Berry, Malick, and the Power of Love

Yesterday I went to see The Tree of Life for the second time. This viewing was a bit less overwhelming (last time I had watched two of Malick's films that day in preparation), but I was still a bit shaken after it. I also saw the film through a bit of a different lens this time, as I had just read Wendell Berry's Hannah Coulter and one of his books of poetry, Leavings. 


Both Coulter and Life are stories told through vignettes, which, together, sketch the life of a family. They tell the story of a family that is held together by love, but eventually, when the kids grow old, dissolves into the city of "a better place" as Berry puts it. Both also tell the story of the awesome power of nature - its beauty and power to heal. 


Malick takes the idea of nature in a bit of a different direction than Berry. He juxtaposes the destructive power of nature, its "war with itself, and need to be pleased," with the ever domineering father figure, played to perfection by Brad Pitt. Even with this picture of nature, magnified by countless images of nature combatting itself, there still is a feeling of immense awe at the beauty and harmony of nature. This also comes from one of Malick's trademarks of filmmaking, which is that he rarely if ever shoots any of his films inside, and he likes to use the natural sounds of the environment as much as possible in his scenes. This graceful side of nature is found in the mother's character, played by the wonderful "newcomer"Jessica Chastain. In the words of her character, "Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries." And later she says in a voice over, as beautiful images of nature are being shown, "Love. Wonder. Unless you love, your life will flash by." So Malick's answer to brutality is found also in nature.


For Berry, in Hannah Coulter, this brutality is found in the trenches of war. He sees war as a thing alien to nature, in which finds only peace and solace. In the words of Hannah, the novel's narrator, "The stream and the woods don't care if you love them. The place doesn't care if you love it. But for your own sake you had better love it. For the sake of all else you love, you had better love it."


While Berry is an outspoken Christian, Malick is not much of an outspoken anything. However, I do think it is somewhat safe to view him as such (it would at least seem so from all of his films). Berry often times (in the two books I have read) takes the side of nature, and points to man as a fallen creature. Malick, on the other hand, is willing to point to nature as having been effected by the fall just as man has (and in seemingly similar ways). Both do also find their answer in nature, though. For both artists it is the grace and love of and from nature that heals all wounds.