Against the Robots

After seeing "The Tree of Life," I long forbade myself from writing about the film. Two forces clashed within me. Captivated by its poetry, by the state of bliss I was immersed in, I was afraid of disturbing the surface of this work. I became so enveloped in the film's mystery that I didn't understand the negative reactions and was incapable of critical thinking ^. "The Tree of Life" is based on a book from the Bible, "The Book of Job." And this somber book speaks of life and humanity's relationship with God. This is a theme present in many books of the Bible. But the Book of Job begins with a dialogue between God and Satan, who are toying with humanity. The impression left by this opening dialogue is strange. Of course, the initial dialogue wouldn't be from the same period as the central narrative. In fact, it doesn't matter; the impression it leaves is repeated throughout the book. How could God play with his beloved creation? A hasty conclusion reveals the implausibility of the situation. In truth, once the outer layer is removed, the Book of Job unveils the heart of the relationship between God and humankind. And Terrence Malick's film, "The Tree of Life," shares this same ambition.

What is life? Our era uses the expression "individual freedom," meaning pleasure, to explain life. And our era is familiar with numerous techniques for dissecting life ^before and after. They eliminate birth and death, and give themselves a clear conscience in the face of evil. These people are destitute. Misery awaits them. Let evil strike them, and incomprehension, emptiness, nothingness engulf them. Annihilate them. But these people have the excuse of not knowing; materialism has closed their hearts to God. What are we to think of a believer who relies on technology for reassurance? What are we to think of believers who tirelessly take refuge behind a technique, the technique of thinking they will be spared because their conduct permits it? To think that there is a logic to the world, a logic to God, and to assume that this logic is understandable by man is the technique of retribution, which, like the technique of pleasure, is a means but not an end.

The Book of Job Revisited

"Tree of Life" is a visual interpretation of the "Book of Job." The film's opening twenty minutes show a woman at two distinct stages of her life: at ten years old, a little girl awakening to the beauty of the world, reassured by her father's shoulder, communing with nature, speaking innocently to innocently, she rescues the lost sheep—we are in Paradise before the Fall. And then, as an adult, playing with her children, a happy and contented mother whose reward is comfort, and suddenly—for suddenness is always a factor with evil—when she learns that she will never see her son again. A parent who learns that their child is dead, whether religious or not, initially thinks they will never see their child again. The pain felt is otherworldly. Terrence Malick draws us into this pain. To the very heart of this pain. When the mother receives the letter informing her that her son has died, she has just recited a lesson in harmonious living learned at school: “The sisters told us that there are two paths in life: the path of nature and the path of grace. You must choose which one you will take.” And the little girl, and the sisters through her, secretly invoking Saint Paul and “The Imitation of Christ,” intones the path of an ordered life: “Grace does not seek its own gain. It accepts being ignored, forgotten, unloved. It accepts insults and hurt. Nature seeks only its own gain. Nature imposes its will. It loves to dominate, to act as it pleases. It finds reasons to suffer while the world radiates around it and love smiles in all things.” According to the Sisters: “The paths of grace never lead to unhappiness.” And the mother, Mrs. O'Brien, played intensely by Jessica Chastain, finally recalls this happiness with these words, her own words: "I will be loyal to You… No matter what." Yes, but here's the thing: it's easy to say these words before the event. It's easy to say these words before the evil. Before the evil, everything is easy, since we are in the world, in our world with its easily identifiable attributes, and technology protects us. But life is not a fairy tale. In life, it's not possible to close your eyes, to tell yourself that this letter never arrived, to repeat to yourself that you have chosen the path of grace and that it never leads to misfortune. "I will be loyal to You… No matter what." When she says this sentence, Mrs. O'Brien doesn't know that she is close to Peter saying to Christ: "Even if all fall, I will not! […] Even if I die with you, no, I will not deny you." "(Mark 14:29-32). The first rupture, the essential rupture of the film, occurs with the death of the son. We feel the anger rising. Toward the parents and friends, with this torrent of words that make no sense to anyone who has touched evil ^. "He is in God's hands now" (— As if he hadn't always been). "In time, your grief will pass, even if it's hard to admit." (— I want to die, to be with him). "God sends flies to the wounds He should be healing." (— What have you gained from this?). One human attribute connects all the epiphanies of evil in the world: injustice. Terrence Malick explains nothing. He doesn't analyze. He doesn't judge. He has shown us the end of a world with the pain striking the heart of a family. The anger that wells up as the first reaction to injustice. Shouting out rage and hatred for everything that is not this pain. Of all that does not understand or embrace this pain. Yet, nothing can embrace evil except the one who suffers it. In Malick's vision, this is the moment to recall this phrase from God that opens the film and initiates God's dialogue in the "Book of Job":

