The Tree of Life Withers

This movie, directed by Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain, had such promise. It begins in the 1940's and 50's of sub-urban America where Jessica Chastain plays a loving and nurturing mother to her three boys while Brad Pitt is their strict, often temperamental father. We know this because soon after one of their sons dies, he talks about how he often shamed the son that died by yelling at him about how he turned pages of a book. We learn that this particular son, Jack, died because Jessica gets a telegraph one day and is absolutely devastated upon opening it and reading it. The balance of the movie is about the relationship that the two boys had with their mother and often temperamental father and the impact of the death upon the family.

However, what began as a potentially wonderful and strong movie, quickly devolved into a slowly moving animal that often lost my attention, much the way losing a piece of grass would lose your attention if you were watching it grow. The first part of the movie deals with the creation of the world - dinosaurs and the whole nine yards- which takes place right after we learn about the death of Jack, the eldest son. The second part deals with the family and is the best part of the movie. Unfortunately, it takes forever to get there and the movie had lost my attention before it got there. The third part of the movie deal with Sean Penn, who arguably has only cameo appearances at best.

The movie is incoherent, although the performances are pretty good. There are seemingly dozens of characters that move in and out of the action but I'm still not quite sure what purpose they served because the movie is just a montage of movies with very little speaking. The messages that I also got out of this movie seemed to be self-serving, banal and predictable. Malick seemed to be holding up his own mother as perfect while knocking down his old-school, hard knocks father and what action did happen, was predictable. So boring and not worth watching. Sorry Mr. Malick but this was perhaps the worst film that you have ever made.