An adult man named Jack remembers his 1950s Texas childhood. He recalls his gentle mother, his severe father and the loss that divided their family. The film expands those memories into a 20-minute meditation on the origin of the universe. This is Terrence Malick's most ambitious film. It asks what one person's grief means against 4 billion years of life.
The Tree of Life is a 2011 drama film directed by Terrence Malick. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (1 editing, 2 cinematography and 2 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Wings of Desire uses several of the same techniques.
Cutting to an image from outside the story's time and place, such as a memory, fantasy or symbol. It shows what a character feels or comments on the scene.
How this film uses it
The cosmic sequence is 20 minutes of nebulae, volcanoes, cellular life and dinosaurs, dropped into a 1950s family drama. Malick uses it mainly as context, and spectacle comes second. The human grief at the center of the film is real and tiny at the same time.
Where to see it
The creation sequence. After Mrs. O'Brien asks God why R.L. had to die, the film moves through the birth of the universe and the evolution of life before it returns to the Texas family. Scale itself becomes the subject of the film.
Placing the camera where a character's eyes are, or shooting the scene the way that character experiences it. You see and feel things from inside their head.
How this film uses it
Emmanuel Lubezki films the childhood sequences from a child's eye level. Low angles look up at parents, at trees and at the sky. The camera takes on a child's physical relationship to the world. Adults are huge, light comes from above and the ground is close. That is, childhood becomes a specific physical state and stops being a sentimental idea.
Where to see it
The childhood backyard sequences. The camera sits at child height, so the parents' bodies are enormous and only partly in view. You see the world from the height where the adult's memories were formed.
Having a narrator tell the story from some point after it happened. The events feel like memory, and you sense early on that something will be lost.
How this film uses it
Jack's adult voiceover speaks to God, his mother and his dead brother in fragments. It asks questions more than it tells the story. The voice looking back is still living inside the questions of the past. Malick's film suggests that grief does not end. It simply becomes the way an adult sees everything.
Where to see it
Young Jack's voiceover in the middle of the childhood section: 'Mother. Father. Always you wrestle inside me. Always you will.' The boy's words tell you that the past will stay present for the adult.
Shooting with a handheld camera so the frame shakes and moves with the action. This documentary-style look, called cinema vérité, puts you uncomfortably close to the character.
How this film uses it
Lubezki's handheld work in the Texas sequences captures the physical reality of childhood. The camera moves with the children through grass, water and summer air. Its unsteadiness has the raw, sensory feel of memory as it happens. That is fairly different from the tidy way memory looks when you think back on it. The handheld style makes remembering a physical act.
Where to see it
The summer sequences in the backyard. The camera moves with the children through grass and light. The handheld movement gives you memory as a physical sensation more than a visual record.
Starting the film by showing or telling you how it ends, such as the main character's death or defeat. The rest of the story then explains how things got there.
How this film uses it
The film opens with a voiceover about 2 ways through life, the way of nature and the way of grace. This comes before a single character or event is introduced. The opening states the film's whole idea up front. Everything that follows illustrates it. The cosmic sequence and the family drama are both examples of the same question asked at different scales.
Where to see it
The opening voiceover about nature and grace. The film lays out its whole philosophy before the story begins. It prepares you for a film that will spend 2 hours earning these words.
Questions
The Tree of Life: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does The Tree of Life use?
CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in The Tree of Life (2011): Non-Diegetic Insert, Subjective Camera, Retrospective Voiceover, Handheld Cinema Vérité and Proleptic Opening.
Who directed The Tree of Life?
Terrence Malick directed The Tree of Life, released in 2011. CineCode also covers The Thin Red Line (1998).
What films are similar to The Tree of Life?
Films that share techniques with The Tree of Life include Wings of Desire (1987), Aftersun (2022), Trainspotting (1996), Y Tu Mamá También (2001).
