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29 Copyright © 2016 by Northwestern University Press.
30 Published 2016. All rights reserved.
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32 Unless otherwise noted, all film stills reproduced in this volume are from The Tree
of Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Twentieth
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Century Fox, 2011).
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— 35 Printed in the United States of America
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37 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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39 ISBN 978- 0-8101-3255-9 (cloth)
40 ISBN 978- 0-8101-3254-2 (paper)
41 ISBN 978- 0-8101-3256- 6 (e-book)
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43 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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Contents 4
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Introduction: In the Midst of the Garden 000 10
Jonathan Beever and Vernon W. Cisney 11
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Part I. The Way 13
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Revelation or Dream?: Experiencing and Writing about 15
The Tree of Life 000 16
Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk 17
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Seeing the Light in The Tree of Life 000
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William Rothman 20
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Technologies of Observation: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life
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and the Philosophy of Science Fiction 000
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Marc Furstenau
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Belief in the World: Aesthetic Mythology in Terrence Malick’s 25
The Tree of Life 000 26
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Robert Sinnerbrink
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Part II. Of Grace 30
Religious Exteriority in Malick’s The Tree of Life 000 31
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Eric Boynton
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The Tree of Life and Death 000 34
John Bleasdale 35
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“What Was It You Showed Me?” Perplexity and Forgiveness: 37
The Tree of Life as Augustinian Confession 000 38
Paul Camacho 39
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Varieties of Finitude in The Tree of Life 000 41
Manuel “Mandel” Cabrera 42
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3 The Triumph of Love in The Tree of Life 000
4 Erin Kealey
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Suffering and Redemption: A Nietzschean Analysis of The Tree of Life 000
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7 Leslie MacAvoy
8 All the World Is Shining, and Love Is Smiling through All Things: The
9 Collapse of the Two Ways in The Tree of Life 000
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Vernon W. Cisney
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12 The World of Representation via The Tree of Life 000
13 Jonathan Beever
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15 Appendix: Translator’s Introduction to Martin Heidegger’s The Essence of
16 Reasons (Vom Wesen des Grundes) 000
17 Terrence Malick
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19 Contributors 000
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Introduction 4
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In the Midst of the Garden 8
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Jonathan Beever and Vernon W. Cisney 10
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13
Terrence Malick’s films are notoriously ambitious creations. Even when 14
they do not stretch the durational boundaries of a “standard” Hollywood 15
movie (while Malick’s first two films have running times of 94 minutes, his 16
next three films far exceed two hours), nevertheless their common cinematic 17
components—the prolonged close-up shots of nature, majestic themes, Mil- 18
tonic imaginings of paradise lost, poetically and philosophically reflective 19
voice-over narrations, and compelling imagistic evocations of the minutiae 20
of human emotion—herald an audacious and uniquely singular artistic 21
visionary among American film directors. Whether one admires or detests 22
his works (and there are plenty of folks at both ends of this spectrum), it is 23
difficult to deny his courage and originality as a filmmaker. 24
But even in a corpus of works that progressively shatters the accepted limits 25
of cinematic capabilities, The Tree of Life (2011 Cannes Film Festival Palme 26
d’Or winner) stands apart. Boasting a stellar cast (Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and 27
the inimitable Jessica Chastain in one of her first major roles), it neverthe- 28
less employs its characters in a subdued manner, managing to skillfully pull 29
out some of the finest moments these performers have ever given, without 30
at the same time allowing the film to be consumed by the grandiosity of its 31
familiar faces. In addition, the film forcefully defies the conventions govern- 32
ing standard narrative; there is not really a plot to speak of—no buildup, no 33
climax, and hence, no resolution. Or perhaps we should say, the film’s climax 34
occurs in its first two minutes, and the rest of the film is its resolution; to 35
say this, however, is to severely attenuate any traditional senses of the words 36
“climax” and “resolution.” The narrative is, in parts, encomium, fantasy, 37
memory, daydream—and these parts overlap and intersect indistinguishably; 38
even in the film within the film—the central tale of the upbringing of young 39
Jack O’Brien (Hunter McCracken) in Waco, Texas—the “story” moves along 40
through loosely connected memories, some more detailed than others, and 41
ranging from extended episodes (such as the moment at the dinner table 42
when R.L. defies Mr. O’Brien and the familial crisis that ensues) to seemingly 43
irrelevant, disconnected momentary images (the tall gentleman hunched over 44

