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The Tree of Life: Alternative Forms of Structure

By Jacob Krueger

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SPOILER ALERT: You may want to come back to this article after you have seen The Tree of Life. 

Often, as writers, we get so hung up on linear, narrative structure that we forget that there are completely different forms of screenplay structure that can be equally moving and powerful. So for today’s podcast we’re going to take a blast to the past, and look at a film that seems to diverge in almost every way from the traditional forms of structure we’ve been talking about on this podcast: Terence Malick’s, The Tree of Life.

What makes The Tree of Life so extraordinary is the effortless way it weaves traditional linear storytelling—the story of the family– with long meditative sequences of breathtaking images of the vast beauty and wanton destructiveness of the universe. But don’t let Malick fool you, underneath the melodic rambling of The Tree of Life is a rock solid structure, which provides the drum beat for the entire film.

In fact, if you compare The Tree of Life to Terence Malick’s more recent, and significantly less successful film, To The Wonder, you can see the difference between a film composed entirely of beautiful images without a sense of underlying structure, and one composed with a structure underneath them.

And that’s a valuable lesson, whether you’re writing an art film, like The Tree of Life, or are simply in an early draft of a more linear story, when you’re still trying to find the thread to tie together all your moments of visual inspiration.

The Fundamental Question

Despite all its jumping back and forth in time, its shifting perspectives, its God’s eye view of the universe, its whispering voiceovers, its dinosaur sequences and its meditative imagery washing over us like ocean waves, at the fundamental structural level, The Tree of Life follows the story of Sean Penn’s character, Jack, as he searches both past and present for the answer an unanswerable question:

“Why should I be good, if you’re not?”

On the spiritual level, Jack is asking this question of God, as he tries to reconcile the vastness, wonder, and beauty of the universe with the senseless death of his brother: the problem of a world where death is always present, even in the most idyllic memories of his early childhood.

On the physical level, Jack is asking the same question of his loving but abusive father, played by Brad Pitt, whose often misguided love both protects Jack and is slowly destroying him.

As young Jack’s adoration for his father and desire to “be good” devolves into disappointment and hatred, he is forced to reconcile not only the dual sides of his father’s nature, but also the dual sides of his own– wrestling with a profound and unanswerable question of how to be good in a world where the love of both God and father seem to shift inexplicably from beauty to violence.

Great Movies Are Built Around Big Questions

It’s easy, as writers, to think it’s our job to tell the audience what to think or feel.  But usually our best work comes not from answers but from questions. And these are often questions that are too big to answer. What’s wonderful about building a movie around a question to which you truly don’t know the answer is that it forces you, as a writer, to take a journey as profound as that of your characters.

Searching for a deeper understanding of the world is what writing is all about. And that’s not limited to experimental films like The Tree of Life. Woody Allen’s comedy Midnight in Paris is built around a profound question “Wo...