Review of "The Tree of Life"

The vision is dazzling. The portrayal of family life palpable. The ending … well, let's go back to the vision.

"The Tree of Life," writer-director Terence Malick's fifth feature film release in nearly 40 years, is stunning, confusing, invigorating and frustrating. It has no clear storyline, instead jaggedly following a Texas family in the '50s dealing with tension, failure, death and the eternal bond of blood.

Which sounds stark, but Malick isn't content with the mere human condition. He's barely got his dusty tale rolling when the film swerves wildly, turning into a brilliant light show of converging abstractions that emerge as the very beginning of creation.

Talk about going into your backstory. Malick's fantastic visual display eventually reaches dinosaurs and the rush of evolution, slowly rounding back to the family in Texas. Malick doesn't offer just a bit of family history; he offers all of history.

And then just this family, living in a suburban neighborhood. Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) seems dragged down by work, his fingers still longing for the classical music he loves to play.

The luminous Mrs. O'Brien (the otherworldly Jessica Chastain) is downright angelic (Malick's shot of her rinsing her feet in a lawn sprinkler is heartbreakingly beautiful), and she needs to be because it turns out Mr. O'Brien has a temper.

At the heart of the film — which certainly does have a heart — is the tension between eldest son Jack (Hunter McCracken) and his abusive father. Sean Penn plays Jack as a grown man in flash-forward scenes, apparently a morose architect ruminating on his past.

"Tree" ends in a misfire netherworld straight out of "The Twilight Zone." Malick's command of texture, his rebel ambition and sense of scope are impressive and undeniable. If only he could land as well as he flies.