"Tree" Reflection #2

Looking at the movie's format on a larger scale, it seemed fragmented to me when i first watched it. My idea of why that might be is this: Sean Penn is Jack all grown up and he is remembering memories from his childhood as he goes through some sort of rough patch in his adult life. No one can pick and choose the images/events the their mind remembers. For example, you may remember playing with your younger brothers in a friend's backyard one day but not remember what you ate for dinner that night with your family. This explains some of the serious time jumps that occur in the film. Unfortunately, this is also extremely confusing for the viewer. But memory is a tricky thing; usually we only remember snapshots of events, or a particular feeling. I think Malick tried to mimic this in his use of the camera.

Perhaps more importantly, my hypothesis for why the film started with the excerpt from the Book of Job was to establish the lesson of the movie before it even began. The particular passage, and even the rest of the film, try to tell us that we as humans cannot be too secure in where we are. I think the whole point of the movie is to humble us. Why show huge, elaborate, long Creation sequences and then focus on just a single man and family? I think Jack is meant as an example of how low humans really are, how significantly insignificant we are when it comes to the larger picture. Hence the title "Tree of Life": by choosing to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil human nature was condemned, and if we even want to get live forever we need to find the Tree of Life. The idea of living forever is conveyed by many characters in the film, especially the mother, who said in the beginning that no one who follows to path of grace comes to a bad end. But Jack is reminded on the anniversary of his brother's death, and he searches his past for some sort of meaning to apply to his current, empty and warped world. But no matter what, he keeps looking for answers in his childhood but has difficulty. He is Job. Job tried to find reasons for why God did the things He did, but Job was unable to understand. His friend basically told him he is nothing, just a worm. Jack is figuring this out, but he needs closure. He needs to reach the Tree of Life, gain knowledge and wisdom, and come to a "good end". Reuniting with his former self in the beach scene at the end of the movie may be a way of finding that closure and possibly gaining a piece of the Tree of Life.