okay, here we go... there's probably a billion ways to approach this, but
I can think of a few ways to look at this movie, and each perspective would necessitate its own little essay worth of shit; there's a book about this movie out there for anybody with the time to take the topic up. Anyways, perspectives:
Just to frame my response, I’m very much entering argumentation mode. Your initial thoughts cover a lot of things the movie
is, but I’ll explain why being these things doesn’t make it a broadly resonant movie. I won’t deny that it is most of the things you claim, but I don’t feel that it effectively employed these massive-in-scope and varied themes in communicating with viewers who lack a particular loose-Christian outlook. I was going to employ the term “post-Christian” but this term is already used to describe societies (typically European) where Christianity’s impact is felt most strongly by way of cultural runoff as opposed to ongoing practice. With “loose-Christian” I refer to either the people or beliefs of a well-populated though necessarily non-organized demographic in (at least) the USA consisting most stereotypically of a modern spiritual person who subscribes to many of the take-home messages of Christianity while rejecting the dogmatism of organized religion. A loose-Christian will tend to emphasize the “universal truths” held in the Bible while taking a relaxed view regarding the specific details therein; this grants them all the security, comfort, and spiritual grounding of the ideologies held within while freeing them from the concern over the inconsistencies that arise in light of modern observations about the state of the universe. The most typical loose-Christian was introduced to a rigorous form of Christianity as a child and proceeded to move to a more open spiritual outlook; hence many of these people report that The Tree of Life as “not Christian” since it represents the place they moved
towards while simultaneously moving
away from Christianity. From this experiential perspective, the stance seems to make sense. However, The Tree of Life’s central theme – nature vs. grace – seems to me (an atheist) a mere reframing of typical Christian good/evil morality, while it’s a vast distance from the chaotically amoral nature of the universe as viewed by a nihilist/existentialist. From this perspective I see the film as Christian (among other things).
1) it's auto-biographical; the movie is largely about how people (specifically families) relate to each other and to the world around them; this is a running theme in Malick's movies - you don't need to mention anything specifically religious to talk about this facet, and it fits into Malick's structure, which puts the brothers and the family at the heart of the story (by specifically, I mean that Malick makes no explicit argument for any kind of religion in exploring the effects of losing a brother and growing up in a certain place with certain people; the Christian imagery is a byproduct of the place and time, not an irrefutable truth). Under this interpretation, we can assume that much of the movie consists of Sean Penn's memories and imagination... the jumpy editing is a product of the way our memory tends to work; there is no straight narrative, just numerous ideas and musings that get strung together into something bigger. I'm sympathetic to this interpretation, at least in part. It helps make sense of Sean Penn's character, and it helps connect the "creation of the universe" sequence with the story that takes place in the 50s... the movie ends up being an extended train of thought, seemingly unedited... we get everything from feeling grief to sneaking into a house and wondering what it all means 30 years down the road, after youth has faded and death comes increasingly closer.
I don’t think the Christian imagery is merely incidental. If it were only a relic of the time and place and unimportant-in-retrospect to Jack (who we can assume is standing in for Terry), these elements would be down-played instead of propped up. The Book of Job is brought to the forefront via opening text and the sermon scene, the latter of which holds considerable power in a film where words are scarce. The traditionally-Christian theme of “nature v. grace” is placed at the thematic center and the parents are drawn as archetypes embodying the two poles.
I understand Malick to be an Episcopalian (or at least was raised that way), yet based on my knowledge that he has a degree in philosophy, has been published translating Heidegger’s essay
The Essence of Reasons, and created The Tree of Life, I have no doubt that he must have evolved towards my category of loose-Christian. Had he given up Christianity altogether, perhaps we would have been treated with cries to a sky-dwelling God from young Jack and his parents, but we’d probably not hear any from adult Jack/Malick. Let’s not forget that the title could have been a number of more apt things, yet instead we have a semi-pertinent one that references the Garden of Eden.
The autobiographical nature of this movie might be the origin of my biggest gripe. Despite all the film’s lofty and admirable aspirations, Jack’s story never registers as anything but a highly stylized filmic depiction of a man’s midlife crisis and its ensuing philosophically self-congratulatory aftermath. This is in line with a message the movie sends: there’s beauty and magic permeating the universe and as long as you strive for grace, your life will be meaningful and special. This sort of spiritual warm-fuzzy copout is central to protestant and loose-Christian thinking, isn’t it? Just try and be good, repent in some way, accept God into your heart, and you get to go to heaven? That’s essentially the spiritual path we are left to presume Jack takes. And presume is all the viewer can do: we’re shown many experiences of a conflicted child embodying both spirit and grace, then sparse snapshots of a sad adult whose life appears to have embraced far too little grace during the intervening decades. The path to spiritual enlightenment is a furrowed brow?
