The Tree of Life
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: May 27, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 50 Critic Reviews
Positive:
45
Mixed:
4
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawNov 22, 2016
This is visionary cinema on an unashamedly huge scale: cinema that's thinking big. Malick makes an awful lot of other film-makers look timid and negligible by comparison. Read full review
100
Total FilmJonathan CrockerNov 22, 2016
Much of The Tree Of Life’s beauty is in its yearning and wonder. It’s an extraordinary grasping stretch – across space and time – to touch what will always be just out of our reach. It’s a captivating, unmissable experience. Read full review
100
EmpireIan NathanJul 4, 2011
There is simply nothing like it out there: profound, idiosyncratic, complex, sincere and magical; a confirmation that cinema can aspire to art. Read full review
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJun 17, 2011
This film is undoubtedly a piece of art, as much so as a Picasso painting, one that invites viewers to immerse themselves, scratch their heads and consider it. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJun 10, 2011
The Tree of Life is a religious experience. Overtly. Audaciously. Unashamedly. No film has ever reached as high toward the face of God and, in our commodified future, few are likely to try. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJun 9, 2011
Still, somehow, The Tree of Life - impressionistic, revelatory, elliptical - works. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJun 2, 2011
At times trying and perplexing, but it also contains some of the most psychologically insightful and ecstatic filmmaking imaginable. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJun 2, 2011
A sense of reconciliation is Malick's great accomplishment in The Tree of Life, affording us equal wonder at grace and nature alike.  Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJun 2, 2011
The only other film I've seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and it lacked Malick's fierce evocation of human feeling. Read full review
100
NPRBob MondelloJun 1, 2011
The film is gorgeous and abstract, leaping around in time and space, structured in movements and more like a symphony than a conventional narrative. Read full review
100
USA TodayClaudia PuigMay 27, 2011
A shape-shifting film, it resembles a poem. At other moments, it is closer to a symphony. Most often, it approximates a fervent prayer. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 26, 2011
With disarming sincerity and daunting formal sophistication The Tree of Life ponders some of the hardest and most persistent questions, the kind that leave adults speechless when children ask them. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasMay 26, 2011
In terms of scale, The Tree Of Life recalls the mammoth ambition of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," but it's also more intimate and personal than Malick's previous films, rooted in vivid memories of growing up in '50s Texas. Read full review
100
Village VoiceNick PinkertonMay 24, 2011
Better than a masterpiece - whatever that is - The Tree of Life is an eruption of a movie, something to live with, think, and talk about afterward. Read full review
100
Time OutKeith UhlichMay 24, 2011
The Tree of Life enthralls right from the start. Read full review
100
VarietyJustin ChangMay 17, 2011
Result is pure-grade art cinema destined primarily for the delectation of Malick partisans and adventurous arthouse-goers. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn LevyJun 9, 2011
An extraordinary thing, and one that I shall likely esteem for a long time. Philosophically, though, it's still mired in the primordial ooze in a way that will, I suspect, forever make me hold it at arm's length. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 17, 2011
More meditation than movie, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is bound to mystify, awe and exasperate in equal measures. Read full review
90
SlateDana StevensMay 27, 2011
The middle section of the film, in which we follow Jack's childhood in a series of fragmented memories from birth until about the age of 12, is as astonishingly precise a rendering of the way the world looks to a child as I've seen on film. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMay 27, 2011
Daring in concept, occasionally daffy in execution and ultimately unforgettable, Mr. Malick's film offers a heartfelt answer to the question of where we humans belong - with each other, on this planet, bound by love. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMay 23, 2011
Tucked away inside the grandeur, though, and enlivened by jump cuts, is a sharp, not unharrowing story of a father and son, and, amid one's exasperation, there is no mistaking Malick's unfailing ability to grab at glories on the fly. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'HehirMay 17, 2011
The Tree of Life is pretty much nuts overall, a manic hybrid folly with flashes of brilliance. But even if that's true it's a noble crazy, a miraculous William Butler Yeats kind of crazy, alive with passion for art and the world, for all that is lost and not lost and still to come. Read full review
90
Boxoffice MagazineWade MajorMay 17, 2011
Aggressively impressionistic and unapologetically spiritual, Malick's long-gestating meditation on the meaning of life is, if nothing else, a singularly original and deeply personal film - a growing rarity in American cinema. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 17, 2011