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1 in the attic, Mrs. O’Brien dancing angelically in midair, the doctor with the
2 small-town accent, or the clown in the dunk tank, for instance), without any
3 identifiable logic or cohesion. We might echo Gilles Deleuze and say that they
4 are, quite simply, bits and pieces of a life.1
5 But perhaps the most pronounced and obvious departure from stan-
6 dard Hollywood procedure comes twenty minutes into the film, when we
7 encounter the depictions of the origins of the cosmos and ultimately, of life
8 itself. Complete with ethereal gases, asteroid fields, Saturnian rings, volca-
9 nic eruptions, glaciers, single-celled organisms, plesiosaurs and dinosaurs,
10 this imagined creation sequence presents us with some of the most magnifi-
11 cent imagery of the film. However, given that a further seventeen minutes
12 pass before we see another human being, the sequence can test the forbear-
13 ance of even the most patient moviegoer, a point which, during the film’s
14 theater run, prompted many movie theater managers to offer “warnings,”
15 either verbal or written, to the film’s would-be viewers.2 Of all his films, The
16 Tree of Life is by far Malick’s most daring and most ambitious one, both
17 cinematically and thematically, to date. Therefore, it is a film that almost
18 seems to provoke, if not outright invite, philosophical engagement. This
19 invitation is augmented by even a cursory glance at Malick’s philosophical
20 background.
21 Terrence Malick’s intellectual biography has by now become legendary.3
22 Malick majored in philosophy at Harvard University, studying under the
23 well-known American philosopher Stanley Cavell, who expresses gratitude
24 for Malick in the preface to his now-classic 1971 text (i.e., two years prior to
25 the 1973 release of Malick’s directorial debut, Badlands) The World Viewed:
26 Reflections on the Ontology of Film.4 After graduating from Harvard in
27 1965—summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa—Malick went on to study
28 with Gilbert Ryle at Magdalen College, Oxford. There he began researching
29 for a thesis on the concept of world in the philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard,
30 Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger. He and Ryle allegedly had a
31 falling-out that resulted in Malick’s departure from his fellowship at Oxford
32 after only one year. Returning to the United States, Malick then worked off
33 and on as a journalist for the next few years, and taught Hubert Dreyfus’s
34 seminar on Heidegger at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968.
35 In 1969 Malick published his English translation of Heidegger’s Vom Wesen
36 Des Grundes, complete with a translator’s introduction.5 It thus might have
37 appeared as though Malick intended to take up academic philosophy again
38 here in the United States, but that was not to be. After an unpleasant experi-
39 ence as a teacher, Malick turned his back on academic philosophy for good,
40 and enrolled in the American Film Institute Conservatory in 1969 (the first
41 year of its operation). The rest, as they say, is history . . .
42 Given this unique background, avid Malick fans (especially those of us
43 whose “day jobs” are in academic philosophy) may find ourselves tempted to
44 think of Malick as a director who creates films that are, themselves, cinematic

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projections of philosophical positions. We may be tempted to search for a 1

“master text” that lies behind Malick’s work, as though Malick himself “just 2
is” a Heideggerian, or a Kierkegaardian, but one who outlets his philosophy 3
through the medium of film, rather than in articles and books, as do academic 4
philosophers. On this note, however, we would do well to heed Malick’s own 5
warnings. First, we are faced with the biographical-historical fact that Malick 6
ultimately abandoned academic philosophy for a career in filmmaking. Thus, 7
in attempting to paint Malick with the philosopher’s brush, we may be stub- 8
bornly sustaining an illusion of who Malick really is, on the basis of what 9
his studies once were. We would not, for instance, say of a police officer with 10
thirty years of service on the force, because he happened to have studied Eng- 11
lish literature in college, that he is a literary police officer, or that he conducts 12
himself on the police force as an author would. Why then should we assume 13
that Malick’s films expose a metatext informing the works of art themselves, 14
or that they assume in any way a philosophical disposition? 15
Furthermore, Malick himself reportedly rejects this characterization of 16
his work, saying, “I don’t feel one can film philosophy.”6 Thus, according 17
to Terrence Malick, any endeavor to read philosophy in any film (let alone, 18
one of his films) may be doomed from the outset. But then again, perhaps 19
not; perhaps this rejection is more complicated than it at first appears. After 20
all, one of Malick’s philosophical “heroes” was Martin Heidegger. Accord- 21
ing to Malick, one of the reasons he is enamored with Heidegger in the first 22
place is that Heidegger struggles for new ways to express the experience he 23
is trying to evoke. Here, let us look to a passage from Malick’s “Translator’s 24
Introduction”: 25
26
Our problems are problems with Heidegger’s language. What gives 27
them their force as problems is that they ask to be solved in and 28
through his language, without further recourse. Heidegger is not, 29
certainly by his own account, using new and peculiar words as 30
“equivalents” for our own, and even if he were, there is no reason to 31
think that we would then be in some better position to understand 32
him. Which is to say that the difficulty is not one of decoding him . . . 33
If Heidegger resorts to his own peculiar language, it is because ordi- 34
nary German does not meet his purposes; and it does not because he 35
has new and different purposes. If we cannot educate ourselves to his 36
purposes, then clearly his work will look like nonsense. And yet we 37
should not conclude that it is nonsense merely because we are not 38
sure what is to keep us from the conclusion . . . They are not strictly 39
arguments or descriptions, one suspects, but are designed to make 40
such procedures, and the proper application of them, possible.7 41
42
In this passage, Malick is addressing the often frustrating tendencies that 43
Heidegger exemplifies in his writings. (1) Through the course of his career, 44

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1 Heidegger progressively abandons traditional philosophical vocabulary in

