J. Alfajora. On Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life () By John Christen M. Alfajora UPLB Introduction Poetic and philosophical, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life guarantees that any attempt to characterize it, or describe it at the least, could be left as a chimera. The sensorial distinctions of the film are not meant to be interpreted, but are left to blogger.comted Reading Time: 9 mins Jan 14, · The Tree of Life is also both the name of Terrence Malick’s masterpiece and an apt descriptor for his creative process, as evident by The Criterion Collection’s release. The Estimated Reading Time: 8 mins The Tree Of Life By Terrence Malick. Words5 Pages. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life () is an artistic and impressionistic film masterpiece, about an architect named Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) who struggles to find middle ground between the philosophies of his mother and father while growing up. This film encompasses an episodic plot; while we see Jack in the
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The tree of life is a common metaphor for the interconnectedness of all beings. While this metaphor is a familiar framework for ecological thinking—all regions, systems, and species are interwoven and inseparable—the tree of life is also a provocative paradigm for thinking about creativity. Included in the Criterion Terrence malick tree of life essay, in conjunction with the minute theatrical release, is a new version of the movie that includes 50 minutes of additional footage.
The Criterion release contains two versions of The Tree of Life and neither is posited as superior to the other.
Instead, they are parallel explorations of similar narratives. Offering viewers two different, parallel versions of The Tree of Life coheres with the logic introduced in the version of the movie, which exceeds all genre conventions and pushes beyond Hollywood thinking.
As the film foregrounds, there is no singular story; there are multiple stories. And for each story, there is not just one version but multiple versions. But some stories carry more weight than others. At middle age, Jack is lost and alienated, wandering through a world of high finance and concentrated capital. The trees that represent the interconnectedness of all things are replaced by artificial trees: skyscrapers of metal and glass, terrence malick tree of life essay.
Jack is alienated from the philosophy that all things are radically connected, the minute and the grand; the personal and the impersonal; the profane and the sacred; the human and non-human; terra cognita and t erra incognita. In many ways, Jack is a perfect capitalist subject: wealthy, successful, urbanized. From this state of alienation, the dominant condition of terrence malick tree of life essay, Jack reflects on his youth, his family, terrence malick tree of life essay, and his experienced tragedies.
At the heart of Terrence malick tree of life essay Tree of Life is the profound grief of a life cut short and how such loss reverberates—and fails to reverberate—across various timeframes and timescales. He goes back in time. Way back in time. In a near minute sequence, Malick uses an impressionistic aesthetic to show the creation of life and the awesomeness of evolution.
US-made movies, in their dominant form, are narratives. The Tree of Life is challenging to so many audiences because it is both a narrative and an anti-narrative. Why do we move from a specific family in mid-century America to an extended, patient representation of galaxies, solar systems, and the vastness of space? Why must we sit through slow sequences of planet Earth prior to human life? Why must we see the emergence of life from single-cell organisms to more complex life-forms developing in oceans, in the air, and on land?
But perhaps these are the wrong questions. About the meaning, mystery, and miracle of being? About why things are the way they are?
About our place in the world? About why we are here? The Tree of Life critiques and seeks to escape the dominant condition of alienation, which helps explain why so many critics recognize the movie as deeply spiritual. They cheapen us, [. Job, a righteous man who experiences myriad tragedies and unceasing suffering, challenges God and asks why evil flourishes in the world, to which God responds with a speech about how myopic and limited human knowledge and understanding is, terrence malick tree of life essay.
The typical markers and metrics for measuring and assessing time are negated. Instead, terrence malick tree of life essay, Malick asks us to consider and contemplate the myriad wonders of the world as it unfolds in ways that exceeds our comfortable, familiar categories.
Initially, Malick was going to be a philosopher. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Malick was a philosophy student with a particular interest in and passion for the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Under the guidance of professors, terrence malick tree of life essay, including Stanley L. Cavell, Malick graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Rhodes Rhodes Scholarship. After graduating, Malick went to Oxford University with the intention of writing a dissertation on Heidegger.
