The Tree of Life (2011)

An amazing film directed by Terence Malick. On one level it’s a story of an American family and how they deal with a bereavement. But the film is also designed as a work of art, constructed to operate on multiple levels of symbolism and philosophical exploration. 

Early on it detours into a history of life on Earth (perhaps influenced by 2001), showing dinosaurs and the meteorite that forced their extinction. It then returns to the story of the family. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain play the parents of three boys, while Sean Penn plays one of those boys as an adult in the present day and struggling to come to terms with his past. 

There are so many impressionistic elements that you’re often unsure what to think and what, if anything, is actually happening in narrative terms. That can be frustrating if you are expecting anything close to a regular drama. Indeed, the dinosaur segment borders on the ludicrous. 

If the job of the film is to take you on an emotional journey, then it’s too muddled to succeed. But if you embrace the sheer ambition of the project – in terms of its visuals, music, editing techniques and production – it’s unlike anything else you will see.