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Rating: This film represents Malick's attempt to fulfill a crucial function of the artist in society. Namely, to represent in a direct, synthetic, and accessible manner, in a way that taps into the ancestral dimension of images, emotions, and intuition instead of the laborious elaboration of analytical rationality, the knowledge that our culture expresses regarding the past and present of the cosmos, reality, life, and man.
It is a work comparable to the great pictorial cycles that we find in churches and historical palaces, where the beliefs of the time regarding the universe and man's position in the universe are depicted.
And what is Malick's point of view? It is evidently a viewpoint that embraces the knowledge that Western scientific culture has consolidated over the past centuries, particularly in the twentieth century, thus rejecting alternative concepts and beliefs upheld by religions and pseudo-religious currents like the New Age. And this already is a significant choice.
All of Malick's cinema is an attempt by someone who, starting from a strongly intellectual position, painstakingly tries to reconnect with the sphere of emotions, intuition, urges, and desires. This need is significantly captured by irrationalistic trends in vogue like the New Age. Malick's message is that this need cannot be satisfied by abandoning the achievements and knowledge of Western culture, denying facts and evidence, but by reckoning with them.
The film presents us in highly evocative images with what the scientific approach tells us has happened in the past and has brought us to the present: the indistinct beginning, the formation of stars and planets, the Earth's crust and oceans, the birth of the first forms of life, the appearance of multicellular life, the colonization of land first by plants and then by animals, the appearance of amphibians, reptiles, the age of dinosaurs, the apocalypse caused by the fall of the asteroid that ended the Mesozoic, the gradual appearance of modern life forms, mammals and then humans, leading to the Anthropocene, megacities and the engineered and technological world of today.
The main periods are interspersed with scenes shot in streets and squares depicting humble or traditional social contexts, from various cultures and geographical locations, contrasting with the grandeur of the film's prevailing imagery and reminding us how life can be miserable and hard, or simply humble and simple.
The images are accompanied by a narrating voice, which intervenes from time to time and addresses its own mother, where the mother is nothing but nature, asking her to explain her inscrutability, her indifference, and our bewilderment in the face of a reality that the more we understand, the more its meaning escapes us.
Among the various periods, perhaps the least convincing is the one concerning the dinosaurs, told by briefly following a solitary small dinosaur caught in the cataclysm caused by the asteroid's fall, depicted in a far from sensational manner. Surely, dinosaurs are an overused theme in cinema and collective imagination, yet Malick misses an opportunity to attempt to renew this same imagery with a bit of courage and scientific depth.
Convincingly, however, is the brief section concerning the evolution of man. The comparison that comes to mind is the beginning of "2001: A Space Odyssey"; here, though, humans are not depicted as repellent ape-like creatures, but beautiful, young, and physically toned, almost sensual, as the first humans must have been, living a very active life and rarely reaching much beyond the end of youth.
Paradoxically, although the film is undoubtedly visually remarkable and pleasant, Malick might have done more, considering he is outdone on his own ground by many images we receive from the forefront of scientific exploration (space probes, oceanic submarines, etc.). Additionally, there is no mention of the new era that is unfolding, that of space exploration by space and terrestrial telescopes, automatic probes, and in the future, perhaps, directly by humans in the flesh.
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