Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life begins with a biblical quote, projected on screen, in which God chastises a doubting Job for questioning the nature of divine intervention in human existence. It's a rhetorical question answered in the film by stunning sequences about the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang, the formation of the earth), the emergence of life (from single-cell protozoa to dinosaurs), and the future death of the sun and the solar system. Such grand illustrations of macro-level celestial compositions are followed by micro-level explorations into the human family, through the lives of a family of five living in Texas in the 1950s.
It's here that the story introduces a new Job in the shape of Jack O'Brien (played by Hunter McCracken), the clan's 11-year-old eldest son who is frequently berated by his disciplinarian father (Brad Pitt) for not being tough enough to thrive. 'The world lives by trickery,' O'Brien tells his three sons, 'and if you want to succeed you can't be too good.'
When Jack witnesses the drowning of a friend - his father fails to resuscitate the child - the boy's moral compass collapses, leading him to question what goodness is worth in a brutal world.
The Tree of Life is driven by Jack's confusion, a predicament which will go on to haunt the boy throughout his life. Before the film launches into those years of childhood hopes and fears, viewers see the adult Jack (Sean Penn), now an architect who works and lives in glass-and-steel edifices in a modern, unnamed city (the scenes were shot in Houston, which hosts Nasa's headquarters). He reminisces about those young, formative years when he was split between opting for 'nature' or 'grace' - the former represented by his father's Protestant work ethic and an aggressive pursuit of worldly fulfilment, and the latter embodied in the love and compassion of his mother (Jessica Chastain).
Jack's confusion about decency and destiny - or decency in destiny - is a recurrent issue in Malick's oeuvre, especially in the two films he made before The Tree of Life. In the 1998 film The Thin Red Line - which documents the US assault on the Japanese-held Pacific island of Guadalcanal during the second world war - military officers are forced to contemplate the consequences of their desire to fulfil earthly ambitions, while a more free-thinking soldier (played by Jim Caviezel) reflects on the tranquil existence of the Melanesian tribe he lived with while going AWOL.
Nine years later, Malick revisited the conundrum with The New World, a story set in Virginia in the early 17th century, when British military captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) is split between his colonial duties and his sympathy for the communities he encounters.
The Tree of Life is certainly as philosophical and metaphorical as The Thin Red Line and The New World. But it combines the more ethereal nature of Malick's recent outings with the social commentary which bubbled under his first two films. Malick's 1973 debut, Badlands, uses a story about a pair of young renegades to explore the darker psychological traits of post-war America.