Malick’s The Tree of Life draws deeply from Augustine’s Confessions. Jack’s spiritual crisis and resultant desire to get back to where his mother and brother are mirrors Augustine’s desire to get back to where his mother was – a state of grace. To imagine a reconciled future in the face of sin and suffering, Jack must do a deep dive into his vast storehouse of memories. Malick understands how Augustine on memory is movie material par excellence: memories are archived images derived from sensory experience. But this film is about humanity’s collective memory, too. We know something is wrong and somehow we remember that it shouldn’t be this way. The Tree of Life stands at the beginning, ignored when we instead partook of that which had not been given (the way of nature). But it’s there in Revelation, too, when we’ll finally understand all that’s happened, all things. For now, Malick’s film pictures how memory’s role might not only be confessional but also sacramental. When Jack smiles in the end of the film, it’s like Augustine is speaking to him in voiceover: “It’s from love of your love that I make recollection.”
—Nick Olson