2 favor of his own created lexicon. Even this, however, is not an accurate char-
3 acterization, because Heidegger’s terms are not subject to “definition” in the
4 way that words in a lexicon are; rather, the definitions Heidegger provides
5 often just are the philosophical activities themselves, in action. (2) Likewise,
6 Heidegger does not employ standard philosophical argumentative style in his
7 writings. He typically eschews the offering of premises, and the evidence that
8 he uses is often an evocation of an experience, rather than straightforwardly
9 verifiable truth-claims.
10 It would behoove us to keep in mind that, although he acknowledges the
11 difficulties that Heidegger’s innovations pose, Malick is here defending Hei-
12 degger on this score. If Heidegger does not stick to the standard ontological
13 characterizations or ways of “carving up” the world, if he does not obey the
14 accepted rules of philosophical argumentation, perhaps it is not because he
15 has nothing truly interesting to say, and hence feigns profundity by way of
16 deliberate obfuscation; rather, perhaps Heidegger creates a new language and
17 a new mode of expression, because Heidegger is trying to create a new world.
18 Thus, his abandonment of traditional philosophy is, in his own way, the pur-
19 est and most perfect fidelity to the philosophical tradition.
20 Perhaps we can speculate that something similar can be said of Malick
21 himself. (And here it would not hurt to remind ourselves that some of the
22 greatest philosophers in history—Nietzsche, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, for
23 instance—were not philosophers at all, strictly speaking.) Even if Malick
24 is right, that one cannot film philosophy, even if there is no master text to
25 be found lurking behind Malick’s films, even if they present no arguments
26 and no conclusions, perhaps we can say, here echoing Malick himself in his
27 admiration for Heidegger, that if Malick abandoned traditional philosophi-
28 cal argumentation, perhaps it was not because he had nothing philosophical
29 to say, but rather, that Malick is trying to create a new world, and to do it,
30 he must first create a new language. Even when philosophical concepts (such
31 as Empedoclean love and strife or Nietzschean affirmation) appear to be at
32 work in Malick’s films, Malick’s imagistic evocation of experience blurs them,
33 challenges them, provokes them, and weaves them into a newly synthesized,
34 affective multiplicity. Rather than philosophy as such being “filmed” (the
35 possibility of which Malick rejects), perhaps it is the case that with Malick,
36 film itself becomes philosophy. Perhaps we are the inheritors of this language,
37 and the observers in Malick’s world.
38 The world that Malick creates in The Tree of Life traverses three distinct
39 but related thematic axes, to be briefly discussed in this introduction. These
40 three axes are: (1) metaphysical and religious reflections; (2) ways of under-
41 standing the meaning of the human experience and of contextualizing human
42 suffering; (3) the confrontation with what Harold Bloom calls the “American
43 Sublime.” Let us now discuss these three axes in turn.
44

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Metaphysical and Religious Reflection 1

2
We have already mentioned the unusual creation sequence that occupies a 3
full seventeen minutes of The Tree of Life. This sequence itself is revelatory 4
of the fact that the film at least delves into metaphysical speculation. There 5
are a few key points to be made. First, the title of the film, The Tree of Life, 6
alludes to a nearly ubiquitous symbol, pervasive throughout many religions 7
and cultures, Eastern and Western, across antiquity and continuing up to the 8
present day. The tree of life is a symbol for the source of all being, and as 9
such it can represent (as it does in Egyptian mythology) the divine itself; it 10
can represent (as it does in Judaism, Christianity, and some strains of Chi- 11
nese mythology) immortality and restoration; it can represent wisdom, as it 12
does at certain moments in Judaism (in the book of Proverbs) and in Bud- 13
dhism (where it is synonymous with the Bodhi Tree under which the Buddha 14
attained enlightenment); it can simply represent the interconnectedness of all 15
living things—sometimes in a spiritual or mystical interconnectedness (as in 16
Kabbalah), but it can also be strictly naturalistic (Charles Darwin himself, in 17
On the Origin of Species, explicitly refers to the principle of common descent 18
by way of a tree metaphor); finally, the tree of life may allude to some combi- 19
nation of these interpretations—for instance, the deepest wisdom attainable 20
by human beings may be the realization of the interconnectedness of all living 21
things. But in short, to invoke the tree of life is to tap into something timeless 22
and universal within the human experience. 23
Within the Judeo-Christian tradition (steadily evoked throughout the 24
film), the tree of life is an explicit hearkening to the biblical book of Genesis: 25
“And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleas- 26
ant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the 27
garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”8 In the second creation 28
account offered in the book of Genesis, we find the first mention of Eden, 29
the mythic paradise created explicitly for the sustenance and comfort of the 30
newly formed creature, Adam. In the center of this garden sits the mythic tree 31
of life. Thus, the tree of life in the film’s title can be read as an evocation of 32
paradise, purity, and innocence. 33
Of course, we all know the tragic fate that awaits the human being in the 34
story with respect to paradise: following an explicit command by God not 35
to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, a beguiling serpent tempts 36
the woman, who then offers the tree’s fruit to the man; both eat of the fruit, 37
and the two are cast forever out of the garden: “Behold, the man is become 38
as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, 39
and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the 40
Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from 41
whence he was taken.”9 The earth, given them for their comfort, will now 42
only produce food for them by way of laborious toil; childbirth will become 43
44