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?... When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”⁴

Malick then takes a bold gamble. Some prominent American journalists have compared Terrence Malick to Herman Melville, but these journalists are fortunate to enjoy far more freedom than their French counterparts. Terrence Malick is one of those rare contemporary artists who don't offer a vision of their own self-imposed confinement, a vision of a method that has become trapped within itself and seeks self-pity; Terrence Malick seeks freedom and claims it. He decides that the time has come to inspect the world. Or rather, to inspect creation. Life must be reviewed, and "Tree of Life" is an emanation of this idea. The American director thus decides to show us the moment of Creation. This moment, here and now, when "the morning stars burst into song, and all the sons of God shout for joy." The Alpha. For about fifteen minutes, through a symphony of images and music, Malick takes us on a journey from the beginning of the world to the origin of the O'Brien family. The alpha of a family, like the alpha of the world. Terrence Malick decides to show everything. It's not an ambition, it's a theophany. Like the Book of Job. Terrence Malick films an immense kaleidoscope of childhood; he gathers all these fragments of life and composes stained-glass windows. Life is a marvel. The first son, Jack, is an Adam in his paradise. But very quickly, the clouds gather. A second son is born. Jack is no longer alone. He feels he is no longer loved as much. He wants his mother all to himself, like before, before the event: the birth of his brother. Envy quickly surfaces in human relationships. And Terrence Malick films all these moments, this freedom, this intensity of childhood joy. Here again, few films have managed to capture the difficulties of growing up in a child. Jack is one of those children who can't find their place in the family, in the world. Life always seems either too big or too small to him. He struggles to live. While walking with their mother in town, Jack and his brother witness poverty: criminals caught by the police, disabled people, alcoholics. One of the children asks a natural question: "Can this happen to anyone?" And their mother, like an angel, but an earthly one, subject to the laws of the world, tells him to be quiet. Envy stirs. "Let's not attract the evil eye." And she doesn't answer. She has decided to follow the path of grace—one could say, judging from the film, that she follows the path of grace perfectly, scrupulously, and with relish, but she obeys earthly laws. She subscribes to a philosophy of retribution. A reassuring philosophy. Philosophy is effective in the world as long as evil does not intervene in that world.

The futility of technology against evil

"Tree of Life" takes place in 1950s Waco, Texas. Childhood unfolds in the same way as it has since the beginning of time. Childhood has its own world, one that adults don't enter, where transgression represents the most extraordinary adventure. But very quickly, questions plague childhood: "Who am I?" "What am I supposed to do in this world?" The relationship with God is mediated through questions. Questioning is the foundation. By following the relationship between father and son, we discover that certainties emerge from these questions; certainties true or false, but certainties strengthen; they are the bedrock of character. The politics of retribution is a certainty often used by adults with children. It allows them to explain the inexplicable. Above all, it tends to channel the inexplicable, to make it reasonable. To explain is to control. When Job is struck by God, when he loses everything he has—his family, his possessions, his health—three friends come to visit him and lecture him, one after the other. The three friends come to explain to him what he doesn't know about himself and his life. They come to tell him that he has done wrong, that he doesn't seem to realize it, and that if he doesn't, he is all the more guilty. In short, they overwhelm him. Job, their friend, cannot be condemned without having done wrong, and only his ignorance blinds him, making him believe he is innocent of all crime. Haven't we ever met such friends who know better than we do what is happening to us? How many discussions with friends lead nowhere like this? When incomprehension reigns supreme, when we know deep down that the event that occurs inaugurates a new adventure, and when these friends assert truths from another age, completely escaping the intensity of our new world ^, as soon as Job is struck by God, he knows that it is God who strikes him. The question becomes more refined. Not: "Why the world rather than nothing?" in the manner of Heidegger or Leibniz, but: "Why evil in the world?" From childhood, the world fragments, and questions abound. "Why do people die?" "Why do people suffer?" The questions are always more numerous and, above all, more seductive than the answers. But in the adult world, only the answers are valued. The answers express power. Time is reversed compared to childhood. In the adult world, those who ask too many questions, especially in light of misfortune that befalls them, act as if they are cursed. Any form of curse or event, anything that can be interpreted as such, breeds envy. Job's three friends spend time with him, lecturing him and refusing to listen to his questions, lest they intrude upon his privacy. And they do not intrude upon his privacy because they are afraid, terrified, for they too would risk the same punishment as their friend. They isolate themselves from Job by talking to him, by shutting themselves away in their own certainties and remaining deaf to their friend's anguish. Their responses serve to compartmentalize the discussion because Job is ostracized. Job suffers from profound anguish. He carries this anguish with him from the very beginning of the story. His anguish proves legitimate. Job knows that God is punishing him. God is good. Job is good and obeys the Law. Why would a good God punish a good man who obeys his law? Job's anguish stems from this question. In this apparent inconsistency.

