Gimrack: An All-Inclusive History of Cinema from the Dawn of Man to the End of Time

As a deep believer in story, it's hard sometimes to appreciate when a film can become true art without being confined to the rigors and structures normally associated with narrative films. There is a very definite structure to film stories, we know it going into the theatre, while we're watching a film and afterward when we wipe our brow and smile that the hero made it out alright, not knowing if he would or not. The same basic story is being told again and again, and yet movies can tell such fresh stories. Rarely has a film ever come out where this structure is completely absent. And usually when a film deviates from the story structure mastered by screenwriters for a century, it's a disaster.

Here's a quick rundown of basic film story structure. A catalyst happens which changes the "normal world" the hero inhabits. The hero accepts or is thrown into the call of adventure, going into a "special world" where he is in over his head, up against a villain or challenge that seems impossible. Midway through the film he faces an ordeal, one in which his "mask" and sometimes the "mask" of the villain is revealed and it's an ordeal that pushes him further away from the "normal world." (An example of a mid-point sequence is in Sixth Sense when the kid says he sees dead people. The kid reveals himself, and Bruce Willis takes his mask off afterward saying he thinks the kid is crazy and he can't help him.) The hero is then plunged into greater and worse obstacles until he faces off in a climax. If he wins, the film is resolved, if he loses it is a tragedy and we are to learn from his mistakes.

Films fit into the structure almost every time. Sometimes they compress years, months or weeks down into two hours, just showing the important scenes and events that help us follow the story structure. Sometimes the film is over a day or weekend, and the plot points are very sequential. As close as films get to being art, they're still confined by the basic idea that the overall story structure is broken down into arcs, sequences, scenes and dialogue. To paint a painting you have to have paint and a surface. So it is assumed, to make a film you have to have these things to tell your story. But every once in a while a film comes along that transcends this.

The Tree of Life is Terrence Malick's latest film. It's an experimental film and an art film. I don't throw those titles around lightly. I hate experimental and art films. I like story and structure. I like when films have structure, it makes them better. I hate films that feel like they can do what they want with no regard to story, because they usually fail. But I believe that at it's greatest, a movie can be cinema, and cinema is art. Cinema is art where filmmaking is the medium. It can combine different elements of other art forms to form something more alive and real than any other art form, but still it's something you could never touch, as you could a statue. The art is in the image and in the spaces between the images. Just as a novel can have magnificent sentences and an intriguing story, but the art is found between the sentences. 

In normal films we feel the art in one shot to the next and one scene to the next. Sometimes films barely become like great literature, with interesting characters and a unique plot. But then they can go above that and reach what is actually art; something deeper than a creation that is something else. The "something else" is actually something else, something symbolic.
At times Tree of Life just seems so much like an art film that knows it's an art film and just is randomly showing you images and breaking the norms, and it's at these times when the audience is the most distant from the film. There's a reason films have structure, structure involves characters and growth and that's what ties us emotionally to the film. But then what else is film, but a dream. Dreams cut together images and actions seamlessly without room for nothing. Think to your dreams, they're never about nothing. Something is always happening and when they blend together, like "somehow it turned into a snowstorm but we were still at the mall shopping for the thing..." Dream merge together, there's no space between for when you would potentially travel from one part to another. Your mind is editing the boring stuff out, just as a film does. And then when you walk up, what do you remember the most usually? It's the feelings. The raw feelings and emotions. Sometimes they're odd, like being so scared of something, it's so dreadful. Again, like a film, it's how we feel during and after the movie that counts. Tree of Life plays like a dream, going from one thing to the next. It's also how memory works, we don't always remember things in exact order with every detail. We just remember how it felt and what the interesting stuff was.
And that's what makes the film so interesting! It's playing like what the core and heart of what film is....a dream. Like memories, it's just the important stuff and it's aim to get right to the raw feelings. The film primarily is just what Sean Penn remembers and feels from his childhood. The scenes are little glimpses and snapshots, edited together to show what he remembers, and ultimately what he learned from his parents at that age; grace and nature. The film strips every other wasted piece of flesh from cinema, that we're left with the bare bare, nakedly on display to show the audience what the real core of filmmaking is. We're so inclined to watching films heavily clothed in lots of special effects and action told in sequential order, that's what usually makes films beautiful. This film bares it all though, warts and fat. It's tough to watch,  but it's usually tough to look at something totally naked.