Last week an old friend insisted that I see Terrence Malick’s recent film, The Tree of Life. He noted that it is a deeply theological film driven by challenging existential questions such as “Why am I here?” and “Where are you, God?” He also warned that the movie lacked a clear narrative, and “is probably not for most people.” I didn’t know it at the time, but the lack of a “traditional linear narrative approach to storytelling” has induced some rather harsh reactions to the film. Not least of these is a theater in Connecticut that posted a “No Refunds” sign noting the “polarized audience response.” Ignorant of this controversy and trusting his recommendation, I made the drive to an independent theater in Raleigh because it wasn’t showing in Durham at the time.

Although the lack of a linear narrative structure certainly stands out, it would be too much to say that the movie is without structure altogether. Instead, narrative structure is replaced with a heavily moral one: we are instructed from the beginning that we must choose which way we will follow through life, the way of nature or the way of grace. These paths are represented by the father and mother of three boys growing up in the 1950s, Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien (played beautifully by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain). Father – never to be called “Daddy,” he insists – is a harsh and uncompromising disciplinarian, especially toward his eldest son. Mrs. O’Brien is a gentle and soft-spoken woman with a playful and ethereal lightness of being.

As the film progresses, these characters, nature and grace, take shape among the joys and challenges of raising their boys. Mrs. O’Brien, questioned by her eldest son as to which of the three she loves the most, answers, “I love you all the same.” She shields their eyes from suffering as a man seizes uncontrollably on the ground, yet she also pours a cup of water for a prisoner being transported (to his execution?) in a police car. She accepts the insults and injuries of her husband’s wrath, even as she is accused of turning the children against their father. Perhaps most poignantly, she dances and plays with infectious delight. At one point she is lifted off the ground and floats luminously in the air – literally rising above the downward drag of the natural world.

Mr. O’Brien, by contrast, aggressively tries to get ahead by filing patents and keeping in touch with the wealthy and powerful. He is uncompromising in his demands of obedience from the boys, and the oldest is regularly scolded for failing to keep the yard in proper order. They are forbidden from saying, “I can’t” and taught that “If you’re good, people will take advantage of you.” The sharpest image of this harshness is his earnest attempt to teach them to fight, saying, “Come on son, hit me – hit me!” Only when he is fired from his job does Mr. O’Brien’s rough exterior begin to crack. He assumes the questioning posture of the biblical figure Job, saying, “I never missed a day of work. I tithed every Sunday.” The unshakeable order of the universe is suddenly thrown into question – what happens if the righteous do not receive their due? When he turns to his son, saying, “You’re all I have. You’re all I want to have,” it is too late. The boy has already endured (and internalized) too much cruelty from his father to receive this belated offering of love.

Malick surrounds this portrait of a family with detail and richness that supply the film with staggering complexity. The dialogue is deeply infused with verses of scripture – I caught references to Romans 7, Psalm 22, Psalm 23, and Job 1, among others. Music is drawn from a number of liturgical and classical sources – Mrs. O’Brien even hums “Now the Green Blade Riseth” at one point. (Blogger Edward Davis has put together a comprehensive list of the music from the film). Animals are present in seemingly every frame, though we rarely see the same one twice – there must be fifty different dogs running across the O’Brien’s yard throughout the film. Most overpowering, however, are the extended images of natural forces at work in the cosmos. They serve to locate the intricacy of the family story within a grand and unforgiving universe. Scenes of loss and pain appear irrelevant in the vastness of the cosmos, and Malick seems to be visually representing the divine response to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And yet, for all of the discussion about the film’s length and suspension of traditional narrative structure (i.e., that it is slow and boring), the images always seem to shift and change just before you’ve had a chance to take in all of the detail. The cosmic images are profoundly disorienting in this way, simultaneously atemporal and yet fleeting.

Perhaps I should not say too much about the end of the film in this setting, as I suppose some readers will use an encounter with these reflections as encouragement to go see it. (For this reason I have also left largely untouched the complexity of the oldest son’s development within such a divided household.) I do think it is worth noting, without spoiling the overall tenor of the close of the film, that the central images of the mother’s hands in those scenes still display her wedding ring. That band, which I take as a sign of the covenant bond between nature and grace, has a kind of eternal presence that is with us from the very beginning of the film. It is, after all, the voice of grace that tells us of the two ways through life in the opening voice over. Several other characters could have supplied that perspective, with the oldest son as the most obvious candidate. But it is grace that presents us with the choice because it is her gift to give. Grace goes before us, willing to accept the insults and injuries of our response to what she offers. And grace goes after us, never removing those signs of the covenant that mark her eternal faithfulness.

*Thanks to Jeff Finch, Meghan Feldmeyer, and Paul Sapp for conversations about the film that helped shape these thoughts.