At the time, Oxford was strictly devoted to analytical philosophy and no one was willing to support a project centered on Heidegger specifically, let alone on Continental philosophy more generally. After leaving Oxford in disappointment, Malick was briefly a philosophy lecturer at MIT. Intrinsic to being human, according to Heidegger, is the ability to ask questions about being, about the mysteries and meaning of being. For Heidegger, we are predisposed to be philosophers, to both be intimately a part of the world and simultaneously, and paradoxically, to be distant from the world with our questioning.
What is key, though, is our orientation towards the world. Rather than place our selves as the center of all relations and reduce the rest of the world to resources whose sole purpose is for human exploitation and use, what makes us fully human is to see and engage with the richness and awesomeness of being in all its multiplicity.
According to Heidegger, we must learn the art of patience and allow the world to disclose itself, a disclosure that cannot be forced by human will. In contrast to typical Hollywood directors who position themselves as Ahab figures who seek to control all aspects of their environment, Malick allows the environment to be, terrence malick tree of life essay, waiting for and open to surprises and the unexpected. There [are] hundreds of people; there [are] generators and trucks.
And this was a completely different experience — we had none of that. However, we have created cultures that remove us from the ecological world and places us into artificial worlds of alienation. According to Heidegger, this is mostly due to modern technology.
In contrast to previous technologies which allow us to engage with the world in respectful, symbiotic ways, modern technology enframes the world as a thing for us to use and exploit at our will. Modern technology frames terrence malick tree of life essay world so that we become the artificial center and the surrounding world into objects and things that can be used and exploited without thought, concern, or even, for the vast majority of humans, direct engagement.
In contrast to peasants who had to work with the Earth and respect the Earth, modern technology has created something entirely new. Heidegger, at mid-century, is critiquing the modern food system, modern air conditioning, and a becoming nuclear world. In a society defined by and devoted to modern technologies, we are no longer beings-in-the-world what Heidegger calls Daseinterrence malick tree of life essay, but alienated from the world, and ultimately, from ourselves.
Modern technology enframes the world as distant and alienated from us, and our modern social media artificially places us at the center of the world, terrence malick tree of life essay, and artificially inflates—and more often deflates—our artificial ego. We no longer see the surrounding world as teeming with various, mysterious, beings-in-the-world.
Trees are no longer beings-in-the-world. Rather, they are reduced to objects whose only value is for human use and consumption. It is important to emphasize that Heidegger is not critiquing all technologies.
To this point, Malick uses the technology of digital cameras to make us see trees, flowers, birds, clouds. Seeing the natural world, the multiplicity of beings-in-the-world, is part of our story.
It is essential to our Dasein. Jack wanders into a wide clearing in which he encounters and embraces people from his past, including his mother, his father, and his brother Laramie Epplerwhose life ended tragically short.
This clearing is not an ending. Humans challenge the Earth and the environment to myopic and destructive ends. Skip to content Search for:. TAGS criterion drama fantasy feature film feature martin heidegger terrence malick tree of life. Criterion Film Offerings: French Noir, Japanese Lovers, American Gangsters and Frames of Pure Serenity. Home Features Reviews Interviews Lists Music Music Reviews Terrence malick tree of life essay MetalMatters Singles Going Steady Playlists Film Television Books By the Book Reading Pandemics Comics Games Mixed Media PopMatters Picks.
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, time: 8:38The Tree Of Life Film Analysis - Words | Cram
Sep 13, · T errence Malick’s cinema takes place within a spatial and temporal framework that has the elasticity of human consciousness and moves to its pulse—we are on the Texas panhandle early in the twentieth century (Days of Heaven, ), or on Guadalcanal during World War II (The Thin Red Line, ), or in an unnamed Texas suburb in the s (The Tree of The Treehouse: An Essay Reflecting on Life, Family, Neighborhood, and Memories. In The Tree of Life, tree and director Terrence Malick provides his essay with a choice, The way of tree, or the way of grace. The contrasting but interleaved paths are explored through J. Alfajora. On Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life () By John Christen M. Alfajora UPLB Introduction Poetic and philosophical, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life guarantees that any attempt to characterize it, or describe it at the least, could be left as a chimera. The sensorial distinctions of the film are not meant to be interpreted, but are left to blogger.comted Reading Time: 9 mins
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