The Tree of Life

Bea says: Beautiful. Captivating. Hypnotic. Dreamlike. All words that went through my mind as I was immersed in the experience of watching The Tree of Life.

Plot? What little there was of one vaguely documents the childhood of Sean Penn's character, Jack, as a boy. Dialogue? Even less, other than dreamy, often biblical, words voiced over images of deserts, rivers, oceans, forests, space, and electron microscope images of our own bodily interiors. One sequence involves dinosaurs - a kind of "before we were here" pre-conception/creation/intelligent design kind of thing I think.

Kind of about death, grief, childhood, marriage, motherhood, religion and meaning in life (says a lot by saying nothing at all). Lots of symbolism and biblical references - some of these I got, some I didn't.

Loved the soundtrack. Go for the experience, not the story.
***

Cecil says: Don't go to this film if you're feeling even the slightest bit sleepy: you won't survive the 2h 18 minutes, I guarantee...

The opening scene was a bit weird, but then it got going with this family in the 1950s, only for the whole story to stop and we had to watch about 20 minutes of wildlife and the world, as Bea says (I hadn't even realised that some of the shots were of our insides). It all felt more like watching a David Attenborough wildlife documentary (without his voice), combined with Jurassic Park, for a very very odd few scenes.

What was THAT all about? And that basically sums up most of the film, I'm afraid. I'm glad Bea knew that much of it was based on biblical allegory; part of me guessed as much; and the last time we went to a film that was all Bible and allegory, I almost walked out (in fact, I think I did). But the music was lovely and some of the filming quite captivating too, so I didn't come that close to leaving.

I knew it had to return to the plot sooner or later, so it just required a bit of patience. Quite disturbing scenes often, boys growing up with a violent father and getting into lots of scrapes.

Rather like a symphony, which comes back to its original theme at the end, you kind of know when this film is drawing to a close because it goes all funny and weird again. So, I left the cinema thinking: hmmm, not sure what that was all about really. I fear the producers wanted me to go away thinking 'wow' - and maybe if I knew the biblical references, I might have. But I didn't.

**.5