Review: The Tree of Life

Yesterday, hubs and I watched The Tree of Life. I found it very moving. One major critique I remember hearing when it came out was the 20 minutes of space/nature scenes and nothing else. This somewhat interupts the telling of the story. But I found it does fit, even though is a bit lengthy. If you can manage to sit through it, you will be rewarded for it.

The boy who passes: artist, lover, gentle, kind

This movie takes true patience to watch. A majority of it is told (or more like shown) from the perspective of a boy growing up. The beginning starts off when the parents find out about the death of one of their sons (somewhere in the 70's or so). Then it shifts to current time with one of the boys all grown up and remembering his brother on the day of his death. The movie seems to be about his journey that day remembering his life and how he finally comes to terms with his death.

We see short snippets and poignant scenes of his life as he saw them.  What I found truly great was how much I connected and understood each character. The boy dislikes his father, and we understand why, yet we feel for his father and understand his motivations and why he acts as he does. This is all done through little dialogue and mostly the changing of scenes like memories.  I really loved the Mother. We see a bit of her life growing up, similar to how we see Jack's life. She is gentle and good and very loving. Her spirit and the way she handles the 3 boy children was beautiful.

Pretty dear

I felt that the movie deals with the issue of our life-why are we here, who is God, why did he create us, why do we have pain? Much of it is different scenes with either the mother or the boy, Jack, talking to God specifically in a whisper. It is hard to explain specifically why I found the movie so touching, but I found myself almost in tears at many moments throughout the 2.5 hours.

Overally, I reccommend this movie. But I also reccommend being in the right state of mind to sit and watch something so out of the ordinary when it comes to film.