As part of my study of aesthetics, I started to ask myself: is it enough for art to be beautiful, and what is beauty, anyway? Does a masterwork have to be beautiful? Does genius transcend beauty? I didn’t come to any conclusions, but I found that asking the questions were enough. I don’t think beauty is a prerequisite when it comes to great works of art, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it exists in so many of them. Beauty is subjective, anyway. Or so we are lead to believe.

Terrence Malick’s The New World is one of my favourite films (of allll tiiiiiiime). If I had to compile a top 5 it would be in there. If I had to compile a top 3 it would still be in there. I think it would probably still be in my Top 2, alongside Volver, but it would depend on how recently I’d seen Black Narcissus. Knowing this, and feeling this way about Terrence Malick’s previous film, I was expecting to be blown away, or to at least have all of my sensory glands/receptors frayed and/or caressed hypnotically by The Tree of Life. I really wasn’t disappointed. It is a film so beautiful, I thought my heart would stop. I couldn’t believe I’d ever felt downtrodden or depressed. I couldn’t believe I’d ever questioned human beings’ innate ability to love or be good. I felt bowled over, and I was genuinely never bored. The film must have been a good 3 hours long, but I would have happily watched it for longer and thought angrily “WAS THAT IT?” at the end. I could have endured more and I wanted to. It never tried my patience.

There were niggles, however. I wasn’t happy with the ending, which felt like a slightly laboured mobile phone advert about connectivity and possibilityzzzzzz. I felt occasionally as if I were privy to a film about white people’s problems. White, straight people’s problems (athough that was a very minor niggle, and I’m not suggesting that films shouldn’t be made on the subject). I wanted to know more about the wife, as I felt she was pushed away from the fore in what was, essentially, a man’s movie. The camerawork sometimes felt excessive. I wanted to see more dinosaurs. I wanted to be carried into teenagehood and see more of the boys’ lives unfold.

But these thoughts were tiny ants floating in a sea of admiration for the work - like the tiny meteorite that seems to drop gently into the side of Our Fayre Planet but sends vast tidal shockwaves around the entire globe, obliterating life (now that was laboured - Simile Police). I marvelled at Malick’s ability to seemingly effortlessly recreate the alternate wonder, majesty and horror of ordinary childhood and family life, contrasting the shameless joy of outdoor play with the heartbreaking terror of your parents arguing or the sinister and sensuous twin discoveries of sex and violence. The music was also so well chosen and well crafted that I wanted to burst into song spontaneously and cry tears of joy and sorrow at the same time.

I think that sufficiently explains my experience of the movie.

Essentially it is a film that doesn’t offer any explanations, reveal any motives or proclaim anything profound, it simply observes. The scope, however, of what it observes is so vast and overwhelming, that it ends up saying something profound by default. I had been warned that it was a deeply Christian and evangelical piece. But in the end I didn’t feel that. I felt it was a film about people who were religious, but ultimately, the film was not in awe of God, but in awe of Nature. At the start, Jessica Chastain’s character breathlessly intones that there are two ways: The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace, and nothing bad will ever happen to those who follow the Way of Grace. Her family do their best to take this path but bad things happen anyway, and they seem to suffer a crisis of faith as a result. I’m not sure I believe that nature even exists (I think it is socially constructed), but I HAVE to believe in it. In that sense, it is my god and religion and the film seemed to be wrought from similar ideas. I’m sure other people felt differently, but luckily, like the beauty that inhabited every frame of the film, that is also in the eye of the beholder.