"Without love, life passes like a flash."

Anxiety stems from incomprehension. Jack, the eldest O'Brien son, is plagued by anxiety, very early and very quickly. From the moment his brother is born (the performance of young Hunter McCraken is particularly noteworthy—these American children have an incredible propensity to embody fictional roles as if they were seasoned actors), the walls are always too close to him. He is always surrounded, walled in, imprisoned. He always feels imprisoned by himself, or by his father, or his mother, or his brothers, or by his own actions. "The impossibility of forgetting the truth, that is indeed the first characteristic of anxiety." ⁶ But the truth is what we endure, something imposed upon us and over which we have no control. "I can't do what I want. What I hate, I do." Jack is unaware of the path to grace. He doesn't understand it, or rather, he knows, he senses that the answer is deeper than this simple choice between grace and nature. He senses that there is something more subtle than these two paths. These two paths are of this world. These two paths are a technique. Like any technique, they are not to be denigrated, but put in their proper place. What strikes this family, or Job—the loss of a brother or a son, the loss of all possessions—is evil. Evil is a jewel. It is not of this world. It therefore comes from another world. But it intervenes in our world. It summons us and stuns us. There is the advice of family, of Mrs. O'Brien's friends, or of Job's friends, but there is—and this is how the world begins to interpret the intervention of evil—the absence of God. Retribution is the presence of God; evil is his absence. So when the father is laid off, his whole world, his entire conception of the world, collapses. He is miserable. “I am nothing. Look at all the glory around us. The trees, the birds… I have been unworthy. I have tarnished everything, without even seeing that glory. What an idiot. I was never absent from work. I always gave to the church…” Reward is of this world, and evil is not. Reward and all its accolades are merely technical. Like the modern world, technology can even become a source of anxiety when it is taken for an end in itself. A source of anxiety and a headlong rush. Bernanos had clearly seen that technology was straying from its purpose like a river from its course. With time, this has only worsened. But it is man who encourages it, carried away by the power he feels in taming technology. The impression of power is quite relative, because man is more often controlled by technology ^. This technology leaves no room for inner life. Mrs. O'Brien's response in the film is: "The only way to be happy is to love. Without love, life passes in a flash."

Every conversion is a big bang. Job knows perfectly well that he is right against his friends. His creator, whom he has always adored and served, from whom he had the right to expect reward and who gave it to him through a material life beyond all need, punishes him in his very being ⁸ </sup> The Book of Job is also a story of election. “Ah! I wish I were choked! Death rather than my pains?” cries Job (7:15). And Mrs. O'Brien silently utters similar sentiments after learning of her son's death. So Job would have suffered for nothing. Mrs. O'Brien too. So we would be nothing but wisps of straw swept away by God? A bit like in antiquity with those gods who disposed of humans as they saw fit and who were often more human than humans. Does evil have a meaning? “Is there some fraud in the skim of the Universe?” as the priest says in the film during his homily . <sup>⁹

Terrence Malick followed the "Book of Job" step by step, imbuing it with the images of his American childhood. Mrs. O'Brien takes the time of the film to understand, like Job, that evil—this evil that comes from God or that God has not denied his creatures—has meaning; through encountering evil, He restores to his creatures their essence: to participate in good. It is impossible to hear this statement without acknowledging evil. God pushed Job to the brink of madness by taking away everything he possessed so that he might become aware, so that he might rediscover the faith of his origins. Job believed he had faith before this event. He was deluding himself. He was hallucinating his faith. Through these trials, he saw it face to face. In the heart of darkness, at the very heart of evil, he reaches the heart of life. No other journey could have been so edifying. "Tree of Life" ends with Mrs. O'Brien's final words, immersed in a spatio-temporal procession that inevitably evokes the Communion of Saints: "I give him to You. I give You my son." She discovers the ultimate solution to her sorrow: conversion.

Written and directed by Terrence Malick; director of photography, Emmanuel Lubezki; edited by Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber, and Mark Yoshikawa; music by Alexandre Desplat; produced by Jack Fisk; costume design by Jacqueline West; produced by Sarah Green, Bill Pohlad, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, and Grant Hill; Fox Searchlight Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes.

WITH: Brad Pitt (Mr. O'Brien), Sean Penn (Jack), Jessica Chastain (Mrs. O'Brien), Fiona Shaw (Grandmother), Irene Bedard (Messenger), Jessica Fuselier (Guide), Hunter McCracken (Young Jack), Laramie Eppler (RL) and Tye Sheridan (Steve).