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1 an excruciating necessity for the woman. The tree of life has become but a
2 memory for humankind.
3 That the tree of life sits side by side in the midst of the garden with the
4 tree that would ultimately beget the fall of humanity, the tree of knowledge,
5 indicates a close relation between the two. Indeed, according to the story, the
6 creator’s fear of humanity’s access to the tree of life (and hence, immortality)
7 following their attainment of the knowledge of good and evil is the reason
8 he banishes them from Eden. The human dalliance with the fruit of knowl-
9 edge is tantamount to the introduction of suffering and death into human
10 existence—this is the explicit threat that God offers to Adam when he first
11 places him in the Edenic garden: “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
12 shalt surely die.”10 The tree of knowledge, then, is quite literally the tree of
13 death, which sits in the midst of the garden, directly adjacent to, and perhaps
14 entangling roots with, the tree of life. To invoke the tree of life is to thereby
15 invoke the fall—suffering and death. (Egyptian mythology, the origins of
16 which are intertwined with Hebrew mythology, holds that the acacia tree is
17 the tree of both life and death.) It hearkens to paradise, but it is a paradise
18 that is always already lost.
19 This brings us to the opening image of the film, which is the silent presenta-
20 tion of the following words: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of
21 the earth? . . . When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
22 shouted for joy?”11 Prior to the introduction of any of the human characters
23 in the film, prior to the cosmic creation sequence, prior even to the effluvi-
24 ent, kaleidoscopic light through which we hear the film’s first spoken words,
25 we, the viewers, are posed with a question, by an inquisitor who never once
26 speaks through the entirety of the film, despite the many petitions of its char-
27 acters: where were you? This quotation comes from the thirty-eighth chapter
28 of the biblical book of Job.12 Job is the Judeo-Christian cultural reflection
29 upon the meaning of suffering and death; central to the entire account is
30 that Job’s inability to understand his suffering torments him relentlessly. The
31 attempt to sensibly contextualize and narrativize his anguish, in the face of
32 his friends’ criticism, and his wife’s abandonment, is the driving force of the
33 story, occupying thirty-five of the book’s forty-two chapters.
34 Job and his three interlocutors share the conviction that a just God will
35 never allow a righteous person to suffer unfairly, in other words, that if God
36 is indeed a just God, then human suffering is always warranted. Where they
37 differ is that, while Job’s friends affirm God’s justice, and therefore deny
38 Job’s righteousness, attempting to persuade Job to confess to whatever sin
39 he has committed and repent, Job affirms his own innocence, and thereby
40 challenges the presupposition of God’s justice: “If indeed you would exalt
41 yourselves above me and use my humiliation against me, then know that
42 God has wronged me and drawn his net around me. Though I cry, ‘I’ve been
43 wronged!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.”13 Job’s
44 pleas are that the almighty should at last appear and offer to Job a satisfying

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and justifiable reason as to why he has been made to suffer in the myriad 1
ways that have befallen him. 2
When at last God, from out of a whirling storm, responds to Job’s lamen- 3
tations, it is certainly not the response that Job had sought; indeed it is not 4
a response, strictly speaking, at all, but rather, a series of questions: “Brace 5
yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where 6
were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who 7
marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line 8
across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while 9
the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”14 Little 10
by little, God in the story walks Job through the intricacy and magnificence 11
of the whole of nature, of which Job’s life is but a small element, a fleeting 12
moment in the vastness of eternity. From life to life, behemoth to leviathan, 13
desert to glacier, predator to prey—Job had demanded answers, but the 14
response he received was merely an interrogatory reflection upon the splen- 15
dor and majesty of nature and of life itself. Job’s challenge to God is very 16
much the same question Mrs. O’Brien poses early in the film, following the 17
revelation of the family’s tragedy: where were you? It hardly seems acciden- 18
tal, therefore, that shortly after this crisis is revealed in the film, The Tree of 19
Life takes us on a visual journey through time and space, showing us nature 20
in all of its violence and all of its tranquility and wonder. As John McAteer 21
writes, “God takes Job on the same journey the movie takes us on with its 22
journey through the story of creation and the evolution of the dinosaurs.”15 23
24
25
Human Suffering and the Meaning of Life 26
27
Whatever the religious significance of Malick’s imagery might or might not 28
be (this is a theme that many of this volume’s contributions explore), it is 29
undeniable that the film offers a meditation on the significance of human suf- 30
fering, a problem unbounded by history, culture, or religion. One might even 31
say that it is the core problem of every cultural or cosmological narrative, 32
religious or otherwise: what is the meaning of our suffering? The suffering 33
central to The Tree of Life is the unexplained death of R.L., the O’Briens’ 34
middle son. Of this death we know only two details: (1) he died at the age of 35
nineteen; (2) the news arrives by way of a Western Union telegram. Besides 36
this, there is only speculation. Given the timeline of the film, it is at least 37
conceivable that he died in the Vietnam War. However, the responsibility of 38
notifying the families of fallen soldiers was transferred to military casualty 39
notification teams early on in the Vietnam conflict. Therefore, while possible, 40
it seems improbable that R.L. is supposed to have died in Vietnam. Alterna- 41
tively, we may be led to suspect that R.L. committed suicide. Shortly after 42
the revelation of R.L.’s death, Mr. O’Brien is remorsefully reflecting upon the 43
way he had treated his son, connecting this mistreatment with injuries that 44

