FILMOGRAPHY

The Tree of Life is an American masterwork, despite its simplistic, cowardly embrace of Christian meaning as an answer to the inciting incident /question: “How do we justify the death of a child? What meaning is there in death and loss?” The easy answers offered still don’t negate the fact that the film renders the quite specific dynamic between a father/son and family in a physical visual manner that is, quite simply, pure cinema.
— Mike S. Ryan, “THE TREE OF LIFE: Film Print vs. Digital Print”

Mike Ryan’s Hammer to Nail piece is ostensibly about the superiority of film projection to digital projection vis-a-vis his multiple encounters with The Tree of Life, but, as indicated in the excerpt above, he goes on to address aspects of the film that are as far from technical as you can get. The breadth certainly doesn’t offend me — I value Hammer to Nail in part because editor Michael Tully allows his writers (among whom I count myself) a lot of elbow room. However, when I linked to Ryan’s piece on Twitter, I took exception to two of his most prominent assertions, inadvertently igniting a marvelous, revelatory exchange between Ryan Stewart and Eli Daughdrill. This showdown, which I’ve reconstituted and preserved below, is Twitter at its late-night best. (Please bear with the abbreviations and idiosyncrasies that are necessitated by the limitations of that fleeting form.) In an unprecedented move I’ve opened the comments on this post, as I find these matters highly discussable. So let’s rumble.

Alejandro: A) I don’t know how you can like Tree of Life without embracing its Christianity; B) It looks better shown digitally.

Ryan: That’s one of the dumber pieces I’ve read lately. A ‘masterwork’ and ‘cowardly’ at the same time?

Eli: art can’t b profound & problematic? art not same as rhetoric

Eli: ‘Masterwork’ might b hyperbolic, but the response is valid. I embraced the imagery but cringed at the intended significance.

Ryan: No one with a command of English would call something a “masterwork” then attack it as “cowardly.” High praise and

Ryan: withering criticism can’t be offered up in virtually the same breath.

Ryan: The whole piece is sub-intellectual. No one with even a glancing knowledge of art history would attack a work of art for

Ryan: for having a religious dimension. Most of history’s great art is grounded in religious devotion.

Eli: yes, because the Church often commissioned much of that work. in a secular culture, removed from the demands of such a patronage

Eli: it would seem Malick, as intelligent as he is, might b willing & free 2 define nature of existence beyond these antiquated ideals

Eli: therein lies the disappointment. but author’s intent does not define art. spectator can reject intended meaning & find their own

Eli: or create their own profound meaning.

Ryan: He’s a religious man. This is known. He goes to church regularly. You find Christianity antiquated? Fine, but attacking what

Ryan: is essentially the *stated* meaning and making up your own is just a flight of fancy. Grapple with what it is there.

Eli: so the pleasure of camp & unintended meaning is only reserved for “trashy” fare? that seems rhetorically & intellectually specious.

Ryan: Teaching philo at MIT isn’t ’secular cred’ enough to abate your high-handed dismissiveness of his true artistic intention?

Eli: not dismissive of him at all; I think he is brilliant. But when one makes something that attempts to define nature of existence

Eli: & uses Christianity/god as the final arbiter, I think it quite reasonable to protest, while not rejecting the work as a whole. &

Eli: this debate over intent has long been hashed out. The author of a work has no more claim to its meaning than any spectator.

Ryan: The piece in question doesn’t object politely, it accuses the filmmaker of being a philosophical simpleton and then

Ryan: assures the reader that he (the writer) can appreciate it on a level that the filmmaker himself would find dubious. It’s a

Ryan: childish and transparent attempt by the writer to bend everything to his will. Better to be J. Hoberman and say “it sucks.”

Eli: think we’re getting away from real issue here; to me, M. Ryan’s review is perfectly reasonable, because it’s not beholden to false

Eli: binary (the either/or of good/bad) that plagues most film criticism.

Eli: Can one be moved by an image, or a sequence, without seeing God in it, as Malick intends us to?

Eli: Can one appreciate Kanye West while detesting the Misogyny of his lyrics?

Ryan: No articulation of any such alternative reading is presented in the piece in question. It’s a straight dismissal of the

Ryan: film’s obvious philosophical underpinnings followed immediately by out-of-nowhere blanket praise. And no, I wouldn’t listen

Ryan: to anything I found to be distractingly misogynistic. There’s a lot of music in the world without that problem.

Eli: fair enough. I think we are ultimately talking about two different things. U are attacking the prose, ethos, & rhetoric, while I am

Eli: reacting to (& perhaps reading into) the response. This is where the rhetoric of criticism often falls short; it often fails in

Eli: capturing/explaining the equivocations & contradictions because criticism/rhetoric must b consistent & cogent. art often isn’t.