2) it's a movie about how the eternal relates to the temporal; this can be combined with 1 without any problems, but I'm separating the two because I think there might be an argument that one is more central the other. I'll leave that up to whoever watches the movie. I think one of the things you have to ask when watching the movie is "why do we need to see the creation of the universe to tell this story?" I think it's because Malick is making an argument that the eternal and the temporal are artificially distinct categories, and that they should be combined or fused in a way we don't expect. Even as time marches on and the world changes in infinitely different ways, there's a constant theme of creation and death that defines the movement of the universe perfectly; there isn't any temporal activity without eternal laws, but the eternal laws are meaningless and void without the temporal specifics; or, at least, the eternal can't be glimpsed by the human except through the specific. I think, when looking at the movie through these glasses, the whole dinosaur episode is just another example of life happening in the universe. The "grace" episode you're talking about with the dinosaurs has nothing to do with grace and nature at all; one dinosaur happens upon the other, one is sick and dying, the other is moving down the river looking for food, and none of it means a damn thing. One lives, the other probably dies, if not by cannibalization (assuming they're the same species), then by something else. In fact, the next scene is a giant asteroid crashing into the earth and killing everything, so it doesn't matter which survived and which didn't. I think that whole sequence was supposed to be a setup for the extinction event he shows before moving on to the next kind of life... we start with brain-less entities, move through the dinosaurs which are modestly more intelligent, and then get to more complex life and eventually humans... but death marks life's progress from moment 1 to moment infinity. It's a sequence, not an argument that there's grace in nature. If that's how you read it, then you're basically arguing that Malick is negating his whole conceptual setup, which I think is a longshot... That brings me to the next thing...
This relation and equivocation of vastly disparate timescales is something I really enjoyed in a certain, isolated sense. The non-Texas sequence was extremely well done and rewarding to watch. However, I never felt much of a thematic connection between this portion and the story of the O’Briens. To me, the universe itself (excluding life on Earth) is a cold, dead place governed by firm physical laws and devoid of spiritual meaning. Malick clearly feels the opposite and presumes that there is wonder and intent throughout the universe, humans or not. This is a view central to Christians and particularly loose-Christians and although I might be open to it with tasteful presentation, the way it’s portrayed in this movie is indirect and clearly intended for those who already believe. Malick is convinced that his view of a fantastic universe is plain to see as long as the viewer’s eyes are open. This may be true for many, but not for me. Perhaps I’m asking too much; an overt display of this idea might necessarily come off as heavy-handed and clumsy.
But mere intent and meaning throughout the universe aren’t enough for Malick; I believe that he does sprinkle evidence of pre-human grace into the universe. One explicit example likely lost on many viewers is what I perceived to be a depiction of the origin of endosymbiosis: the evolutionary turning point where the ancestors of “higher” organisms (plants, animals) consumed other organisms and began a millennial collaboration that allowed life to prosper unlike ever before. This was depicted in the film as a large amoeba-like blob consuming a smaller microbe, followed by a dramatic flash of light/energy. At first glance this appeared to be an act of violence or consumption (in line with “nature”) but since life has since shown that the two distinct organisms instead managed to cooperate and thrive, we can reasonably interpret this as an instance of grace: each gives up their previous/individual/selfish needs and instead compromises to consider a new set of goals. I also believe that the Malick deliberately used dinosaurs as a demonstration of grace in non-humans and completely disagree with your interpretation of his intent. Along with the collaborating microbes, he’s offering us a conceptual stepping stone between “natural” animals and humans, via “graceful” animals (a dinosaur in this case). If the natural world is dominated by selfishness and survival, wouldn’t the apparently carnivorous dino tear into the downed herbivore dino without hesitation? Malick knows this presumption is at the forefront of the viewer’s expectation for the classic scene of a downed prey being approached by a sleek predator. He engages us and heightens/reinforces our expectation with a moment of violence as the predator stomps on the head – but we are shocked when the carnivore turns down an easy meal and trots off into the distance, leaving the would-be-meal to die in peace. I think this scene is an interesting inversion of 2001’s opening: there man’s defining evolutionary moment is the invention of tools and their application in the name of violence, heightening the efficiency with “nature” can carry out its selfish goals. Malick is more optimistic and offers a retrospective counter-view: perhaps there were equally important defining moments of grace in other creatures, but these moments were quieter and more easily overlooked. I read the asteroid’s destruction in The Tree of Life as a perhaps-inexplicable end to what was a race on the brink of enlightenment and spiritual awakening. Also, your assertion that the meteor's destruction of the dinos signifies their insignificance and gracelessness, wouldn't the sun's eventual dying out signify the same for humans? If there is spiritual meaning in the entire universe, why shouldn’t there be avenues for non-humans to reach a higher plane, or to attain grace?
