Page - 170 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

Augustine says in his Confessions, “abandon the higher and supreme goods … that is … God, [God’s] truth, and [God’s] law” in pursuit of inferior goods, which no doubt have their delights but “are not comparable to … God”, is a mark of humans’ sinful nature.6 Better to check one’s commitment to earthly goods against a more thoroughgoing commitment to God, the summum bonum. Envi- ronmentalists have the opposite concern. Environmentalists worry Christians’ faith commitments distract from addressing today’s most pressing ecological problems. When one good is enshrined above all, other goods worthy of moral consideration inevitably get curtailed – or so secular environmentalist thinking tends to go. All this plays out in the distrust we see between environmentalists and evan- gelicals today. Many Christians have come to regard environmentalists’ political efforts on issues like climate change with suspicion, some going so far as to adopt a line of argument famously articulated by the novelist Michael Crichton, who, in 2003, criticized environmentalism as a kind of new religion.7 Environ- mentalists, though, who are cognizant of how Christians’ political influence has been co-opted by free-market neo-liberal ideologues reciprocate evangelicals’ distrust by remaining cautious about engaging too much with evangelical or- ganizations. Recent instances like evangelicals’ coordinated resistance to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to regulate coal mining in Ap- palachia only serve to reinforce environmentalists’ circumspection.8 NARRATIVE AND VISIONARY FILMMAKING Where does The Tree of Life fit in all of this? My argument is that while the basic content of Malick’s film is Augustinian, The Tree of Life is thoroughly Emersoni- an in form. I will demonstrate this by considering the role narrative plays in The Tree of Life – in how Malick’s propensity to dispense with traditional narrative form in favor of a more experimental approach to his filmmaking reveals a rad- ical vision of politics more aligned with American avant-garde cinema than with Christian orthodoxy. This is not to say that The Tree of Life’s politics is divorced from its theology, just that the film’s politics has as much to do with its cinemat- ic construction as with its theological interests. Not many non-documentary films from the last ten years deal as explicit- ly with the theme of humanity’s relationship with nature as does The Tree of Life. This theme is standard fare for Malick’s larger oeuvre, but The Tree of Life marks a distinctive turn in Malick’s willingness to explore the particular Christian 6 Augustine 1998, 30. 7 See Nelson 2012. 8 See, e. g., Weaver 2014. 170 | Russell C. Powell www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 167–185