reflection reminds me of what a woman wrote to the editor of NCR in May 2007 in response to a positive review of the film "Into Great Silence" about the life of Carthusian monks. She was deeply disappointed in the film because she expected so much more and wrote, "How could such a rigid, controlled, isolated life have anything to do with the life of grace?" (What an exquisite question, to me)
Your reflection also supports the principle that everyone sees and interprets films according to their own lens - and expectations. At Cannes, half the audience loved "The Tree of Life" and the others booed it.
I see three films a week and I can tell you, most of them disappoint me on some level. The best thing is to ignore the hype and lower your expectations - always.
"The Tree of Life" caught my imagination - and knowing Malick, I knew it would be a slow go. That's the way he is.
So no worries; you don't have to like TTOL and many probably won't either.
I just saw "Beginners" and the critics are raving about it. It was one of the most boring films I had ever seen - except for the Jack Russell terrier. I want one of those.
Bless you!
Get some gorgeous nature
Get some gorgeous nature footage: woods, beaches, waterfalls, volcanoes, interstellar space and, of course, the obligatory Antelope Canyon shots. Throw in some dinosaur footage for good measure and for soundtrack some classical music and Latin hymns... Intersperse these nature shots with some deep-sounding quotations and insufficiently fleshed-out fifties family scenes played by well-known actors, and you too may win the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Every time you feel like walking out of the theater, there is a hint that something meaningful is about to happen, but believe me, it won’t...
Can the high ratings this film is getting be explained by reviewers being afraid to give this film a bad rating for fear of being seen as a country bumpkin?...
Or was I just not in a very spiritual mood on Friday, when I saw this film?...
Amen on "Get some gorgeous
Amen on "Get some gorgeous nature".....after all the hype, and heavy meaning and "once in a generation film"-build up, I was ready to float through that movie and cry because I never wanted it to end......I found myself nearly in tears waiting for it to be over......maybe I wasn't in a very spiritual mood either.....
In this country especially,
In this country especially, we have been trained to get our movies handed to us on a plate, even pre-digested. The simpler and more available the ideas the better. The more we can project our real emotions on a field of fake ones, the happier we seem to be. And, we want our religious films to blare their aphorisms. Viewers beware, "Tree of Life" is not "The Passion of the Christ."
This film is very new, a new way of doing something much more deeply Christian than reciting our stories and pulling the same old strings. Tree of Life asks us to look at our relation to God and Grace in life, our life, the life of the world -- the world where death threatens to destroy meaning and faith. The film asks questions, the questions that are at the center of Christianity. It asks them in a deeply Christian and even worshipful context -- and amazingly enough for an American film -- it asks us to think.
Go see this film. Think about it for a week. Open yourself to a great new work of art.
I saw the ToL with my wife
I saw the ToL with my wife last week. After meditating on it for a time I took my mother to see it the day before yesterday. I don't think I've ever focused that intently on a film in the second viewing. It is rich with meaning and reflection. It clearly illustrates God's grace in our world and the fact that we are able to choose it perceive it. That this element is what makes us human end elevates us to be able to share that love and grace with one another as conduits for God. We can witness God's work in nature, we can see it in animals but they are slaves to their nature. We are not; we are authors while they are actors and it is this difference and this understanding that sets us free and can elate and comfort us. If you see it once and it resonates, see it again a week later. You will not regret it.
Post new comment