Script Overview: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (May 2011)
Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life has easily been my most anticipated movie of the year. You can imagine my excitement when I was able to get my hands on the script of the film a couple weeks ago and it certainly did not disappoint. First thing first, a couple of warnings before we start talking about the script. Obviously, there might be some slight spoilers about the movie as we describe its broader outline. Also, the script has most likely been rewritten several times since our version is a draft dated June 2007. Knowing how meticulous Malick is in the editing room (the movie is still in post-production), the film will certainly look somewhat different from what we are about to describe.
Reading the script, you can’t help but recognize Terrence Malick’s trademarks and quirks that have defined him as a filmmaker, all the little things that only he can pull off successfully in a film. However, in many ways, The Tree of Life is by far Malick’s most artsy, ambitious and challenging work-to-date. The script is, as you would imagine, extremely descriptive and reads almost like a novel, rather than your standard one-page-a-minute movie script.
The story begins in 1956 and revolves around a Waco, Texas family with three sons: eleven-year-old Jack (our main character), R.L., 9, and Steve, 6. Brad Pitt plays the unnamed father while Jessica Chastain plays the unnamed mother. At first, everything seems idyllic as the parents happily watch their young children play in the backyard. Fast forward twelve years and we witness the family mourning the death of their middle son R.L. with the mother particularly hit hard. In that peculiar novelistic style that is Malick’s, Jessica Chastain doesn’t have any dialogue here but the script is extremely descriptive in the emotions she needs to convey silently with the help of poetic visuals.
Suddenly, we fast forward to a grown-up and depressed Jack (now played by Sean Penn) living in a contemporary unnamed city. We see the world through his eyes, and the entire universe seems to commiserate in his despair. Malick, who has always been fascinated with nature and shot all his films in rural or completely natural settings, describes the city as follow:
“The buildings hem him around like the trees of a wild forest. A false nature; a universe of death. A sightless world, roofed over, shut off from things above. Here one must stoop to walk. A world that would exclude the transcendent, that says: I am, and there is nothing else. A world without love.”
As Jack walks through the city, he sees a tree at the edge of the city. He makes his way to it and touches it. What follows is most likely going to be the most visually stunning and talked about film sequence of the year. This time, we flash back to the beginning of the universe. We watch as “the chaos of nothingness” gives way to the formation of galaxies, stars and new worlds. We witness the birth of the Earth, first as a bulb of hot gas, progressively cooling to “a mighty inferno of magma and pitch”.
“The sky fills with steam. Rains fall for millennia, cooling the surface by degrees. For ages, there is no clear day of sun, no night of stars; only thunder and lightning. But by and by the mists drift off, the cloud part and the first land appears, a low island of meteoritic rubble and stark volcanic stone”
Life on Earth begins tentatively from single-cell bacteria to multicellular organism, from worms and amphibians to the mighty dinosaurs and our modern mammals including, yes, humans. We see in quick succession how Man moved from “nomadic savagery” to modern civilization. The descriptions are absolutely stunning to read, having a poetic quality to them while remaining true to scientific facts. It will be truly fascinating to see how Malick can make this sequence work from a visual and visceral standpoint.
This all leads up to Jack as an embryo in his mother’s womb, his idyllic early childhood completely sheltered from the external world. We learn about his relationships with his saintly and loving mother–a theme present throughout the movie– and ambiguous father, as well as his connection with his younger brothers. The film comes full circle to the beginning of the film in 1956 Waco, Texas with a shot of an oak tree standing in the O’Briens’ backyard. This constitutes the first 25 pages of the script.
The main section of The Tree of Life (about 100 pages) focuses on the relationship between Jack and his father. Like many of Malick’s films, it is not plot-driven. Rather, little moments build upon each other, often highly descriptive yet with little dialogue. I have extremely high hopes that this may be Brad Pitt’s best role to date. He plays the mercurial paternal figure who often treats his boys with an authoritarian fist thanks to his passive-aggressive way of interacting with his children:
“He has the unshakable belief that he must approve or modify everything the children do. He is full of petty and exasperating cautions. Watch! Step there. Open the door!”
Far from being some archetypal figure, he is also capable of being a loving father, often showcasing both extremes in the same scene. The relationship between Jack and his father could be described as tense and Jack is a bit of a rebel, causing him to show his darker side much to the chagrin of his mother. Jessica Chastain portrays a mother with saintly, nearly transcendent qualities of maternal love. The boys clearly love her as much as she loves them and Jack’s rebellion against his father stems in part because he makes his wife unhappy.
The third and final part of the film fast-forwards to the end of the Earth and Sun. By then, mankind has moved on to new worlds yet unknown. Eventually, we watch the end of the universe itself trillions of years from now. Yet, according to Malick, not all is over as he visualizes a world according to the Multiverse theory (a.k.a. parallel universes)
“Though that all that lives is doomed to die, something yet remains. Though even our universe is not eternal, there yet is that which is.”
I will leave the ending untouched except to say that we come back to adult Jack standing by the tree of life at the edge of the city and some powerful imagery ensues as we become aware of the surroundings. What is the meaning of all this metaphysical abstraction? I am still wrapping my head around this script and don’t pretend to understand more than a fraction of Malick’s intentions. However, Malick sees parallels between a person’s life and the universe as a whole. This process of birth, aging and death exists and is repeated within every entity in the universe, from the tiniest bacteria to distant stars and galaxies.
An incredibly rich and fascinating script that does nothing to quell our excitement for the movie’s release later this year. It remains to be seen how Malick will be able to convey the powerful and transcendent ideas in the script through visuals only but this has always been his forte and I’m sure he will not rest until he is fully satisfied with the final product.
