Biff_Loman

Had they left out the NASA pictures, the volcanic and prehistoric footage, and the symphonic music, and straightened out the crooked narrative, The Tree of Life would have been a brave, modest film classic about growing up in Waco, Texas in the '50s. It would not have been easy to bring off, with the only singular event, the loss of a son in what must have been the Vietnam War. The dinosaurs and the vulcanism would have had to be replaced by further pertinent footage about the events leading up to the son's going to war, along with the terrible aftermath of his loss. Many elements in the story would have had to be fleshed out. Characters besides the father would have had to be developed beyond near mute and emotional simpletons. They would have to have lives and friends and speak up and better explain themselves to each other and to their God. It would have had to be a lot more Bergman and a lot less Kubrick and Antonioni. Malick took the easy way out. He bludgeoned us with Mahler, who will draw tears from a stone gazing at a blank white screen; and he enthralled us with the photographic glories of Hubble's universe. He (and we) would have been better served to dispense with the manipulation and stick to the touchingly simple story he had to tell, of which we got only a beautiful outline. Perhaps it was fear that that story was dated and twice-told that prompted him to go cosmic. But, there is a profound discontinuity between the one realm and the other, and Mahler, the lovely footage, along with painfully trite questions addressed to that God do not begin to adequately bridge it of deflect the viewer's disappointment in the director/author's dodging the real questions. It was a nice try, though.

The film captures the grimness of that era, the struggles of the civil rights era, the shock of the Kennedy and MLK assassinations, and the interminable horror of the Vietnam War. It's a worthy corrective to mendacious film fantasies like Forrest Gump. Those born since the '70s have no idea of how threatened, paranoid and alienating it was in post-WWII America, and the propaganda ministry of the mainstream media tends to keep it that way. With regards to Ochs, the film exaggerates his interest in ****, which was always an absurdist parody of same. Likewise the influence of John Wayne. James Dean was a real influence, particularly the misunderstood rebel without a cause who died an early tragic death. Likewise, the diagnosis of bipolarity, which is made much of, seems mainly in retrospect. Today bipolarity is a catch-all for what were in those days psychopathologies, and the victims of which were often institutionalized. Today many of the delusional symptoms of same are treatable with drugs. In those days they were not. But, distinctly, that's not what was wrong with Ochs. He was saner and more politically astute than most. Under the stresses of the music business, radical politics, harassment by the FBI, he took various drugs and drank in excess, and they took their toll. There is a form of depression that results from chronic THC intake, and it's known to sometimes lead to suicide. That may have been it with Ochs, if indeed he committed suicide.... But I digress. The film is worth seeing. Phil Ochs lives.