The Harlem River Dispatch: "2011: The Tree of Life Odyssey"?

Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees...that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up. 

- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Ever since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life has consistently been compared to Stanley Kubrick’s mind-bending sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey - and understandably so, for the similarities between both films are numerous and striking.

Most notably, both films feature extended space sequences grandly set to classical music that are lacking in dialogue, action, and narrative relevance to their central dramas. (It's not surprising that behind each sequence is special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull, who is credited on both films as the "special photographic effects supervisor.")

Additionally, both films were simultaneously lauded and panned by critics and audiences alike upon their initial release. Scattered boos and several dozen walk outs were reported during the premiere of The Tree of Life at Cannes - yet, it ended up winning The Palme d’Or at the end of the festival. Similarly, at the L.A. premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey, 241 people reportedly walked out, including movie star Rock Hudson, who famously grumbled upon his exit: "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?"

Similarities can also be found in the artistic styles, habits, public personas, and even the very names of the films' directors. Both were notoriously reclusive figures that forcibly distanced themselves from Hollywood and the media throughout the majority of their careers. They were also both annoyingly tortoise-paced in their creative processes, each having completed far fewer films than their admirers would have hoped for.

Despite the many similarities they share, however, there lies in the thematic marrow of each film a philosophy of existence which is entirely contradictory to the other. This major difference between them is so present and broad that one has to wonder whether The Tree of Life might have been conceived as an artistic response to the world view of its colossal predecessor.

Take, for instance, the music used in each film. Thrice in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Richard Strauss’ "Also Sprach Zarathustra" can be heard - a song inspired by and named after Friedrich Nietzsche’s groundbreaking philosophical novel:

The first time this song is played is at the very opening of the film, in which the camera dramatically pans up to reveal three celestial orbs set in linear succession, the third of which is the rising sun. The second time is when a prehistoric ape-man ecstatically realizes he can use an animal bone as a tool and weapon. And the third and final time is the last shot of the film, in which a mysterious "star fetus" is revealed to be orbiting earth, creepily looking down at our silent planet.

The film’s thematic perspective, like the opening shot of the film, is linear and aims outward, depicting man’s striving for the furthermost reaches of technology, space, and self to the very point before ultimate recession. Like Strauss’ triumphant tone poem, 2001 also echoes and meditates on the themes and philosophies laid out by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, including man as the link between ape and superman, eternal recurrence, and the will to power.

Much of what Kubrick seemed to be exploring in 2001 is this will to power - especially the ways in which the mastery of tools and technology greatly assists it. He portrays the idea that the initial inspiration for technological mastery was so exorbitantly brilliant as to be revealed to us by some alien intelligence.

This possible source of alien intelligence is represented by a tall, black monolith which appears mysteriously before a tribe of prehistoric ape-men early on in the film. Through the influence of this monolith, the prehistoric ape-men seem to get the idea to use the bones of dead animals as tools and weapons for hunting. Eventually though, they get the idea to use these bones as weapons to murder members of their own species in rival tribes in an effort to assert their collective will to power:

In The Tree of Life, there is also a prehistoric scene early on in the film that seems to illustrate the assertion of a will to power - but it involves a couple of dinosaurs instead of ape-men.

In this scene, a small dinosaur is lying ill on a rocky river bank when a velociraptor curiously approaches. Immediately, we see that the raptor is not at all interested in the sick dinosaur as a potential food source - all it would have to do is strike and it would have its meal. Instead the raptor almost bemusedly puts its foot on top of the sick dinosaur’s head, as if to humiliate it and aver its power over it.

Unlike 2001, however, the music of The Tree of Life is not thematically bound with Nietzsche's concept of the will to power. In fact, much of what is used are pieces from requiem masses or funeral canticles.

For instance, the film’s grandiose creation sequence, which contemplates the silent majesty of the cosmos, is accompanied by Polish composer’s Zbigniew Preisner's take on the Lacrimosa:

The Latin lyrics of the traditional musical lamentation translate to:

Mournful that day,

When from the ashes shall rise

A guilty man to be judged.

Lord, have mercy on him.

Gentle Lord Jesus,

Grant them eternal rest. Amen.

The very word "Lacrimosa," translated above as "mournful," can also be translated to "weeping" or "sobbing" – but how could a sequence depicting such majesty and beauty ever be set to such a sorrowful composition? 

First, one could argue that the perspective of the film aims not linearly outward, like 2001, but inward, directing its all-encompassing gaze toward that which unites all: the mystery of being alive. But what is it in "our stars or ourselves" which causes this unspeakable sorrow at the birth of the universe? 

