BRAINTEASER TIME
Trying to scale The Tree of Life is a flawed exercise. My guess is there is no true way to map its many mysteries – not even if you could sit down with the notoriously elusive filmmaker Terrence Malick and have him explain his concept behind every moment.
That's because they'd still be his concepts.
The writer-director specifically marks his own intentions as irrelevant and builds that into the film as a kind of escape clause for interpretation: At one point, Brad Pitt's strict 1950s-era Texas father is instructing his three sons on the definition of ''subjectivity.'' It's just one of many free-associative memories that swirl to the screen in this movie, which is about life, death, the universe, and, let’s just say, everything.
But whose memory is it?
'Tree of Life': A Deconstruction
Terrence Malick's film is a cinematic puzzle, open to many interpretations, and steadfastly refusing to explain itself. Here's one effort to decode its mysteries. (SPOILER ALERT!)
Movie Calendar
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