The Tree of Life

Why yes, that baby's foot IS far more interesting than this movie.

I have a real treat for you guys today. Today I am reviewing not just any movie. Today I am reviewing the most bafflingly pointless piece of film I have ever seen in my life. To call this a bad movie would do the injustice of implying that it qualifies as a movie. This is not a movie; it is, at best, a film editing tutorial – one of those demonstrations of all the fancy techniques that are technically possible but by no means practical or necessary. It is essentially a two-hour version of the Windows Movie Maker help menu. The other things that make up a movie – story, characters, tension, themes, entertainment value, a reason to exist – all of those things are noticeably absent from this film. It’s a bland, boring, incoherent, and superficial waste of celluloid.

That’s right, today I’m reviewing The Tree of Life.

This adventure started a couple of weeks ago when I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. A good program, that. Anyway, they did a quick piece on this movie, and how it was so “artsy” and “abstract” that movie patrons were disgusted by it, walking out of the theater and in some cases even demanding refunds. “Interesting,” I thought to myself. I’m no stranger to artsy and abstract movies. Two of my favorite films of all time are Citizen Kane and Perfect Blue. You can’t get much more artsy than the former or much more abstract than the latter, and while both films are masterpieces they are also hard for the general movie-going public to swallow. So after hearing such a description of The Tree of Life, I knew it had to be one of two things: 1) a misunderstood work of genius that was too philosophical, edgy, and thought-provoking for the masses to handle, or 2) a genuinely awful and unintelligible mess. Either way, I knew I had to see it.

I get the feeling I don’t need to reiterate which possibility turned out to be the case. Still, even I was amazed at just how spectacular an achievement in failure The Tree of Life turned out to be. There is literally nothing about it that works. And it isn’t just kinda bad. It’s bad the way Carrot Top is annoying: so thoroughly and inescapably that it makes you feel bad about the state of the world. It’s as if The Tree of Life is reveling in its own badness like a guy ripping a huge fart in a crowded elevator and laughing while everyone struggles to breathe.

I would describe the plot, but since there really isn’t one, I’ll just have to describe the random sequence of things the movie decides to show us. It starts out with a quote from the Book of Job. Oh, goody! Bible quotes! A staple of pretentious hacks everywhere! We’re already off to a good start! The first scene concerns two parents learning that one of their sons has just died. Somehow. The cause of death is evidently irrelevant, as are the names of any of these people, because none of them are ever mentioned. The father, it should be noted, is played by Brad Pitt, who is not only a very successful and talented actor, but a representative of my own home town, so it’s extra fun to watch him ruin his own credibility by starring in this atrocity. Brad breaks down and says that he shouldn’t have been so mean to his son… which of course means nothing to the audience because we haven’t seen him be mean to his son at this point. It also smacks of lazy writing for a supposedly artsy and abstract film, just having the guy explain how he feels directly to the camera instead of showing it with any kind of subtlety. But at least we’re seeing a statement of the movie’s central theme here, right? Well… no, not really. We don’t see Brad overcome his purported anger issues, and his wife and kids continue to put up with them without making much of a fuss. Maybe it’s a movie about dealing with death? I think that’s what it’s trying to be, but it isn’t really that either. Most of the movie completely ignores the fact that this kid is dead, and we never see how the death affects anyone beyond the initial shock of hearing the news.

After this supposed introduction (that didn’t really introduce us to much of anything), we cut to Sean Penn, who is in this movie for some reason. He’s supposed to be the dead kid’s brother, and… I guess maybe he’s having a hard time getting over his brother’s death. I only know this because he says it explicitly for the camera; it isn’t as though there’s anything about his behavior that suggests it. And I hope no one came to see this because they’re Sean Penn fans because that’s all we’re going to see of him until the last five minutes. At this point there’s a bunch of voice-over from the characters asking God why he would ever allow this one particular person to die. See, just like Job… except that Job’s entire family died, and he lost every penny of what he owned, and then he caught leprosy, and these guys just lost one kid. But that’s totally the same! That Bible quote at the beginning was so relevant to this story! By the way, everyone watching this movie is Catholic, right? What’s that? You’re not? Well fuck you, heathen, The Tree of Life doesn’t have time to pay attention to your kooky ideas about death or the afterlife. The Tree of Life is a Catholics-only event, and it’s not like it was advertised as an open-minded philosophical thought piece or anything like that. For God’s sake, considering more than one theology would make it artsy and abstract, and we sure as fuck wouldn’t want that.

