It could be argued that Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life may just have sprouted a few too many branches for the director to effectively cultivate, but our first ever Saturday MovieNight feature was without question a work of breathtaking beauty.

The Tree of Life traces the lives of an archetypal suburban family in 50’s America. Three boys are born to the family, whose gentle, earthy mother aspires to teach them the way of grace, while father believes in the force of nature, and works hard to instill order in the lads. The protagonist eldest son, portrayed both by the impish Cameron Bright (first seen on the MovieNight screen as Sean in Jonathan Glazer’s excellent* Birth) and then, in the present time by Sean Penn, struggles to find a balance between the two.  Not content to travel non-linearly between the fifties and present day, Malick takes us abruptly back to the dawn of time, replete with big bang and (some very cute) dinosaurs. This instance of colossal celestial imagery was our second this season (the other being Melancholia, also on a weekend night… hmmm). I could have done without the rapturous final scene, which left me thinking that I might have accidentally subjected the MovieNight audience to an attempted “evangalization”, but on the whole… The Tree of Life was stunning!

Speaking of stunning, I know that I raved about our projector a couple of posts back, but once more, I was very impressed with the job done rendering the blu-ray transfer of Emmanuel Lubezki’s crispy clear photography… how could one not enjoy those close-ups of Jessica Chastain’s face?

*Critics disagreed wildly about Birth. James Berardinelli, who’s reviews are oft quoted in these posts, refered to Birth as “a pretentious piece of crap”.

More about this film on IMDb