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1 R.L. had inflicted upon himself at one time in the presence of his father. Mrs.
2 O’Brien looks on and listens to his lamentation, with an almost disdainful
3 expression on her face: “I never got a chance to tell him how sorry I was.
4 One night he . . . punched himself in the face for no reason. He would sit
5 next to me at the piano and I’d criticize the way he’d turn the pages. I made
6 him feel shame . . . my shame . . . poor boy . . . poor boy.”16 A little later we
7 see Jack, now an adult, apologizing over the telephone to his father for things
8 that he had recently said to his father (accusations, perhaps?) regarding
9 R.L.’s death. This reading finds further support in the biographical detail that
10 Malick’s own brother committed suicide in the summer of 1968. The details
11 are tragically similar to the details surrounding R.L.’s character, and what we
12 know about his death: “Larry, the youngest, went to Spain to study with the
13 guitar virtuoso Segovia. Terry discovered in the summer of 1968 that Larry
14 had broken his own hands, seemingly despondent over his lack of progress.
15 Emil [Malick’s father], concerned, went to Spain and returned with Larry’s
16 body; it appeared the young man had committed suicide.”17 R.L. O’Brien
17 and Larry Malick share a love for music, an ambition for guitar, a critical
18 and demanding father, a drive for perfection marked by self-inflicted wounds,
19 and ultimately, a tragic death. But whatever the evidence might suggest, the
20 simple fact remains that R.L.’s death in the film remains unexplained. One
21 might argue that this is entirely appropriate given the thematic structure of
22 the film. Given that the film is a reflection upon the meaning of human suf-
23 fering, the problem after which human beings have forever in vain sought an
24 answer, to provide the viewer with anything resembling a tidy explanation
25 would indeed undercut the film’s philosophical exploration. We, like Job, like
26 Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien, simply cannot know why this has happened. And, ulti-
27 mately, whether R.L. died in the battle of warfare, from self-inflicted wounds,
28 or from some other cause we have not even suspected, in the end it makes no
29 difference, or at least it brings us no closer to understanding why.
30 But the film transcends even this characterization as well. For juxtaposed
31 against the smallness of Job is the splendor of each and every life, in its rela-
32 tion to the larger whole. Despite its effervescence sub specie aeternitatis, each
33 life is rife with significance and purpose: plans and goals, loves and losses,
34 successes and failures. In reexamining the meaning of his own suffering (and
35 hence, the larger problem of suffering generally), Jack painstakingly leads
36 the viewer along as he journeys through the detailed moments of his past.
37 Indeed, the viewer is hard-pressed to find a significant moment of her own
38 life that is not, in some way, mirrored or reflected by Jack’s memories—one’s
39 first playground injury, the warmth and insecurity of one’s first crush, the
40 cold, isolating experience of jealousy, the point of sexual awakening, the first
41 encounter with death, the inexplicable desire to hurt those we love, ambiv-
42 alence towards one’s parents, the impulse to transgression, self-loathing,
43 disdain for authority, faith—religious and interpersonal—and the loss thereof,
44 the foundation of trust and the experimental curiosity to breach that trust,

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shame and acceptance of responsibility, the possibility of reconciliation and 1

forgiveness, the first encounter with social outcasts, the realization that some- 2
times, quite suddenly and without warning, our world changes forever, and 3
so on. Beyond or within the problem of the meaning of suffering, The Tree of 4
Life is itself a film that explores this question within the context of the larger 5
question of what it means to be a human being. The late Roger Ebert, a film 6
critic not given to rhetorical flourish or hyperbolic characterizations, writes 7
of the film, “I don’t know when a film has connected more immediately with 8
my own personal experience.”18 Ebert speaks here of Malick’s depiction of 9
1950s America. Yet part of the brilliance of Malick’s auteurist vision is that 10
he has created a film capable of connecting with any viewer, regardless of her 11
age, race, gender, cultural background, religion, parental status, and so on. A 12
parent is easily moved to tears by the portrayals of motherhood; theists see 13
the film as an argument for religious faith, or more, an argument for God’s 14
existence; atheists marvel at the film’s depiction of human emotion; Ebert 15
praises the authenticity of the depictions of landscapes and familial relations 16
of 1950s America; dimensions all explored within this volume. In short, what 17
Malick has created with The Tree of Life is a film that meditates, deeply and 18
profoundly, about what it means to be a human being, living a life. In the 19
words of a friend, “Where most films try to give you only a slice of the tree, 20
Malick is trying to give you the entire tree.”19 21
22
23
The American Sublime 24
25
Yet of Malick we can also say that, while he offers us a work of art that 26
explores the experience of life itself (and hence a work of art that is, without 27
question, universally accessible), nevertheless he does so within a very specific 28
motif, namely, a specifically American motif; in fact, Malick is a distinctively 29
American director, but this requires explanation. After all, Malick’s films, 30
lacking in car chases, shootouts, explosions, grand master plots, gratuitous 31
sex, and so on are not standard Hollywood fare. The grandiosity of his vision 32
is more contemplative than it is forceful and assertive, his aesthetic sensi- 33
bilities in many ways closer to the era of silent cinema than to that of his 34
own contemporaries, even the greats such as Scorsese and Coppola. As Lloyd 35
Michaels notes, it is not accidental that “he has frequently been described . . . 36
as an essentially European filmmaker, with a narrative pace, visual style, and 37
thematic opaqueness more akin to the continental art cinema than the New 38
Hollywood.”20 What, then, can it mean to say that Malick is a distinctively 39
American director? 40
In his Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens, the 41
American literary theorist Harold Bloom, citing Ralph Waldo Emerson, 42
offers the following quotation: “ ‘There may be two or three or four steps, 43
according to the genius of each, but for every seeing soul there are two 44

