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Articles - Open Section

Vol. 5 No. 2 (2019): Apocalyptic Imaginings

Narrative and Experiment, Religion and Politics in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life

DOI
https://doi.org/10.25364/05.05:2019.2.9
Submitted
January 11, 2019
Published
2019-11-02

Abstract

While most interpretations of Terrence Malick's 2011 The Tree of Life concentrate on the film's theological resonances, I focus here on The Tree of Life's political vision. I locate this vision in the fraught relationship between two influential strands of American religio-political thought, Augustinianism and Emersonianism. The Tree of Life's theological concerns are undoubtedly Augustinian, yet it takes up a similar radical politics as what Emerson did in his best-known essays. The result, I argue, is a cinema of religio-political possibility with important implications for a potential rapproachment between religionists (namely evangelical Christians) and secularists, particularly on the topic of environmental conservation and sustainability.