Criterion’s ‘Tree Of Life’: Terrence Malick’s 3-Hour Version Expands A Vision Of Grace, Loss & Family

WHEN FATHER WAS AWAY ON BUSINESS
This movement segues into dad’s absence—the section of the movie where Pitt’s character leaves, and Jack breaks bad and goes on an utterly destructive jag. One extended scene of destruction—and there are seemingly lots of them—shows Jack and his brothers breaking into someone’s house, damaging it and even pretending to live in it. The house, it seems, belongs to one of Jack’s friends and the next scene, an entirely new one, finds the same pal of Jack’s physically abused and harmed by his father (Ben Chaplin from “The Thin Red Line.”).

There’s also the centerpiece of the movie which is a gigantic storm and tornado that besieges their home and neighborhood. The aftermath, garbage, trees and flotsam, and jetsam strewed around is also quite evocative; the boys are shown playing with a dead fish, and an old man details how 114 people died in the storm.

This is, by far, the most significantly extended act. The problem is, it becomes distended. By the second hour mark, “The Tree Of Life,” begins to drag, expressing variations on the same sentiments, feelings and ideas—Pitt as a stern jerk, Jack becoming more and restless and rebellious due to his father’s influence—and you still know there’s an hour to go.

READ MORE: Examining The Visual Obsessions Of Director Terrence Malick

Further extended herein in BUSINESS is Jack… doing a lot of bad shit again and again. Mischief would be one way to describe it if it didn’t’ feel so rancorous and aggrieved; a swirl of hatred and sadness within self-destructive behavior. A new school sequence is supplemented here as well: Mrs. O’Brien comes to class and learns just how poorly adjusted Jack is becoming, how poor he’s doing in his studies and how disinterested he seems. These are essentially the origin moments of how Jack became so spiritually adrift and lost as the adult we see in Sean Penn’s version.

“He wouldn’t even complete his painting. He was afraid it might be wrong. I told him it can’t be wrong. He’s a good boy,” says one compassionate teacher to his mom in a heartbreaking scene. “He just seems to lack confidence. He doesn’t seem to hear my instructions.” Another teacher, older and much less forgiving reveals that Jack cheated on a test. “He disrupts the entire class, he cannot handle criticism,” he adds.

Before Act 7 – THE RETURN– aka Brad Pitt back on his bullshit and Jack destroying more shit, we get a glimpse of how the boys are drifting apart. The younger, more sensitive R.L. quiet puts his ears and face up to a tree, listening for “the words that’ll stop people from being mean.” With a grimace, Jack says, you know “I don’t hear that stuff anymore,” intimating how his innocence has long since faded away.

READ MORE: Watch: Terrence Malick’s ‘Knight of Cups’ Gets Re-Evaluated In 9-Minute Video Essay

THE RETURN
THE RETURN is more of Pitt’s father character continuing to scold, reprimand, and give Jack a hard time. “I protected you as best I can. I didn’t get an education. You will. But I can redeem myself,” he says in a new scene of reproaching his son and once again explaining everything he has sacrificed for them. “You’re my freedom.”

“Just listen, son, you might actually learn something,” Mr. O’Brien says to Jack in a new scene where he continues to detail the sacrifices he’s made and strangely enough revealing he’s contracted hepatitis “from drinking unpasteurized beer in China.” This continues on until the movie’s final, most significant addition. The O’Brien’s send Jack away to a kind of more formal prep school an hour away. “We haven’t been good parents, or you wouldn’t be under all this tension. We should have set a better example,” Chastain’s Mrs. O’Brien says to Jack in a kind of apology before being sent away. At this point in the movie, it’s underlined that Jack’s suffering from a kind of PTSD from his dad; he’s angry, troubled, the constant anxiety he’s endured has crippled his confidence and emotional state. Later on, Jack is seen away at his new boarding school with a new severer haircut and uniform. “The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by,” his mother says in voice-over.

Perhaps this gives more context to the “shame” section of the film, where Pitt’s father finally realizes how hard he’s been on his kids and how it’s affected them (“Now I’m nothing. I lived in shame,” “I dishonored it all and didn’t notice the glory,” I’m a “foolish man”).

This is where “The Tree Of Life,” essentially concludes its essay about the difficulties of parenthood; wanting to protect and keep children safe, but the impossibilities of gauging if we’re pushing too soft or too hard on the gas pedal of instruction, teaching, guiding and coaching.

It’s beautiful, it’s heartrending, and the notion of wanting love, craving approval, hoping to impress the parents you idolize only to see them revealed as flawed, fallible, even weak mere mortals is a universally crushing experience. “The Tree Of Life” seems to suggest the degree to which our mothers and fathers wound us in childhood, and how much we accept or fail to recognize that disappointment, is commensurate with just how happy one can be in life. Of course, this all then fades into the last suite, the afterlife GRACE sequence, which as we’ve detailed early on, is essentially the same aside from few new insert shots here and there.

Less celestial and opaque, more linear and relatively easier to follow, and more emotionally involved, “The Tree Of Life” Extended Version is almost too much of a good thing. It’s an expanded vision of grief, grace and family—the same stream of conscience flow of emotions, and use of ephemeral memory to connect to the past, the loves and loss and life we experienced—but it ultimately wears out its welcome. Malick’s reimagined film is essentially the same: an envelopingly epic and gorgeously sad look at life through the macrocosmic and microcosmic lens of God, his creations, and their evolution as seen through the eyes of one loving, but troubled, family. It’s a superior version to “The Tree Of Life,” until, it’s not. It’s masterful, sometimes maddening sonata, and perhaps one that Malick will keep playing with until the end of his time. [B/B+]

(*Voyage Of Time footnote: both versions of the film were shown at film festivals in 2016, but after “Voyage Of Time” the 45-minute IMAX version narrated by Brad Pitt bombed theatrically, Broad Green Pictures seemed to renege on the idea of releasing “Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey” as narrated by Cate Blanchett and throwing good money after bad)

(**Another ‘Tree Of Life’ version? Terrence Malick has been asking about a technology that allows viewers to watch a more random, lava-lamp-like version of the film on DVD where it flows arbitrarily. So if that technology ever does appear, one should probably expect Malick to go fishing again).

(***There’s also possibly an additional shot of Kari Matchett who is listed as playing Jack’s ex in the original film, though I didn’t find her on a recent rewatch).

For extra credit, check out these extensive pieces on the making of Malick’s “Badlands,” “Days of Heaven,” “The New World” and “The Thin Red Line.”