Cannes Film Festival: Brad Pitt shines in The Tree Of Life

There may, however, be doubts about The Tree of Life, a long episodic, openly philosophical and impressionistic portrait of a Midwestern family in the Fifties with Brad Pitt playing the harsh but loving paterfamilias and Sean Penn as his troubled eldest son in the present day, carrying all the hopes of his father and growing up in a world that seems to lack either purpose or faith. There are times when the film seems more like a religious experience than narrative cinema.

At one point we get almost 20 minutes of Malick looking at the wonders of the world and the mysteries of space, with no characters visible.

"There are two ways in life," the commentary intones, "the way of nature and the way of grace" and "no one who chooses the way of grace comes to a bad end". The final words are: "To the end of time, keep us guide us."

It is, of course, an extraordinarily beautiful movie like all those of a director who lays great store in imagery. We do not just see the characters but also clouds, trees, landscapes and plantlife in what is hopefully a new light. It is as if Malick is relating his story of a young boy growing up in Texas to the most general situations facing what has become a greedy and corrupt mankind.

Perhaps this story of a father who wants to do his best for his family but who makes them fear as well as love him has something to do with Malick's childhood. We'll never know because he won't tell us. But it is acted with terrific realism and almost grace by Pitt and Jessica Chastain as father and mother, and especially by Hunter McCracken as the boy who turns into Penn. The film sticks in the mind even if it tries the patience.

Malick wants to get everything in - the human experience. One wonders how the public will take it - there were boos as well as cheers at the end of the first screening. Malick will probably not mind. He is not after popularity but some kind of significance. Fortunately he is such a good film-maker that even when you doubt him, you cannot but admire him. Many people will recognise something of their own childhood in this Texan odyssey, which can never get enough of a mystical sense of the world at large as well as the minute bits and pieces of growing up.