The Tree of Life gives you what you want to take out of it. Writer/director Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, The New World) creates an environment of compelling visual stimuli connected to the life of one man. It is a meditation on life, family, growing up, and identity. There is no way to fault the technical execution of this film. The visual effects are magnificent. At one point, Malick takes us back to the Big Bang and the creation of the universe. This mix of natural videography and computer graphics is one of the best executed scenes I've ever seen in film. With no dialog to hinder the visual storytelling, it is everything a film fan could ever want and all the evidence you need to prove that film is an art form.

The great strength of The Tree of Life is its universality. Time and again I found myself drawn into the unspoken moments of the narrative because I could read whatever I wanted from them. With the actors playing concepts rather than characters, it would be hard not to find some way to connect to some facet of this film.

Unfortunately, for me, the film begins to lose its power when it tilts its hand toward specificity. In the first few minutes, a voice-over from Mrs. O'Brien--the central figure's mother--keeps intruding over the action onscreen. It's not a matter of poor quality or lack of focus; it's a matter of ambition. It feels like Malick was so intent on giving the film weight and depth that he overdid the sensory experience with postmarks designed to narrow the scope of the film. Is there any confusion as to what is happening when you see a mother collapse in tears while talking about her son? You might not know everything about the specifics, but you can easily ascertain the emotional state and greater universal experience without a voice-over echoing all the way back to the Big Bang.

From scene to scene, you don't know if you'll get the open exploration of the human experience or the specific story of this one man. It's jarring. Whether Malick intended to throw the audience off or not is another debate. I found the approach invasive and unwelcome. When he found so much truth and resonance in the mostly-silent visual storytelling, why did he feel the need to add the voice-overs and long stretches of dialog that remove any question of what's happening?

The Tree of Life is long and meandering. No two people will ever view it the same way because of the ambiguity of the visual storytelling. The screen is constantly filled with images and the mix with such a variety of sound that there's no way to absorb everything at once. This is not a film that you can just take in. You have to engage with it or you'll lose out.

Rating: 7/10

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