Oh, but this is where it gets really insane. Imagine you’re watching a movie on TV… not The Tree of Life, a good movie. Let’s say you’re watching The Godfather for the first time, and when you take a break to get a snack or use the bathroom or see the sun for once in your life, your roommate goes changes the channel to Animal Planet. So you come back in and suddenly the movie that you thought was about gangsters is about dinosaurs. Try to imagine your confusion in that minute or two before you realize what’s happened, and now try to imagine that confusion lasting an entire goddamn half hour, because that’s what we’re in for here. Strap in. It’s nature documentary time.

I’m not even kidding.

As Dead Kid’s family finish complaining that they’re the only people in the history of the world to experience death, the film cuts to a shot of a vagina… wait, that can’t be right. Oh, I see, it’s an astronomical image of a spiral-arm galaxy photographed in a vertical orientation instead of the usual horizontal representation.

See? Perfectly innocuous.

You know, while there is no up or down in space and either way is technically valid, if you’re using the image in a movie you’ve got to be cognizant of the fact that using the vertical orientation makes it look like a vagina, because people aren’t going to fail to notice that. And please, for the sake of my sanity, let me hold on to my belief that this image was unintentional and not symbolic. But we’re just getting started. For the next ten minutes or so, we’re treated to a tedious montage of the Earth cooling and life evolving on the planet. And th- wait, evolution? C’mon, Tree of Life, now you’re even failing at being overtly Christian.

And then comes the coup de grace, the moment when you realize that as stupid and baffling as it is, it is an undeniable fact that there are dinosaurs in this movie. Yes! I know it’s crazy! But in this film about an ordinary, middle-class, Catholic family in the 1950s, there are dinosaurs. And sadly, at this point in the movie, we have just as much reason to sympathize with the dinosaurs as we do with the actual characters. Of course, even the dinosaurs aren’t enough to make the film interesting. All we see is one dinosaur dying while the other dinosaurs run off somewhere. Then a velociraptor shows up, looks at the dying dinosaur, and decides not to eat it. Spellbinding. And then we go back to Brad Pitt and the entire nature documentary segment is completely forgotten about. Now, I try not to steal running gags from other reviewers, but I have no choice now but to say that we have witnessed the longest Big Lipped Alligator Moment in the history of cinema.

Sorry, guys.

What was the point of this sequence, other than killing time and distracting us from how boring the rest of the movie is? I mean, there’s got to be some reason to put in that huge-ass sequence in there. Wait, I’ve got it. That dying dinosaur was meant to show that death has always been a part of life, that everything dies and we’ve got to accept that and not feel like there’s anything personal about it. Yeah, that’s got to be what this movie’s about! Hear that, Tree of Life? I’ve got you all figure out! Suck it!

Oh, except for the fact that now we’re in a flashback that takes up the rest of the movie and doesn’t have anything to do with death. Hmm. We see Brad Pitt and Annoying Wife With No Personality (see, movie, this is why you don’t force the audience to make up names for your characters) have their first child. Is this the one that dies? I don’t think so – I think it’s the one who grows up to be Sean Penn, but the movie doesn’t say. The two parents raise the child in a lengthy montage reminiscent of what gets forced onto you by an obnoxious coworker with a one-year-old and a camera phone, and then they plant a tree. A tree of life, perchance? I get it movie, the tree is a metaphor for… um, this tree is never going to be mentioned again, is it?

Goddammit, movie, I’m trying to pretend you’re being artsy and you’re actively preventing me.

The parents have another kid – I’m pretty sure he’s the one who dies because he’s the one who’s so pure and innocent he makes Jesus looks like a deeply flawed individual. And then they have a third kid who serves no narrative purpose whatsoever. I think the most screen time he got was that one scene where you could kind of see him over the other kid’s shoulder. Sadly, now that the cast has actually been introduced, the film gives up on being surreal and starts to settle for just being boring. The characters stop doing anything of any relevance, insomuch as what they were doing so far was relevant to begin with. We see Brad teach his kids to fight, continually tell them that nice guys finish last, go to church without picking up on the irony, and occasionally play the piano surprisingly well. And credit where credit is due, the film does do a good job on one point: without ever directly saying it, it successfully gets across the idea that Brad is mean to his kids because he’s using them to vent his frustration over never pursuing his dream of being a musician. I’d be a bad critic if I conveniently ignored the one thing I actually liked… but think of that as a palate cleanser, because we’re going right back to the suck now, and we won’t have another moment like that one at any point from here on in.

