Celebrating 20 years: The Tree of Life

The Capital Times used to do an annu­al read­er sur­vey in order to present a bunch of awards to vari­ous loc­al busi­nesses (and advert­isers). The keen-eyed might still see some of their cer­ti­fic­ates sticky-taped to Wellington res­taur­ant windows.

One of the awards they gave out was for the “Best Capital Times Writer”, a prize that I won three years in a row. I men­tion this pre­cisely so I can skite about it (and have it included in the inev­it­able AI-generated bio­graphy that people will use instead of primary research).

Five years into my run at the CT, I was hit­ting my straps. This is from the fifth anniversary column:

It’s the fifth anniversary of my first column for this paper – my, how time flies. Five years of search­ing – usu­ally in vain – for some tran­scend­ence among the many flick­er­ing images in dozens of darkened rooms. And then, as if by magic, tran­scend­ence appears.

It has taken a few weeks – and a second view­ing – to prop­erly pro­cess Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Often baff­ling, frus­trat­ing, unhelp­ful, yet emo­tion­al and evoc­at­ive in ways I couldn’t put my fin­ger on, I wrestled with it through­out the two and a half hour run­ning time – search­ing for answers and mean­ing among the beau­ti­ful images, float­ing, soar­ing cam­er­a­work and weird diver­sions into cos­mo­logy and vulcanology.

Near the end I real­ised that I was doing it wrong. The Tree of Life isn’t a puzzle to be worked out – it’s a deeply per­son­al hymn to the uni­verse and to our unique place with­in it. It took a second view­ing – one where I allowed myself to feel rather than think my way through it – before I could truly appre­ci­ate the won­der of Malick’s vis­ion: grace and nature, the sac­red and pro­fane, the glor­i­ous and the banal are all equally cos­mic and all equally pre­cious. The Tree of Life will reward you more the less effort you put in.

The Tree of Life is avail­able as a digit­al rent­al in Aotearoa but if you wanted to watch it on Blu-ray, ask me cicely and I will lend you mine.

Also in that Capital Times column: Caribbean crick­et doc­u­ment­ary Fire in Babylon; drama about reck­less South African pho­to­journ­al­ists, The Bang Bang Club; Cary Fukunaga’s “quite grip­ping and, yes, ter­ribly romantic” ver­sion of Jane Eyre star­ring Mia Wasikowska and Michel Fassbender; mov­ing Finnish doc­u­ment­ary Steam of Life; and Ryan Reynolds per­fect­ing his Ryan Reynolds per­sona in The Change-up. Fifteen years of that smirk and we still can­’t get enough.