With each screening (fourth), Tree of Life becomes more cohesive, more revealing - as any "great" film should. This is a great film - maybe the last of it's kind. So few living filmmakers see and understand the in-depth (often hidden) links between family/marriage/friendship, spirituality, and film itself. Ozu, Dreyer, Truffaut, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kieslowski, Rohmer, and Kurosawa all understood this [Patchwork]...but they have all passed on into transcendence - several of them much too early.
Malick creates a film that walks us through a grief process that is at once excruciatingly personal, while also universal...literally. Whether Job or Jesus (or a dinosaur), our "Father" has something to teach us through severe loss, abandonment, mystery, and paradox. {"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?} Since the grief process demands that we move from guilt to gratitude, we are forced to either reject the process (sulk in denial), or work towards acceptance and reconciliation. That is exactly what the last few chapters in the book of Job convey - God demands that Job no longer be blinded by guilt/shame/blame/pride/judgement - but open his eyes to his own smallness, humility - and be grateful, be alive, accept suffering, engage pain - have faith in something greater, in something mysterious, unknown. If we view the whole of Tree of Life through these elements, we can see the deep relationship between being a family in a "small" town...and the creation of the universe. Our "inter-being" becomes a new lens for us to process our context...
...and not just with the greater universe, but also with the visual nexus of the tree outside your window that breathes in carbon dioxide, then releases oxygen...and the tree inside of us that breathes in oxygen, then releases carbon dioxide...
(Photo: Our lungs, or inner Tree of Life, upside-down)
...
Still yet, this film is about acknowledging the existence, passing, and halting of time. "We are spanning...time" (Buffalo '66 quote for the day). Any particular "time frame" in Tree of Life confronts us with our limitations, disabilities, and mortality, as well as our growth, evolution, possibilities, and hopes. If we are present to the "eternal now" in the film, and at the same time aware of the relative passing of universal time - we feel something - and our only response may be emotional - because being consciously aware of our own limited time is always devastating at first thought. The reality is...that being aware of the hidden, the "glory" all around us, takes a faith and a strength that we as individuals don't "naturally" have - certainly not without love, "grace", eye contact, intercourse, music, forgiveness, affection, film, spirituality, God, Easter. Holy Moments. Holy Cinema.
Isn't that the power of photography? The capacity to contemplate a moment in time after it has passed - to not forget? Isn't the fear of forgetting greater than the fear of death?
Because of those fears, we conceptually structure our lives around security, safety, control - creating calenders and clocks so that we can compartmentalize and own our time - yet rarely are we "present" to the eternal now or aware of the flow (river) of time. Nathanial Dorsky describes this regarding the process of filmmaking...of which the presentation of time is so vital...
"When absolute [time] and temporal [time] are unified, film becomes a narrative of nowness and reveals things for what they are rather than as surrogates for some predetermined concept. It is the fear of direct contact with the uncontrollable present that motivates the flight into concept...
If we do relinquish control, we suddenly see a hidden world, one that has existed all along right in front of us. In a flash, the uncanny presence of this poetic and vibrant world, ripe with mystery, stands before us. Everything is expressing itself as what it is. Everything is alive and talking to us."
Take a deep breath into your bronchial tree - then read that quote again.
...
If we can begin to see the vitality and inter-being of Malick's process, narrative, and presentation, then maybe we will be capable of understanding the spiritual glue that holds the film together. First, we have a de-spiritualized (though not de-humanized) father and son, constantly fighting against their own nature - the father full of pride and ambition - the son full of guilt and shame.
Pride - "Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things."
...
Shame - "Where were You? You let a boy die. You let anything happen. Why should I be good? When You aren't."
Second, we have the mother, who is a bit dehumanized, in order to fully represent the manifestation of spirituality interwoven into the film. Whereas I have perceived that Ingmar Bergman could only portray his deepest psychology through the female "persona" - Malick seems to only understand the essence of spirituality (and possibly even God) through the healing affection of all things feminine. The final sequence presents us with a female "Holy Spirit", who guides us to reconciliation. During the creation scene, we are presented with a giant space vagina (funny to say, but awe-inspiring to see) that gives birth to the universe. Is this God giving birth? Then we have a beautiful scene with a child opening up a door underwater and swimming out as a new creation, which then cuts to the actual birth. And as we know, at least theologically, we are ultimately dependent on God for food, power, guidance, forgiveness, etc. - just as we know that the infant child is dependent upon his/her mother for food, affection, guidance, affirmation, and love.
"In the first hours of life, we begin to search out the faces and eyes of those around us and show a preference for our mothers' faces...The fixation on the mother's face is an obligatory brainstem reflex that ensures the 'imprinting' of this vital social information." (Cozolino 2006)
They have been separated, the child from the womb - creating a sense of desperation for both mother and child to remain interwoven through eye contact, affection, and feeding. The process seems designed to be that way. And Malick allows it to speak into our being, here and now, wanting us to understand and know that our interbeing is tangible, sustainable, if we are willing to open up and allow it to shine.
"Help each other.
Love everyone.
Every leaf.
Every ray of light.
Forgive."
The disconnected and jealous father doesn't understand his children - only wants to prepare them for the kill, for survival. "Your mother's naive. It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world. If you're good, people take advantage of you." Soon enough, the son is caught in between nature and grace, shame and acceptance.
"I wanted to be loved because I was great; A big man. I'm nothing. Look at the glory around us; trees, birds. I lived in shame. I dishonored it all, and didn't notice the glory. I'm a foolish man."
I love the scene where the son hugs his demanding father while be reprimanded. The hug was a brief, but necessary interruption. It was recaptured during the forgiveness scene between father and son. I love those scenes because that is my daily reality with my children. They interrupt my bullshit everyday with hugs, smiles, improvised dances, messages of affection and love - and I ask for forgiveness when I am wrong, too harsh, irritated, impatient. I allowed all four kids help me plant peas, spinach, beets, and lettuce. Marion got into the lettuce bed after the seeds were sown in - and now we have bunches instead of rows - but it makes me smile because it is an interruption of the norm - of the "appropriate". It brings me into the eternal now.
Last night we had a contemplative prayer walk around our neighborhood before the Good Friday service. It happened during "Magic Hour" - which gave it a very Malickian cinematic presence - particularly at the gardens, where resurrection peppers will soon be growing. "Poetic and vibrant...ripe with mystery".
(Malick's manifestation of the Holy Spirit in black)
To conclude...what Bergman long ago said about Tarkovsky, I will also say about Malick on this Holy Saturday...
"Suddenly I found myself standing at the door of a room, the keys to which, until then, had never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter...where he was moving freely and fully at ease. I felt encouraged and stimulated: someone was expressing what I had always wanted to say without knowing how. {Malick} is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream."
Welcome Easter. Thank God for resurrection.
...
No comments:
Post a Comment