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1 absorbing facts—I and the Abyss.’ For ‘the Abyss,’ we can read: tradition, his-
2 tory, the other, while for ‘I’ we can read ‘any American.’ ”21 Bloom pulls out
3 of Emerson’s passage a formulation for what he calls the American Sublime,
4 namely, I and the Abyss. This notion of the sublime shares similarities with
5 that of Immanuel Kant: specifically, the feeling of the superiority of oneself
6 in the face of that which, at least potentially, overwhelms us. This, in short,
7 is an expression for the very embodiment of the American mythos: I and the
8 abyss. In our myth of self-understanding, freedom was a notion never before
9 conceived on earth, one that was created with the birth of the American
10 experiment. The nation’s “founders” created a completely new tradition ex
11 nihilo, constituting a people seemingly without a prior history. It was to be a
12 “new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all
13 men are created equal.”22
14 Going along with this is our self-understanding of innocence and moral
15 purity, the notion that, from its inception, this project had the divine impri-
16 matur, and was hence destined for limitless greatness. John Winthrop’s 1630
17 sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” written aboard the Arbella en route
18 to America,23 refers to the city on a hill, an analogy that has become syn-
19 onymous with American exceptionalism,24 and is still quoted by vote-hungry
20 American politicians to this day.
21 The abyss is embodied as well in the American landscape itself: a vast
22 new world, untouched by the old, without fences or limitations, our very
23 own Eden into which we have been delivered by God himself. It is a world
24 replete with natural resources just waiting, almost begging, to be mined and
25 used, in order to create a power unparalleled in human history. The vastness
26 of the land is at once liberating and terrifying; its openness and possibil-
27 ity is coupled with its treachery and danger, and America’s landscapes run
28 the gamut of ecological systems and climates—from harsh deserts, to arid
29 regions, to temperate zones, to areas almost perpetually blanketed in snow—
30 from mountains to swamps, to forests, to plains. America’s virginal purity
31 beckons as that which is to be conquered, and the conquest is mirrored in
32 our interactions with the untamable natives whom we “discovered,” already
33 living on the land that we “discovered.” The harshness of the American fron-
34 tier is embodied in the perceived “savagery” of the American Indians, which
35 demanded in turn forcible subordination; hence, our ongoing and persistent
36 comfort, as a nation, with a certain level of violence—it is violence that has
37 made us who we are; and a power obtained by violence can only be sustained
38 by violence.
39 The final element of this myth, metonymically perceptible in all the rest,
40 is the American myth of self-creation, the “American dream” that no one is
41 bound (hear the intimations of limitlessness) by class, gender, race, or creed;
42 that every American, provided she is willing to work hard, can be anything
43 she wants to be. Wealth, power, prestige, respect, all of it can belong to
44 anyone who wants it badly enough. This American dream is part of what

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defines us, and the speeches of our political figures reinforce this (perhaps at 1
times unconscious) myth. Throughout the 1980s, accompanying the Western 2
resurgence of robust neoliberalism, American television programs such as 3
Dynasty, Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous fed the 4
dream. American life is itself an abyss, and each one of us is capable, through 5
force of will and diligent effort, of bringing it under our power and overcom- 6
ing the obstacles we face. 7
Every single one of Malick’s films speaks in some way or another to the 8
experience of the American Sublime. Whether he is complicating our collec- 9
tive nostalgia for the “good old days,” by telling unsettling stories set during 10
America’s golden age,25 as he does in Badlands (1973, set in the 1950s, and 11
telling a story loosely based upon the Charles Starkweather killing spree of 12
1958 that gripped the nation in fear), and in Days of Heaven, (1978, set 13
in 1916, and telling a story of the relentless pursuit of wealth); disrupting 14
the mythic glory of World War II, as he does in The Thin Red Line (1998); 15
or confronting head-on our founding myths, as he does in The New World 16
(2005), Malick’s films are dedicated to the exploration of the meaning of the 17
American sublime. 18
The Tree of Life is yet the most recent example of Malick’s exploration 19
of the American mythos. Mr. O’Brien is the very embodiment of the Ameri- 20
can dream—driven by insecurity based upon his own feelings of failure in 21
life, and by resentment of those whom he perceives to be unjustly wealthy 22
and prosperous, he attempts to assert himself as “the big man.” Establishing 23
his “ownership of ideas,” he works hard and is never late for work, never 24
takes sick days, and tithes every Sunday, only to ultimately have the Ameri- 25
can dream ripped from his hands by forces beyond his control. The Tree of 26
Life paints a picture of everyday American life in the 1950s quite different 27
from the Norman Rockwell paintings with which we are all familiar, a world 28
wherein men, when they judge themselves against the yardstick of the Ameri- 29
can Dream, perceive themselves to be failures, and overcompensate for what 30
they cannot control in their lives by forcibly attempting that much more 31
aggressively to control what they believe to be their property, namely, their 32
families and their homes. They shout at their wives, who struggle through 33
their own lives of quiet desperation, they tend in extreme measure to the care 34
of their yards, and they excessively punish their children in an effort to keep 35
their offspring from becoming the failures that they perceive themselves to 36
be. Malick’s America is a vision of paradise, but like the biblical Edenic para- 37
dise, it is always already a paradise lost. 38
39
40
In This Volume . . . 41
42
The chapters in this book explore the various intersections of and departures 43
from these themes. In keeping with Malick’s central themes, the sections of 44

