The Thousands

At many points in Terrence Malick’s sprawling, poetic drama, I felt overcome by its visual splendour and dizzying ambition. But I wished it were over about fifteen minutes before it was. Malick evokes a God who’s everywhere and nowhere: embedded in life’s evolution, evident in the tiniest gestures and evanescent moments, yet tantalisingly aloof, offering no succour for human suffering. In its immersive tracking shots, its enigmatic, grandiose imagery and its excellent use of classical music, The Tree of Life recalls 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Yet it largely follows a family in 1950s Waco, Texas. Mrs O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) teaches her three sons wonder and mercy; their father (Brad Pitt) strives to instil worldly discipline and resilience. Eldest son Jack (as a child, Hunter McCracken) bears the brunt of his dad’s rages. I enjoyed Malick’s metaphor of architecture as alienation. Pitt fumes in industrial plants and neoclassical courthouses; nature-sprite Chastain wilts in a midcentury modern pad, but takes solace in the forest; adult Jack (Sean Penn) broods in a split-level abode and a sleek skyscraper. The film reaches its apotheosis on a beach, recalling both baptism and life’s emergence from the seas. Maybe it’s heaven… or Jack finally finding peace.