We see Brad treat his kids roughly… though not at all abusively. He’s kind of an asshole who gets pissed off by backtalk and disobedience, but that’s about the worst of it. As far as we’re shown, he doesn’t hit his kids or his wife, he doesn’t treat them cruelly, he doesn’t deny them any basic human freedoms… he’s just kind of an asshole. I mean, really? That’s all he’s got, after presenting his temper as the only conceivable conflict in the film? General assholishness? Egads, what a letdown. That isn’t a conflict at all! It’s just forcing your audience to watch a guy be an asshole for no particular reason, like any given show on the Fox network. Oh, and yeah, you mix it up by throwing in a half dozen side plots that go absofuckinglutely nowhere and a shot of a chair moving with no one around, like that’s going to help. A chair moving on its own, guys? Really? What, is there a poltergeist in their house? I guess it makes as much sense as the fucking dinosaurs, but now we’re stuck trying to answer the question of why the house is haunted by the most boring ghost since Spooky the typing tutor.

Send that guy to Ebenezer Scrooge and see if he changes his tune about Christmas, eh?

As the movie continues, Future Sean Penn becomes a pretty big asshole himself, and starts to hurt innocent animals for fun. Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen! Or… wait… is he the protagonist? See, this is where we see the terrible effects that Brad Pitt’s anger is wreaking on his son. Or at least that’s what we would see if that followed logically in any way. Let me reiterate: Brad Pitt’s only sin is being an asshole. There’s no physical or emotional abuse, just vaguely hypocritical yelling. Vaguely hypocritical yelling isn’t any sort of justification for torturing stray dogs, people. I’m not an animal rights nut and I don’t have any particular attachment to animals of any kind, but even I draw the line somewhere. Kid, that is not OK. Kids don’t do that. Disgusting, psycho fuckfaces do that. And you can’t turn around and say, “I only did it ‘cuz my dad’s mean to me,” because lots of people have mean dads. Your dad doesn’t hit you. Your dad doesn’t starve you. Your dad does not force you to live in unsafe or unsanitary conditions. Your dad does not lock you in your room. Your dad yells. Your dad is an asshole. Man up and fucking deal with it. When you grow up you can leave and never speak to him again, if you so choose, but while he’s the one providing your food, shelter, and clothing, just putting up with him is not an unfair price to pay. No, Tree of Life, I will not accept your premise that this is all Brad Pitt’s fault. You have not shown Brad Pitt doing anything that comes close to justifying those actions. You FAIL.

The kid also goes on to shoot his brother’s finger with a pellet gun or something, but I almost place the blame for that one on the kid who was goddamn stupid enough to put his finger in the barrel and say with puppy dog eyes, “It’s okay; I trust you.” Of course this scene accomplishes nothing but to show that the younger brother is TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth, which is why he’s going to die. I mean, why his death is a tragedy. Yeah. That one.

Finally, he breaks into his neighbor’s house and steals one of her dresses. He then panics and throws it in the river. What did that have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing, but the filmmakers evidently considered that the climax, because they suddenly decide to start wrapping things up. Sort of. We finally see Sean Penn again (remember him?) and he starts chasing his younger self through a desert. Oh, I get it, it’s supposed to be one of those surreal endings that confuses the hell out of everyone. Bitch, please. I’ve seen the last episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion and I totally got it, man. Don’t be bringing that amateur hour shit in here. So yeah, the desert is his memory, and all the people he knew are in there somewhere, and it ends when he finds his mom and she says that God can have her son.

Really? You’re not going to build up to that at all? One minute she’s cursing God’s name, the next she’s perfectly OK with everything? Alright, whatever man. Fade to credits, we’re done here. Yeah, I know that resolved nothing, but that’s the ending they’ve chosen.  How did the kid die? Not important! Does Brad Pitt overcome his temper? Never mind! How did Boring Wife overcome her loss and crisis of faith? What, this is a movie about faith all of a sudden?