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1 this volume happen in three interrelated parts. The first part, “The Way,”
2 examines the nature of the medium of film itself. South African film and
3 media studies scholar Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk (University of Cape Town)
4 begins with an analysis of encounters with the film. Rijsdijk proposes that
5 the fragmentary nature of the narrative and images, which viewers find origi-
6 nally strange, is in the end what makes the film so compelling. His reading
7 of the film, experimental and reaching, strives to present the ecstasy of hid-
8 den natural moments in the way that only the medium of cinema is able to
9 produce. William Rothman, professor of cinema and interactive media at the
10 University of Miami, explores the unique methodology of cinema in linking
11 Malick’s work with that of his philosophical influence Stanley Cavell and
12 examines the ways in which film does ontological and metaphysical work
13 through a medium all its own. The way of cinema is further explored by
14 Professor of Film Studies Marc Furstenau (Carleton University), who strives
15 to reconcile the role of technology in providing answers to the deep questions
16 of existence within the film. While we might be tempted to read the film as a
17 naturalistic answer, made possible by technology, to religious or metaphysi-
18 cal questions, Furstenau sees in Malick an understanding that, despite our
19 best efforts and most advanced technological insights, there may be some
20 questions that remain obscure. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein for support,
21 Furstenau proposes that The Tree of Life, especially through its cosmological
22 imagery, demonstrates that science cannot answer the problems of life. Thus,
23 while the technical experience of the film is comparable to directly experi-
24 encing the natural world, the scope and themes of the film place it—almost
25 unwillingly—in the genre of science fiction. Beyond the experience of the
26 medium of cinema and apart from the possibilities it affords, there remain
27 the questions it can readily elicit. Robert Sinnerbrink (Macquarie Univer-
28 sity), Continental philosopher and film scholar, draws on the film to consider
29 whether and how belief is possible. For Sinnerbrink, The Tree of Life aims to
30 cultivate belief in the world of existence through philosophical, religious, and
31 mythical themes and imagery. He proposes, following Deleuze, that Malick’s
32 philosophical wager is that cinema, unlike other media, can powerfully elicit
33 and sustain such belief. The chapters in this first section reflect cinema as a
34 way of understanding the questions of existence.
35 The second part of the book, “Of Grace,” draws attention to the religious
36 and mythical tones, images, and narratives running through The Tree of Life.
37 In his essay, Eric Boynton, a professor of philosophy and religious studies
38 (Allegheny College), considers religious exteriority, the idea that religious
39 themes and insights can be reflected externally by cinematic technique and
40 analysis of the interconnection between faith and knowledge. The technique
41 and imagery in Malick’s film play this role of opening up questioning about
42 religious themes. Religion, on Boynton’s reading, is not to be explained or
43 controlled, but rather taken up as an engine of questioning that drives not
44 only philosophical investigation but also thought more generally. One key

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religious theme in the early narrative of The Tree of Life is the story of Job, 1
where Job is confronted by God and asked “Where were you when I laid the 2
foundations of the earth?” This story, according to writer and film critic John 3
Bleasdale (University of Ca Foscari, Venice), finds a declaration of under- 4
standing in the film. The film’s scope seeks to show what we know of the 5
universe and our place in it—but also of God’s place in it, a God Bleasdale 6
calls “a god of the gaps.” This understanding of the universe, with aspects 7
both divine and immanent, is driven by the moral problem of death in an 8
all-good world. But, in Bleasdale’s account, this problem of death leads us 9
to consider broader questions of existence; namely, why is there something 10
rather than nothing? Through this process, it is death that leads us back 11
into the world. This process of religious and philosophical insight likewise 12
drive philosopher Paul A. Camacho’s (Villanova University) thinking about 13
the film. Camacho reads The Tree of Life as a journey of the soul toward 14
God. From an aesthetic unfolding of faith in the goodness of creation, the 15
individual is thrust into conflict by nature’s equivocity: beauty and goodness 16
at odds with destruction and death. This conflict awakens the destructive 17
powers within the individual, who then internalizes that equivocity until the 18
impetus of forgiveness renews faith and pushes back against the destructive 19
potential. For Camacho, this is the positive role of confession: a seeking out 20
of eternal origin and relation. And yet, there is a distinction we might make 21
between seeking answers to questions about our place in the cosmos and 22
expecting a divine response. Philosopher Mandel Cabrera (Yonsei University) 23
examines such a distinction through questions of human finitude, drawing 24
on Thomas Nagel’s conception of the religious temperament. Cabrera argues 25
that The Tree of Life draws from this temperament in struggling with broad 26
cosmic questions while avoiding making direct cosmological claims. 27
The third section of the book, “Of Nature,” addresses more directly themes 28
of nature and immanence that work in tandem with those thematic elements 29
of grace and transcendence that occur throughout the film. Philosopher Erin 30
Kealey (Columbia State Community College) explores parallels between the 31
Greek pre-Socratic thinker Empedocles and the dual themes of nature and 32
grace. On Kealey’s reading, Malick, like Empedocles, finds polar themes at 33
work immanently in the natural world. Empedoclean love and strife parallel 34
Malick’s grace and nature as cyclic and dynamic tensions at work in every 35
level of the natural world. Understanding these dynamics reveals how one 36
ought to live, and helps us come to terms with crisis. Continental philosopher 37
Leslie MacAvoy (East Tennessee State University) follows, pushing harder 38
against the transcendent impulse from a Nietzschean context. MacAvoy cri- 39
tiques the ascetic ideal, played out in the consciousness of Jack, as a futile 40
and nihilistic comparison of the human to the transcendent divine. MacAvoy 41
notes, however, that the collapse of the ascetic ideal brings with it a fright- 42
ening disorientation—an existential crisis of faith. But, as The Tree of Life 43
illustrates or exemplifies, that crisis can be overcome by a positive reading 44

