Critics say that Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is incomprehensible in its juxtaposition of the Big-Bang and primeval myth with a 1950s/60s family drama.
The O’Brien family experiences a renching loss, despite their confidence that those who live by grace (= self-sacrifice) are safe. In the face of loss, the most natural thing in the world is to raise the question of the universe: What’s this all about? What do we mean to Him? What’s the use of living in grace, if we all die anyway, the best earlier than others?
The film begins with a question from the book of Job, and the whole film is a meditation on the Lord’s words, “Where were you . . . ?”
The incomprehension is incomprehensible.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Restoring Man at Notre Dame
It is fascinating to be an outsider on the inside of an institution going through times of…
Deliver Us from Evil
In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…
Natural Law Needs Revelation
Natural law theory teaches that God embedded a teleological moral order in the world, such that things…
