Page - 171 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

frameworks which bolster his philosophical inquiries.9 For instance, The Tree of Life opens with an epigraph from the Book of Job (“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? … When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” [Job 38:4,7]). Malick also utilizes Christian conceptual conventions like “nature” and “grace” to frame the relational dy- namics between characters and the film’s overall structural organization. And finally, The Tree of Life is chock full of allusions to traditional Christian theolog- ical tropes (e. g., the film concludes with a rousing rendition of corporeal resur- rection, set to the score of Hector Berlioz’s 1837 Requiem Mass; see figs. 1a–b). Given the frequency of such referential touch points, it is not surprising that most theological interpretations of The Tree of Life are patently Augustinian. 9 Films like Badlands (US 1973), Days of Heaven (US 1978), The Thin Red Line (US 1998), and The New World (US 2005) each deal with human-nature relationality without overt reference to Christian theological concepts. In these films, Malick is especially interested in the ways human malfeasances are reflected in humans’ connection to nature. In Badlands, for instance, the film’s two main characters, Kit and Holly, recover to an Eden of their making in the woods of South Dakota but are forced to leave it behind when marshals come looking for Kit, who murdered Holly’s father in a fit of passion. In another example, The Thin Red Line, a film about the pivotal battle of Guadalcanal during the Second World War, examines the violence inherent to the natural world as it is reflected in human conflict. Figs. 1a–b: The dead emerge from their resting places in The Tree of Life’s finale (Terrence Malick, US 2011), 02:05:02; 02:05:16. Narrative and Experiment, Religion and Politics in The Tree of Life | 171www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 167–185