Yes, my friends, that was The Tree of Life, and sadly I did not make it up. I wish I did. It had no plot, no conflict, no coherent themes… quite simply, it had none of the things that make up a movie. Quite frankly, the existence of this piece of film defies all natural logic. I’ve seen porn with more narrative depth than The Tree of Life, and that isn’t even hyperbole.

I’m not saying I’m proud that I know this exists, but the fact remains that both these girls have names and character arcs.

How do I even sum up this huge heap of fail? It’s like Primer, without the time travel. It’s like Breakfast of Champions, if Kurt Vonnegut had nothing interesting to say. If at any point someone had tied an onion to their belt, this would be Grandpa Simpson’s story about taking the bus to Shelbyville. It’s one long, uneventful trip to nowhere and back.

And I can hear some of you saying, “But Karl, you’re missing the point!” Well, no, I’m not. I get what this was going for. I get that it was trying to buck conventionality and make some kind of statement. And I don’t have anything against defying the definitions of art or storytelling… if it works. That’s the key point. And I’ve seen it done well. For instance, there’s an anime series called Kino’s Journey, which is about the travels of a girl and her talking motorcycle (yeah, I know, but listen). Kino’s Journey is made up of many of the same elements as The Tree of Life – lack of an underlying plot? Check. Tiny cast of characters? Check. Disjointed narrative style? Big ass check. Random philosophical musings? Check check checkity check check. Yup, The Tree of Life tried its damnedest to be new and innovative, whatever the cost, but it still couldn’t get around the Golden Rule: It’s all been done.

The best golden rules are the ones that are also Barenaked Ladies songs

The difference between Kino’s Journey and The Tree of Life is that Kino’s Journey actually accomplishes what it sets out to do: it leaves you thinking. That’s what The Tree of Life wanted, but none of their actions actually worked toward that goal. Kino’s Journey asked several big questions without ever actually giving voice to them, as Kino witnesses well-meaning people going to extremes and solving problems while creating substantial consequences. The series doesn’t tell us whether those people are right or wrong. It doesn’t tell us whether the end result was worth it or not. It doesn’t tell us anything; it just leaves us thinking. The Tree of Life, on the other hand, asks one question out loud, over and over again, but shows us nothing to get us thinking about it. And if you decide to think about it anyway, you realize it’s a pretty stupid question. Everybody dies; what makes you so goddamn special that you think you should be immune to it, whiny 50s housewife? And ultimately the film flat-out tells us the answer it wanted us to come to, even though that answer was overly simplistic and given no justification in the narrative. We’re supposed to have faith in God, like Job I guess. So the film doesn’t even give us anything to think about, and punishes us for trying to put thought into it.

It’s like this. Let’s say that you like movies about hockey. One day you see a poster for a movie that has a big quote from a legitimate film critic on it, and the quote says this: “THIS IS THE BEST, MOST HOCKEY-RELATED MOVIE IN THE PAST TEN YEARS!” You say to yourself,” Kick ass! I want to see this movie that is totally about hockey!” And so you watch it, and the first scene shows a hockey player skate out onto the ice, only to shout “Hockey is for stupid losers!” and then skate away. Then the rest of the movie is just that guy filling out his tax paperwork. It’s a film that tries to pass itself off as a hockey movie and yet actively punishes you for liking hockey, as though the entire aim of the producers was to personally make fun of you. That’s what The Tree of Life is, with philosophy in place of hockey. It fails so hard at being philosophical that it’s actually vaguely insulting.

There are critics, I’ll warrant, who’ve heaped praise on The Tree of Life just because they mistook its arrogance for actual insight. It’s a film that seems to go out of its way to insist that it’s specifically for smart and sophisticated people, so some people might instinctively shy away from judging it harshly for fear of seeming dense. Luckily, I’ve had a long history of being dense, so I’m not afraid of that kind of thing. And that leaves me free to say that The Tree of Life is truly awful, and you should never, ever, ever subject yourself to it.

Until next time, I’m Karl, and I’m fighting against the tedium one terribly misguided Jurassic Park homage at a time.

... Say, before we go, why don't we see what British game show host Alistair Armstrong thought of this movie?

Oh, Alistair, how I've missed you.

The Tree of Life is the property of Plan B Entertainment, River Road Entertainment, and Fox Searchlight Pictures. Images used from The Tree of Life, The Nostalgia Critic, Kids' Typing box art, Shoujou Sect ~ Innocent Lovers, The Barenaked Ladies' Stunt album cover art, and Pointless for review purposes only.