At the Cinema, The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life is hard to pin down, at heart it is the story of a family in 1950s Texas. Jessica Chastain plays a stupefyingly beautiful, ethereal, angelic and fragile mother and Brad Pitt a stern, authoritarian father.

Our presumptions are challenged in the usual way: the father clearly loves his sons, is devoted to them, and the mother’s ethereal nature seems to indulge them, but on the whole we are left with an all too recognizable conflict, the father representing the harshness of nature and experience in a fallen world, the mother’s tenderness standing for love, grace and innocence. Being dismissive, we could say The Tree of Love is an elegant and beguiling (and somewhat overblown) rehash of the oldest conflict in the book, that of father vs mother and their competing natures. Being kind, it is a courageous and largely successful attempt to ask grand and unanswerable metaphysical questions about the nature of life on earth, family, childhood and a whole lot more; a film that seems to say we should be enthralled that anything exists, let alone that we exist, here and now. It is clear from the beginning that one of the sons (there are three) will die. Spliced throughout the film are vertiginously scenes in which Sean Penn — as the family’s eldest son grown old and now an architect in a very urban setting from which all nature seems to have been banished and, we assume, demolished — stares out of office windows and rides in glass lifts. At once melancholic and frenzied, he is carrying a burden, perhaps prolonged or delayed grief over the death of his brother. It is worth seeing the film for the relationship between the brothers alone, a precise and moving examination of sibling love, cruelty and loyalty.

But before any of this gets going we’re subjected to a half-hour sequence on the origins of life, through the big bang and the age of dinosaurs. It’s overwhelmingly powerful cinema, a beguiling and majestic nature film unleashed across the big screen. I might have enjoyed it more if I’d know it was coming and it was spoiled by people walking out – it was not just that they walked across the screen but that I couldn't help wondering why they were leaving. Ten or so must have walked out within the first hour, but there was applause at the end too**, though it’s fleeting nature suggested it might have been intended ironically.

**If reviewers are to be believed, films premièring at Cannes are often applauded as the credits roll. This only ever makes sense if an actor or the director are in the room to witness your appreciation. There is little that aggravates me more than a football supporter watching a match in a pub (or even at home, come to that) and applauding a substitute off the pitch. You’re showing your appreciation to someone who cannot possibly hear you. I’m all for spontaneous moments of celebration and outrage, but why act as though you’re at the game when you aren’t? I imagine it’s the fallacy that says only real fans go to the game, so to be a real fan you must behave as though you’re in the stadium. Or at least your behaviour should suggest that you’re usually at the game but couldn’t make it today because…you’re in the pub.