It's important to note that the untimely death of the middle son occurs just before this scene, and raises important questions and themes from the book of Job, who asked God: "Why have you set me as a mark for you?" Similarly, the grief-stricken mother whispers: "Lord, why? Do you care?"

Yet, Malick does not focus the central drama of the film on the death of the middle son. Rather, he takes us back in time to focus on the spiritual fall of the eldest son, Jack, growing up in a rather normal household. 

This character arc of this eldest son (who grows up to be a sullen Sean Penn) perfectly demonstrates a classic Augustinian theme - that individuals enact their own personal fall merely for the thrill transgressing laws set out for them. Jack, who has eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so to speak, now sees his spiritual nakedness as an opportunity to rebel. He sadistically abuses his brothers, breaks windows, blows up a frog, breaks into a house to steal a woman’s nightie out of a bureau, and manipulates the good graces of his mother while simultaneously abhorring the father. He even goes as far as to contemplate patricide by dropping a jacked-up car on his father's head. This central element of a spiritual "fall" seems to be tied, then, to the "Lacrimosa" sung during the creation sequence.

But 2001, it could be argued, explores a fall - or more appropriately, a malfunction. For while the central drama in The Tree of Life has to do with man turning against maker, the central drama of 2001 has to do with machine turning against man.

In the film, HAL-9000, an intelligent computing system represented by an ominous red light, communicates with the astronauts manning a spaceship. When HAL catches onto the astronauts plan to shut him down due to ongoing malfunctions, he turns on them and tries to murder them and all the other sleeping crew members in hibernation on the ship - mostly succeeding before he himself is shut down.

HAL’s malfunction, however, was after all, only that: a malfunction.

He was acting not out of any free will but rather an amped up and faulty survival mechanism; his faults, being a man-made machine, couldn’t be on him, but on that which made him.

This brings about another interesting question: in the Judeo-Christian worldview, couldn't it be argued that we too have been faultily wired by our maker? That our free will is only an illusion, and our maker set us up to fail?

I think it’s Malick’s unique suggestion that man is the guilty party in that relationship, and that the "Lacrimosa" is truly on us - on our constant, free choice to turn away from the good.

In both films, there is a will to power - what the mother in The Tree of Life calls "the way of nature." This will, which "only wants to please itself, to lord over others, to have its way," is brought to its chilling conclusion in the deep recesses of space in 2001. But, in contrast, The Tree of Life is concerned with that which perfects nature - "the way of grace." (Many viewers and critics have mistakenly pinned the father character (Brad Pitt) as the embodiment of "nature" - as a selfish, oppressive, even monstrous character. But this theory dissipates if we pay close attention to the film - particularly to the conclusion, in which the father is shown to be just as subject to the salvific sting of grace.) 

If Terrence Malick truly made The Tree of Life in response to 2001, I would venture to guess that his reason for doing so was to make a few his own assertions in response to Kubrick’s film and the Nietzschean philosophy it espouses, including:

1. God is not dead, but is in fact very alive and very involved in the lives of all living things.

2. That the world has fallen away from his will and the fault is somehow our own.

3. The will to power in us and in the world is a result from this fall and is entirely displeasing to him.

4. That what can save us from this fallen nature is an inspiration that can only come from another world.

5. That otherworldly inspiration is to love and to love wholeheartedly, and

6. “Unless you love your life will flash by.” 

Toward the end of the fascinating documentary Stanley Kubrick: Invisible Man, Malcolm McDowell, the star of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, described his director as brilliant but refrained from calling him a genius, claiming that Kubrick lacked the humanity that would require such a designation:

It's an interesting distinction to make, for ideals like "edginess" and "thinking outside the box" are highly valued in modern art and in modern thought - but are they what make geniuses out of our greatest thinkers and artists? Perhaps the greatest mysteries and profoundest truths that we can still explore in this universe lie not in advanced technology or the furthest reaches of space but rather in ourselves and in each other and in the natural world which surrounds us. Kubrick and many brilliant artists like him seemed to have sadly overlooked that possibility.

Though Stanley Kubrick tragically passed away days before finishing editing on Eyes Wide Shut, his final film, Terrence Malick thankfully is still well and making more films than ever.

A still from Malick's upcoming
film, The Burial

Before the release of The Tree of Life, Malick averaged one film every ten years. Currently, Malick is said to be preparing a release of an IMAX companion piece to The Tree of Life called Voyage of Time, a new feature film tentatively titled The Burial which stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Javier Bardem that is due out in 2012, and is set to film two additional films back to back next year: Lawless, which is said to star Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, and Cate Blanchett; and Knight of Cups which is said to also star Bale and Blanchett.

Might it be unreasonable to suggest that if there ever was a film to tap into some inexhaustible well of inspiration in its maker, a film as ambitious and adoring as The Tree of Life might possibly do the trick?