Experiencing this film is like watching a Catherine Cookson drama on mute whilst drinking heavily… although, to the best of my knowledge, Catherine Cookson dramas haven’t got quite so many dinosaurs in them.
The reclusive Terrence Malick returns with a much less direct and linear cinematic piece about, well, I’m not quite sure. If you break it down it’s a simple coming-of-age story about a boy who grows up with a short-tempered authoritarian father and eventually begins to rebel against his very ridged, buzz-cut upbringing. But the opening half-hour or so where we learn one of the boy’s brothers will eventually die (aged 19, long after the childhood events that provide the load-bearing centre of the film) and are then treated to an astonishingly well imagined and visualised version of how the universe and Earth began serve to unbalance the delicate story that’s being set up… if indeed there’s a story at all. Malick’s ever-moving and often un-obtrusive camera makes the viewer feel like the eye of God peering at events from the sidelines and we feel moved to intervene at times. It’s an exhaustingly sombre and lyrical film and will test the patience of most viewers, especially as there’s no real conclusion of sorts or explanation as to what’s just happened. It just sort of… happens.
My theory about the film is thus (warning: I’ve had to use brackets within brackets to properly annotate my explanations, so prepare yourself for lots of “(this (this))”:
We see a young man’s parents being informed of his death and their initial attempts to come to terms with their loss. From here we see the young man’s brother, who is already dead after drowning as a child, as an adult man (Sean Penn) in heaven (which is represented as a modern day busy skyscraper and hinted at by the man’s lighting of a blue candle in remembrance (I think “blue” represents heaven and goodness)) who’s living out his father’s dream of seeing his sons achieving a successful and wealthy life, even though he’s doing it in heaven. The young man’s brother then tries to reconcile things with his family and father by viewing his and his family’s life, and the universe as a whole, from the start (we even see his father lighting a red candle at one point, assumedly to hint at the fact that the path his father is taking in life (with his family in tow) is leading him to hell and/or damnation) and trying to understand what went wrong, if it went wrong at all. By the end he realises his father was only trying to do right by his family and his aggressive outbursts were only because of his frustration and desire to protect them. Once the man feels reconciled he meets his family as they enter heaven (which is represented by a sun-drenched beach) and a happy, loving reunion takes place.
There, that’s it, that’s what I think.
To me it was never particularly clear which of the three boys dies at the start and it’s never explained how he dies, so I’m guessing it’s all open to interpretation. I think Sean Penn’s character dies when the family are at a lake swimming and the references he makes in heaven to his dead brother are misleading… I think he’s mourning the other members of his family (including his recently deceased 19 year old brother) who are, one by one, dying and joining him in heaven. So basically when the film begins we’re witnessing the second child death and when the grandmother attempts to console the mother by saying “you still have the other two” she’s actually referring to the last boy and the father (Brad Pitt).
Give it a go… you’ll either feel empty or fulfilled by the end.
I also recommend watching it alone without distraction.
3/5
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