by Mariantonietta Losanno
“I want to know what you are, I want to see what you see”: while voicing his characters, Terrence Malick he turns to the viewer, inviting him to “absorb” his idea of cinema and to let himself go, in order to get to know his essence, his gaze, his emotionality. The director, in fact, speaks directly to his audience, “provoking” him continuously, extending his reflections, passing from the particular to the universal.
The one of “The Tree of Life” it is an analysis of human existence and the universe; Malick investigates everything that is infinitely small and infinitely large, in parallel, but also making the two “fit together”. The plot, which takes up some autobiographical episodes of the director, revolves around a Texan family of the fifties and the maturation of the three children of the couple formed by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, who have two different ways of “loving”. Family dynamics alternate with reflections on destiny, on the two ways to face life (that of Nature and that of Grace), on loss, on the “scheme” that has already been drawn, on freedom. Terrence Malick pauses to reflect on forgiveness, death, fear, pain. “Is there nothing that does not die, nothing that is immortal?”, he asks; or again, “What’s the use of being afraid?”, “Why should we be” good “even when others are not?” “Existential” questions that – precisely as such – do not require an answer. Indeed, it would be paradoxical to think that there is an explanation for phenomena that (by their nature) “must” remain the subject of continuous discussion. And in fact, Terrence Malick’s is an infinite flow of thoughts, which extends even beyond the duration of the film; it expands, acquires a life of its own, transforms itself into suggestions, sounds, ideas.
Is there anything greater than fate? Or, stopping even earlier, does destiny exist? Are we really in control? In a crescendo of images of dazzling beauty (thanks also to the photography of Emmanuel Lubezki), accompanied by moving symphonic compositions, Malick speaks to everyone, but first of all to himself. He uses “his” language of his, through which he also manages to make “clichés” less banal or to make other concepts poetic. “The Tree of Life” puts the evolution of man and that of the universe at the center of the narrative: the latest example, probably, of such a bold and visionary work is that of “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick.
We wonder why we cannot be exempt from Pain, we marvel at the intense and senseless beauty of things, so steeped in meaning and, at the same time, so empty.
Terrence Malick’s work is dazzling and painful. Infinite, explosive, transcendental. It is a philosophical reflection that develops through concepts that are questioned from time to time and that recalls the enchanting cinema of Tarkovskij and the “colorful” one of Kieślowski.
“THE TREE OF LIFE”: THE SPIRITUALITY AND PHILOSOPHY OF TERRENCE MALICK