Script rating: A
What do you think about The Tree of Life‘s script? Does it feel overly artsy or metaphysical? Are you more interested in seeing it now? Less likely? Let it be known in the comments!
27 Comments
I know next to nothing about the plot of the movie and I intend to keep it that way. I’ll avoid the trailers and try my best to dodge post like this. I’m not sure if it will matter much because, like you said, Malick has probably revised this film by now and it could be something completely different than what’s on the page.
I totally understand and probably would do the same for the vast majority of movies which are much less ambitious and lush with extra-meaning that his movies. However, as I told you on Tweeter, Malick’s movie are different because they aren’t really plot-driven or based on twist and turns (things that can be spoiled easily and ruin the movie experience). It’s the imagery and meaning behind how he shoots his movie that gives his film meaning and significance.
I’m sure we will have some great conversation down the road as far as this movie is concerned
True. It’s not the kind of movie where the plot can really be spoiled for you, but I still like going into his films knowing nothing even if I can quickly guess how it’s all going to end in the opening moments.
I included this in my Top 10 movies to be excited about. Thanks for the great outline here — no spoilers at all. Sounds like his kind of stuff and I can’t wait for it to finally be released!
I’m trying to stay neutral, the wait has been too long for me to get my hopes up at a new release date. It sounds beautiful, though.
Sounds interesting. This will be a movie I’m excited about more for the filmmaker than for the cast, kinda like Inception.
Hi Castor, thanks so much for tweeting! (I have yet to get twitter…) I have over 200 votes already! Please keep voting
http://madmencastingcall.amctv.com/browse/detail/1AJCF7
I stopped reading because of the spoiler warning, Castor. Did you mention how you got the script?
Someone sent it to us
Could you be more cryptic?
Yeah sorry Kai, when we get scripts sent to us we kinda can’t reveal our secrets less we lose our connections. Bummer I know.
I figured… I have friends at Universal and a couple of the smaller production companies and everything they say is off the record… on the DL… and very Hush Hush.
And I just realized saying stuff like that is only cool in the movie blogging world… haha.
Yeah when you say it in other places it sounds kind of odd or creepy but not for movie people.
I have connections though with CBS/Boll KG (hence my love of Uwe Boll) and one now ex member of Universal but if I ever released their names I would get squashed like a bug.
19 yr old blogger vs billion dollar company?
Company wins
Flawless Victory.
Mortal Kombat… well played!
I’m an ADHD child of the 90s. Mortal Kombat was a huge part of my childhood. But I played it the arcades…which are now nonexistent…sigh
I have friends who are building the Green Lantern’s ship for the movie… I have pics of the mold, blue-print, finished product… and I can’t post any of it yet. It sucks!
That’s awesome man. I’m looking forward to the Green Lantern and Transformers 3.
Wait … do you link to the script in the post somewhere???
A friend of mine has “The Social Network” script and I’m trying to get my hands on that!!
You people make me sick. This script leak is ILLEGAL and you should all go to hell for posting it and reading it. Just because you failed in life doesn’t mean you should ruin others work by posting something that isn’t suppose to be. Its not their fault that you are failed writers yourselves.
Hello Bruce,
I assume you are the one who gave a very warm welcome on IMDb and for free speech sake, I am publishing your comment despite the questionable tone you are taking on your very first comment here.
Where do you see us posting the script? Do you see a download link anywhere? Do you see me spreading it all over the internet? I understand that you do not want to read and learn anything about the movie until it comes out and there is nothing wrong with that. If you were to read the post above, you would see that it is spoiler free and contains only a few quotes from the script. Finally, I would be probably a failed writer… if I had any intention of becoming one
Yeah this sounds like 90% of the comments I got for when I posted the Paul script. I mean I have these connections and they get me interviews ect but it was really nice of her to send me scripts. Will I accept them in the future? Probably not. Most people gave me a lot of crap for posting the script but it wasn’t the script just a review of what I thought of the script. I offered it for download for like an hour so my friend could read it but then I immediately took it down. I’m not stepping on the toes of others. And neither are you.
But what can you? Freedom of speech.
I would copy/paste you his warm welcome on IMDb but that would mean taking him off the ignore list where he immediately went after he first responded. Sometimes, you learn all that needs to be known about an individual within 3 seconds
Aint that the truth. You can please some of the people some of the time but not everyone all the time.
Holy Crap, am I excited!!! The film looks just a total mind-bender, that will probably feature some more beautiful images as usual. I can’t wait for this, and I want to see what Pitt and Penn can do, since this looks like their most challenging roles to date.
Hi Castor. Great find by the way. I had just seen the bootleg trailer for “The Tree of Life” and just skimmed through what was read. I’m likely to forget once the film comes out. After hearing the audio commentary for “Days of Heaven” in its Criterion DVD. We should note that whatever was written on the page will be extremely different to what Malick will do with the final cut of the film. I recalled that “Days of Heaven” originally had loads of dialogue in its original script treatment. Then during production, Malick had everyone just improvise the whole thing. Then on post-production, he stripped down a lot of the dialogue and let Linda Manz do the voice-over narration. Interesting process that will definitely work. I’ll definitely keep reading your stuff.
Malick is known for editing his movies for years on end so you are absolutely right that the movie will most likely look nothing like this version of the script. Glad you enjoyed this post Steven and thanks for dropping by!
Where can I read the script? You ask our opinion on it as if we already know where to get ahold of it — I can’t find it anywhere
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