Although my first paragraph here was critical, I did enjoy the two noted demonstrations of non-human grace; they are instances where spiritually-meaningful, special things are developed explicitly in the pre-human universe. Interestingly, they are both conveyed via living things. If Malick conveyed grace in non-living parts of the universe, I didn’t read it as anything more than surface-level beauty. This is a tall order to fulfill, and as I said above it might be impossible to pull off tastefully.
3) the movie is about what nature and grace are; this is harder for me to talk about, because I think Malick eliminates the difference by the end of the movie; that's another reason the dinosaur thing has nothing to do with grace.. They were one kind of life that came along and died, but they're massively different from humans, which can remember their dead and make informed decisions, wonder about the nature of the universe, solve math problems, listen to Sigh, and do more than decide whether to eat or not at some point in time. Humans can reflect and make claims that they see something in the universe that's more than natural, in the sense that it's super-natural, super-nature, whatever. The movie's logic kind of starts with a dichotomy, and then moves toward the elimination of opposites... this is also made clear by the way Malick handles death... we might think that death and life/creation are opposites, but the end of the movie suggests otherwise. Death makes way for life, makes way for death, makes way for life, etc.
I don’t have much to add/argue here. I suppose this theme was largely lost on me. Again, a traditional good/evil dichotomy set as a thematic center, and played out dramatically by its two embodiments in the O’Brien parents. I am not convinced that Malick eliminates the difference by the end of the movie; grace is always something to strive for, and nature is a path repeatedly leading to emotional or physical pain. A pairwise relation of life/death to grace/nature seems irresponsible here: death is inevitable, but the movie suggests that one should hope to attain grace before it comes. I think the ending clearly enough suggests this; Jack’s regrettable “nature”-heavy life is washed away once he flips a “grace” switch in his head and then all is forgiven. He proceeds to (what appears to be) heaven and finds solace. This is another loosely-Christian motif I’m having a hard time seeing as anything else. I don’t see how “death makes way for life”, as you put it.
4) the movie is about God in the world; there are several instances that make me think this is the heart of the movie, but I'm not convinced Malick is thinking about God in a specifically Christian context. America in the 50s = Christianity; had the movie been set somewhere else, perhaps the movie could be made with Buddhist images instead of Christian ones... Anyways, Malick uses the dead brother as a way of talking about what happens to people when they grieve and think a lot about death and meaning, but he also uses that death as a way to suggest that death simply isn't the end, and that there is meaning in grief that exceeds the bare materialistic facts. All the talk about love and meaning support this, but so does the scope of the movie... stars are born and die, worlds form and disintegrate, dinosaurs and all other kinds of life live and die, humans live, look for meaning, and frequently pass away before ever finding it or even glimpsing it, but the constant is perpetual life and death, some kind of perpetual light that founds the universe... death is not the end, etc. - whatever it is that put the universe in motion... we see it in the world, we sort of get a peek at it.... there's something in life that goes beyond the basic material facts, etc. The one brother brought the other to a belief that there's more in the universe, the father is brought to self-understanding by his son, the mother is moved to let her grief go by considering the scope of the universe and the laws that govern it... and ultimately all life exceeds itself and shows itself to be more than the mere facts of organic interactions... I think this links the creation of the universe and the 50s-era story nicely. I know I'm jumping around, but I'd have to see the movie again and take more time to form my thoughts more perfectly before arguing this any better than I am now.
I think this section of your post is a bit of a mess, and it’s forgivable because the movie elements you’re trying to tackle are correspondingly a mess. I thought the dead brother was poorly incorporated into Jack’s story. Back to the autobiographical nature of the tale: Malick’s younger brother killed himself as a teenager. While that was certainly deeply meaningful to Malick and led to a reworking of his relationship with his father, we see almost none of the effect this had on Jack from young-adulthood to his adult state. In the film it just felt tacked on. Did Jack really learn anything meaningful from his brother’s death? If so, why did it take ~30 years for him to take any action in response? Life/death could have been a powerful theme in this movie, but there was a weak conceptual connection between the brother’s death and the impact on his family, let alone on the entire universe.
5) the movie deals with the way different forces of nature meet to make something new; we see this in the creation sequence, but also in the way the characters change through the movie. We don't even need to mention God from this perspective, because ultimately Malick is dealing with philosophical concepts that don't have to be linked to one dogma or another... This is the perspective that looks the most Platonic...
Certainly these concepts don’t
need to be linked to any particularly dogma, but they certainly fall in line with (and don’t work to undermine) the loose-Christian outlook. If anything, this theme is secondary… perhaps not a noteworthy theme at all since it’s vague enough to apply to almost any film?