Brandishing an ambition it's likely no film, including this one, could entirely fulfill, The Tree of Life is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind's place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amid its narrative imprecisions. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldNov 22, 2016
Malick, director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and the cast create a mood that lifts the viewer through the occasional head-scratching moments and into a place of serenity, where answers somehow seem in reach. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJun 15, 2011
The movie plays out as a series of memories, so exact and evocative that watching it becomes an immersive experience. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJun 9, 2011
The Tree of Life falls short of masterful but retains a power that far too many motion pictures lack. It's about SOMETHING and, even when it fails, it does so in a manner that is interesting and not infantile. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJun 2, 2011
This may be the most overtly Christian mainstream picture since "The Passion of the Christ." Unlike that one, though, Malick's comes with a generosity of spirit large enough to get all sorts of people (including non-believers) thinking about the nature of faith and what it's all about. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineMay 30, 2011
The Tree of Life's fetching images are like glowing shards of glass, and together they form a grandiose mirror that reflects Malick's impassioned philosophical outlook. It's unquestionably this great filmmaker's most personal work, a revelation of how he came to be, why he creates, and where he feels he's going. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickMay 27, 2011
For all its flaws, The Tree of Life is a stunning exception to the rule that you can safely check your brain at the popcorn counter until after Labor Day. That's enough to place it among the year's best movies, or at least most-talked-about ones. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 26, 2011
Like its predecessors (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World), Tree delivers truths that don't go down easy. No one with a genuine interest in the potential of film would think of missing it. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumMay 25, 2011
Malick clings to the promise of grace: His vision of the afterlife is a dreamy beach, enhanced by an excellent playlist of fine classical music, and promising the peace that surpasses all understanding. Plus a beautiful sky. Read full review
80
CineVueLee CassanellNov 22, 2016
You don't have to like a piece of art to appreciate the artists vision. Terrence Malick has created a beautiful and ambitious meditation on memory, childhood and the nature of being. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJun 9, 2011
Beautiful, baffling, poetic, pretentious, it's one big ball of moviedom. Malick tackles the whole shooting match, pondering (and showing) the creation of the universe, life itself, death and the afterlife, and everything in between. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierMay 27, 2011
Like so much in this astounding, consistently beautiful and challenging movie, the answer depends on what you bring to it. Think of it as the Ultimate Anti-Summer-Blockbuster. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMay 23, 2011
After warming up with "The Thin Red Line" and "The New World," Malick has succeeded in fully creating his own film syntax, his own temporal reality, and lo, it is … kind of goofy. But riveting. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJun 2, 2011
Even when The Tree of Life does not achieve the heights for which it aims, it soars boldly and fearlessly. Read full review
75
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthNov 22, 2016
With The Tree Of Life the director has once again created a cinematic experience that is uniquely his own, often powerful and mesmerizing, at times overreaching and overbearing, but never forgettable. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenJul 4, 2011
The result actually plays like a divine pronouncement, cosmic in scope and oracular in tone, a cinematic sermon on the mount that shows its creator in exquisite form. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJun 22, 2011
Ponderous and perplexing, a somberly audacious film to make viewers swoon or snore, take your pick. It is defiantly opaque, a free-form meditation on nature and nurture across millennia with a tinge of biblical grace. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMay 28, 2011
If I had to give a two-word review of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, it would be: "Wow! Huh??" Read full review
65
MovielineStephanie ZacharekMay 26, 2011
The Tree of Life is gorgeous to look at. It's also a gargantuan work of pretension and cleverly concealed self-absorption masquerading as spiritual exploration. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJun 16, 2011
Like all his movies except "Badlands," a taut 1973 debut, "Tree" looks gorgeous, has philosophic ambitions, meanders wherever Malick's imagination takes him and stays dramatically inert. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisJun 5, 2011
The movie is church via the planetarium. It's as if Malick set out to paint the Sistine Chapel and settled for a dome at the Museum of Natural History. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayJun 2, 2011
At its best, The Tree of Life makes the viewer lean forward, eager to enter Malick's own dreamy, poetic consciousness. At worst, it leads to the vague feeling that we're listening to the meanderings of someone who's not sure we're smart enough to keep up. Read full review
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