Great review, one of the best I've come across. You've done a masterful job of evoking the emotional and spiritual tone of the movie, something most reviewers have failed to do. I can't claim credit for this observation - it comes from a former professor of mine - but it's too good not to share. It was his opinion that _The Tree of Life_ is a deeply Catholic film, and that the last line (the mother saying "I give you my son") suggests that God does not ask us to do what he has not already done himself. The mother is able to give up her son, as God gave up Christ to death on a cross. I think the film lends itself most strongly to a deep Christian reading on account of the overwhelmingly Christian connotations of the concepts of nature (in a limited sense) and grace in opposition, if for no other reason. It is also interesting to note that Malick's wife is a serious Catholic. Thanks again for the review!

Best review of this movie, which I love, that I have yet read. Thanks so much.

Thanks for a wonderful and insightful review - I will be passing this on to friends who were frustrated with the film. The reference to Marilyn Robinson's Gilead prompted my recollection that the name of Boughton's son, with whom the Reverend Ames struggles, is also Jack. Probably just coincidence.

A beautifully written, thoughtful analysis of a complex work. While I would agree with much of it, and appreciate the clearly Christian worldview through which the film is viewed - I wonder if Malick intended it to be so. I am FAR from an expert on Malick so cannot speak with much authority here. But I am wondering why this writer chose to capitalize the word "Son" in her explication. For me, that was a deeply personal lower case 'son' - her own boy, lost in war. And that final, beautiful relinquishment on her part played a big role in her other son's (Jack's) process of self-examination, what this writer believes to be his conversion. I found the film much more abstract than that, lovely in many ways, but over-long and more than a little self-indulgent. That opinion surely makes me a Philistine in this discussion! I found many allusions to spirituality and to scripture and only a few that were specifically Christian. I'll be reading this again - & maybe re-view the film - thx.

This is a wonderfully intelligent review and one that gets to the heart of the movie better than any others that I have read. Two things I would add: the adolescent Jack's observation that "What I want to do, I can't do. I do what I hate" (a clear reference to Romans 7:15), another key moment in the confessional arc of the story. The other is the title which is wonderfully suggestive in myriad ways, but which surely recalls the archetypal garden, with its tree of knowledge of good and evil (nature; human nature) and the tree of life (grace; communion); the whole biblical story tracks between loss of access to the tree of life in Eden and recovery of ultimate access to that tree, with its nurturing fruits and healing leaves, at the end of time. Malick works wonders with literary and visual iconography from the first frame to the last. The film's language is that of the 'old, old story' -- made new and personal and potent for a modern audience.

Kristen Scharold should be commended for writing a sensitive and thoughtful review. I especially appreciated her references to Thomas a Kempis, Francis of Assisi, Dostoevsky, and Marilynne Robinson. Her interpretation of the coda as a reconciliation with God and man is more compelling than the view that it's a vision of the afterlife. Two quibbles. First, the way of nature and the way of grace doesn't neatly align with the father and mother respectively, but runs, however variegated, down the middle of them, as it does for all of us. Some people have more nature while others have more grace; we're a mixture of both. Second, the way of nature, as it's depicted in the film, conveys more than "the downward pull of human nature" but also the apparent chaos, violence, self-determination, and indifference of the cosmos. It's worth observing that the film's title has Biblical (Gen. 2:9) and evolutionary (Darwin's famous image in "Origin of Species") overtones.

I appreciate this article especially because it evidences how the movie consistently points to a Christian understanding of love. I was tempted to chalk up the ending to an introspective overview of the lead character's life, as many reviews do. But realized I was trying to reconcile the fact that well-paid movie stars are involved in what is a mind-blowing tribute to God's glory and grace. It is revealing of my own preconceptions of how God is revealed through a work of art, which happens to be produced via Hollywood. I look forward to seeing The Tree of Life again after having read this review.

Thank you for such a fine review of "The Tree of Life." I will reflect more on your review and see the movie again. I was also watching for how the themes of nature and grace interact (Thanks for the references to a Kempis and Marilynne Robinson.) I'm a little uncomfortable with assigning nature to the Father and grace to the Mother. The movie does that though. Yet the movie also realistically shows grace and nature intermingling, in the Father, in all the characters, and in the creation/nature itself. (I suppose we can't really equate nature with force and grace with tenderness. There is overlap and intermingling.) One other thing: I read up a bit on Heidegger since Malick has studied him and even translated one of his works. According to Fergus Kerr, in _Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity_, Heidegger has a Quaternity which is a square dance between earth, sky, divinities and death. There is nothing Transcending, only immanence.

Thank you so much for this great article. My husband said he's never seen a movie that made him "feel" so much - the whole spectrum of human emotion. And it was so much richer as we took our own stories of God's grace in our lives into the viewing.