All 5 of these can be combined to some extent, and I think you could insert ideas about gender archetypes, like the male and the female, and the motherly and fatherly.... So there's probably at least 6 ways of coming at this movie, and it's more likely that all 6 are right in some way or another.... But in each case, I see no reason to assume that Malick thinks dinosaurs had grace...
I mean, he doesn't even exactly define what grace is, so I don't know why you're assuming not killing something = grace. That's overly simplistic, IMO. Assuming he is being Christian, then grace definitely does not equal dinosaur sympathy; it's a billion times closer to what happens internally when the mother lets the death of her son go and moves on; she sort of gives her grief up to whatever moves the universe along (God? something else? who knows? she never says, nor does Malick)... You might also see grace in the brother's coming to terms with the scope of the universe... or maybe even with his coming to terms with the eternal.... it's the grace to cope, and more specifically the grace to have your sins forgiven, which in part means forgiving yourself and accepting that nature delivers something in life that grace does not; it's more a gift from God than some specific mental state that keeps dino A from eating dino B - I don't know that any other religion outside the Abrahamic triad (Judaism and Islam being the other two) has a concept like grace, but if they do, I doubt its anything like sympathy. I guess it's easiest to think of grace (in Christianity, and more specifically in the Catholic form) as that thing which unites us to God, and it seems reasonable to assume that grace includes acceptance of God and reconciliation with God (if you think of God as the creator and also the highest expression of truth in the universe; truth may be something like "goodness is the absolute founding element of the universe" or "light is greater than darkness" or "life is elemental, and death serves it, not the other way around). Grace is actually a terribly difficult concept that no dino interaction could possibly communicate.
So yeah... that's my rambling, quickly written take on different aspects of the movie, and I could talk a lot about each one of those. I'm willing to bet there are many others, too, so I'm not trying to say those are the only ways you can approach the whole thing... hopefully that at least clears up with the dino thing, or helps explains why I disagree with you
Like you note below, Malick DOES define grace in his film, and since it’s sort of a nebulous concept, I think it’s important to remember how it’s contrasted against nature, which is selfish at its core. I still think the dino-mercy was a moment of unselfishness, so to me it reads as grace. I feel like you’re sticking too tightly to Christian definitions on this one; I took Malick’s loose-Christian view of grace to be essentially any human super-ego-like essence, something selfless and spiritual that allows us to transcend the base, necessity-driven aspects of existence. I don’t think
that definition of grace is too complex to be communicated in a scene with two dinosaurs.
just a supplement, actually - I guess the mother does tell us what she thinks grace is, but it still has nothing to do with dinosaurs, if only because the dino's fucking brain doesn't give it the option to "act gracefully" - what the mother describes has everything to do with concepts like pride, greed, etc. - specifically human concepts, and maybe specifically religious or philosophical... that still eliminates the dino thing. One of my friends actually asked someone, "are those the kinds of dinosaurs that can't really sense you unless you're moving?" I dunno if that's a dumb question or not, but I know there are a ton of people out there that don't see any reason to read grace into that scene. I get the feeling that all you're supposed to see in that scene is two living creatures interacting in a mostly unimportant way... it just shows life going on between creatures that have advanced beyond the jellyfish and other sea creatures/bacteria.
Also, the river that the dinos are on looks very similar to the river that the brothers spend some of their time on, and Malick really likes creating visual symmetries throughout the movie (the sun, the sunflowers, the shape of a person's face, the spirals of the galaxy, the shapes of sea creatures, the creation of the universe, the division of cells, etc. etc. etc. - I think there are a lot of scenes that are just meant to show off the symmetry of creation in specifically visual ways
I think “natural” traits such as pride greed, and rage are just id-level instincts amplified and actuated through human ego-level capacity… so yeah, greed for a meal was overcome in the case of the dinos. For what it’s worth I’ve read a lot of web-comments where people interpreted the dino as exhibiting grace. I’ll be glad to link you if you like
For what it’s worth, a lot of people also noted that the dino-river does resemble the brothers’ river, and then they find the “dino bone” in the field of course.
Here's the nature/grace definitions, for context:
"When I was young the nuns taught us there are two ways through life. The way of Nature. And the way of Grace. You have to choose which path you'll take." And what is Grace? "It accepts all things. It does not mind being slighted, forgotten, disliked, insults, or injuries." Nature, on the other hand, "only wants to please itself," it "finds reasons to be unhappy" and wants to lord over others, have its own way, and finds things to dislike when all else around them is shining with "the Glory," as Malick calls it here... "No one who follows the way of Grace ever comes to a bad end."
As a final note/thought - realistically I can't invest much more in this topic, so I don't want you to kill yourself with a huge response that'll make you feel burned when/if I can only throw a few thoughts back.
but princess mononoke is my favorite miyazaki movie
/10
