"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
-Job 38:4,7
Art.
That's truly what this film is. Flawed, beautiful, transcendent...
You must give credit to what Terrence Malick has accomplished with this film and with the grandness of scale that he's reaching for here. Only his fifth film in the last 38 years, he has given us a work of art which makes us think long and hard about faith, evolution, science and spirituality.
Equal parts of small town family story combined with thought provoking imagery, music, and voiceover of how and why mankind exists, you can't walk out of this film without a strong feeling one way or the other. One way if you are a believer in something greater than us and quite another if you are not...
Set in a small Texas town in the 1950's, a father (Brad Pitt, representing nature) and mother (Jessica Chastain, representing grace) raise their three children in what can be considered a time of innocence, of Eden. Jack, the eldest (who we sometimes see in middle age represented by Sean Penn in a more current time) represents some of the struggles evident in family life and in growing up.
Both epic in the grand issues it's addressing and minute in the family dramas that we can all relate to, Malick has given us a film that is just short of greatness.
I will leave you with some transcendent words of wisdom from some of the mom's voiceover:
There are two ways through life, the way of nature and the way of grace... The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by... Nature only wants to please itself... It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. No one who loves the way of grace every comes to a bad end... Help each other. Love everyone. Every leaf. Every ray of light. Forgive.