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1 of Nietzsche’s eternal return: a projection of the self into the future as a

2 way of remaking the past. Expanding on these themes of the ascetic ideal,
3 philosopher Vernon W. Cisney (Gettysburg College) argues that The Tree
4 of Life presents an affirmative rather than ascetic worldview, illustrating an
5 inherent perfection in all of immanent creation. For Cisney, drawing on the
6 metaphysics and ethics of Benedict de Spinoza, the nature and grace distinc-
7 tion collapses into one affirmative manifestation of human freedom. To read
8 the narrative of the film as merely a representation of the ascetic ideal is a
9 mistake. Finally, philosopher Jonathan Beever (University of Central Florida)
10 examines the impetus of the nature/grace distinction through an examination
11 of representation. The image of the tree, pervasive throughout the film, rep-
12 resents a particular view of the world. Beever proposes that The Tree of Life
13 can be read as a lens through which Malick provides access to the particular
14 worldview of his characters, while at the same time problematizing those
15 perspectives. Breaking down the distinction between nature and grace and
16 prioritizing immanence offers a parallel emphasis for access to the film and
17 Malick’s cinematic insights.
18 The three sections of the book intersect across themes of the religious
19 reflection, existential questioning, and metaphysical meaning against the
20 backdrop of the American sublime. These analyses offer an enriching array
21 of perspectives and approaches to The Tree of Life, a film that gives us reason
22 for continued reflection on the role and place of we human beings in a richly
23 complex world and an invocation: ecce vita; behold, life.
24
25
26 Notes
27
28 1. See Gilles Deleuze, “Immanence: Une Vie . . . ,” Philosophie no. 47 (1995):
29 3–7. This was Deleuze’s final essay prior to his suicide on November 4, 1995. It
30 is included in Deleuze’s Deux régimes de fous: Textes et entretiens, 1975–1995,
31 ed. David Lapoujade (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2003); translated by Ames
Hodges and Mike Taormina as “Immanence: A Life . . .” in Two Regimes of Mad-
32
ness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995 (New York: Semiotexte, 2007).
33
2. See, for instance, “One Movie Theater’s Hilarious Warning to Customers
34 about “The Tree of Life,” http://www.ifc.com/fix/2011/06/movie-theater-posts
35 -hilarious; “Theater Warning: No Refund if You Don’t Understand the Movie,”
36 http:// consumerist .com/2011/06/24/theater- warns- customers- no- money
37 -back-if-you-dont-understand-the-movie/.
38 3. This biographical information is derived primarily from two sources: the
39 first is Stuart Kendall and Thomas Deane Tucker, “Introduction,” in Terrence
40 Malick: Film and Philosophy, ed. Stuart Kendall and Thomas Deane Tucker
41 (London: Continuum International, 2011), 1–12; the second is “Terrence Malick
42 Biography,” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000517/bio.
4. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film
43
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), xxiv.
44

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5. Martin Heidegger, The Essence of Reasons, trans. Terrence Malick (Evan- 1

ston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1969). This book is now out of print. 2
We are very pleased to include as the appendix to this volume, available in print 3
for the first time in four decades, Malick’s introduction to this work, the only 4
piece of academic philosophical writing that Malick ever published. 5
6. Cited in James Morrison and Thomas Schur, The Films of Terrence Malick
6
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003), 97. This citation itself points to the following:
Martha L. Linden, “Directed by Terrence Malick,” in White Arrow, unpaginated
7
text of published interview on file at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of 8
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1975. 9
7. See the “Appendix” in this volume. 10
8. Genesis 2:9, King James Version. 11
9. Genesis 3:22–23, King James Version. 12
10. Genesis 2:17, King James Version. 13
11. Terrence Malick, director, The Tree of Life, 2011. 14
12. Job 38:4,7. This translation appears to be from the American King James 15
Version. 16
13. Job 19:5–7, New International Version.
17
14. Job 38:3–7, New International Version.
15. “Video ut Intellectum: Jesus, Socrates, and Alfred Hitchcock Walk into a
18
Blog . . . ,” http://filmphilosopher.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/%E2%80%9Cthe 19
- nuns- taught- us- there- are- two- ways- through- life- the- way- of- nature- and- the 20
-way-of-grace-%E2%80%9D/. 21
16. Malick, The Tree of Life. 22
17. Peter Biskind, “The Runaway Genius,” Vanity Fair 460 (December 1998): 23
202–20. 24
18. Chicago Sun-Times, http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? 25
AID=/20110602/REVIEWS/110609998. 26
19. This refers to Wade Furniss. 27
20. Lloyd Michaels, Terrence Malick (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
28
2009), 2.
21. Harold Bloom, Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens
29
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976), 255. 30
22. Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address,” from http://voicesofdemoc- 31
racy.umd.edu/lincoln-gettysburg-address-speech-text/. 32
23. “The Winthrop Society,” http://winthropsociety.com/doc_charity.php. 33
24. Note, Winthrop’s words are decontextualized in contemporary political 34
discourse and hence, lose the communitarian emphasis that Winthrop highlighted 35
in his sermon. 36
25. The “golden age” in America is a term generally applied to two periods of 37
time, the period from the end of the Civil War until America’s entry into World 38
War I, and the period from the end of World War II until the early 1970s when
39
economic growth in the United States began to wane.
40
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