How does son die in tree of life

I have now seen it 3 times, each time bringing greater satisfaction and more appreciation of its psychological dimensions. Movies, Greenaway laments, have become the art form of the Philistines. If Greenaway correctly diagnosed the aesthetic crisis of modern film, The Tree of Life is the solution. Malick seems to intend that visual images dominate the first viewing experience-the mind has time to register the cascade of images but not to comprehend, to reflect, or to anticipate.

The marketing describes the construction of the film as impressionistic. This might suggest that one impression leads to the next, a sort of free association. But there is nothing free in the associations: every link has been chosen carefully.

Malick spent 30 years thinking about this film. And after shooting footage, he devoted another 3 years to editing; 5 co-editors are acknowledged in the credits. They seem to have invented a poetic rhythm, a visual music, which has more in common with a symphony than a novel and, indeed, the music lifts your soul and sends chills down your spine. The images carry the creative trajectory. Then before we can be certain of our psychological bearings, Malick takes us from the human to the cosmic and nothing less than a depiction of the creation of the universe and the evolution of life on earth.

Having shown us our insignificance, suddenly the director brings us back to psychology and a troubled boy coming of age in the traditional family where father rules, mother loves, and Oedipus stirs. The film ends with a vision of the afterlife. Many critics describe The Tree of Life as a philosophical exploration of the meaning of life.

In fact, Malick is one of a surprising number of contemporary filmmakers who began in philosophy. He taught and translated Heidegger before deciding he was not an academic. The traditional understanding of those lines suggests the humbling of Job, a good man put to a test of faith by a compassionless God. On the one hand, he audaciously depicts creation-we are there when all the sons of God shout for joy. On the other, he shows us a father, a mother, and their 3 sons, who, like all humanity, inevitably endure profound humbling.

This is not a philosophical project. That mother and the world Malick creates for us belong neither to everyday reality nor to the realm of dreams. The Tree of Life gives us the spiritual world in which God is present.

The mother Jessica Chastain walks into the woods, and the trees become a cathedral. Throughout the film, mother and son whisper to God in voiceovers. His brother was a creative, sensitive guitar player who committed suicide at about 19 or The movie often shows a young boy with significant burns on the side of his head, and Terrence Malick's other brother was also burned.

There is also a suggestion of a noose in the beginning of the movie. Because of the evidence, I think it is reasonable to assume that R. In the early days of the Vietnam War death notifications became so commonplace, and the military so unprepared for the great numbers of death notices that they were delivered by telegram. The practice was later changed and representatives of the deceased military service would personally deliver the death notification.

The telegram delivery is a pivotal scene because it shows how "wrong" a life is that simply focuses on nature and ignores grace. What could be worse than a strangers handing a note to a mother to read alone that her 20 year-old son was now dead. Similarly, the grandmother stating to the grieving mother, "people die and life must go on" is so devoid of grace that we see ignoring the grace aspect of life, however inconvenient, will even override nature.

This is reinforced by the dying dinosaur scene when the dinosaur leaves the injured dinosaur without killing it. Grace has its proper place in nature. To be honest, I gained the impression from the film that R. Sign up to join this community.

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How does the son R. Ask Question. Asked 9 years, 11 months ago. Active 3 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 31k times. Improve this question. The beach everyone is standing on in the film's closing moments doesn't have a collapsed Statue of Liberty waiting at the end of it.

Jessica Chastain's Mrs. O'Brien does not turn out to have been one of those dinosaurs all along. So it's probably best not to think of the closing sequence as strictly the conclusion of a storyline, either that of Jack O'Brien played as an adult by Sean Penn or his family. In fact, the film will likely defeat you if you do, since when Jack meets up with his parents on a wind-swept beach they look as they did in his childhood, with his brothers also as children even though he remains roughly Sean Penn-aged.

The location exists out of time in more than one way; there's a shot of Chastain holding the wrinkled hand of some unseen elderly person up to her lips, but when she lowers the hand it seems to be young again. The beach is crowded with people outside of the O'Brien family, and all of them seem to be wearing the sort of period clothing Mr. O'Brien wore during Jack's childhood and have on in this scene.

Jack is the one who looks out of place, still in his modern suit. Why a beach? Other than the fact that the wind and the light make it a heck of a setting for Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to produce the film's stunning visuals , the shoreline could be seen as representing some liminal place, the meeting of the earth, the water, and the heavens, all of which have had their place in Malick's imagery throughout the course of the film.

In the film, Jack appears to have been journeying to this place for a long time, which along with the other clues, suggests that it's some kind of afterlife, or perhaps the border between life and death.