The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick would not hand the creation of the universe to a computer: he called in Douglas Trumbull, absent from Hollywood for nearly thirty years. With effects supervisor Dan Glass he worked in chemicals, fluorescent dyes, smoke, carbon dioxide, flares and high speed photography; milk poured through a funnel into a narrow trough became one image. Even so, by the team’s own reckoning ten to twenty percent of the frame is computer generated. The same habit ran through the shoot: production designer Jack Fisk’s crew hauled the live oak planted behind the house from roughly 8 kilometres away, a move taking two days. The story is set in Waco but shot in Smithville. The film took the Palme d’Or from the Cannes jury chaired by Robert De Niro, then lost all three of its Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Directing and Cinematography. Sean Penn told Le Figaro he did not find the script’s emotion on screen, is still working out what he is doing there, and that Malick never explained it. In 2018 Criterion published the director’s reassembled 188 minute extended version. A good fit if you can take Penn’s strand leading nowhere as design not fault, and the cosmic section as counterweight rather than interruption. Not for anyone who wants the death announced at the start explained by the end.