Transcendence and The Tree of Life
Beyond the Face of the Screen with Terrence Malick, Emmanuel Levinas, and Roland Barthes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v8i3.329Keywords:
alterity, ethics, face, other, punctum/stadium, rapture, sublime, transcendenceAbstract
Debates over the ways in which film communicates to its audience have historically revolved around investigations into the meanings of what is seen and heard. Certain films are able to reach beyond the constraints of language so that the experience of viewing becomes a process of communication with a spiritual other. We consider such a concept of transcendence through the writings of two theorists: Emmanuel Levinas, whose philosophy of ethics concentrated on the inability of human knowledge to conceive of the divine truth that is accessed through the encounter with the face of another person, and Roland Barthes, whose reflections on the photograph focused on how some images are able to resist interpretation. Both writers are used to analyze Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and argue that it promotes a transcendent experience, even an experience of the sublime or Holy, that exceeds aesthetic or intellectual analysis.
References
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Aristotle. 1998. The Metaphysics (trans. H. Lawson-Tancred; London: Penguin Books).
Auerbach, Jonathan. 2007. Body Shots: Early Cinema's Incarnations (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Bart, Peter. 1998. ‘The Silent Treatment’, Variety 373.6: 4.
Barthes, Roland. 1972 [1957]. Mythologies (trans. A. Lavers; New York: Noonday Press).
———. 1981. Camera Lucida (trans. R. Howard; London: Fontana Paperbacks).
———. 1985 [1963]. ‘On Film’, in The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962–1980 (trans. L. Coverdale; New York: Hill & Wang): 11-24.
Bruns, George. 2004. ‘The Concepts of Art and Poetry in Emmanuel Levinas’s Writings’, in Critchley and Bernasconi 2004: 206-33.
Calhoun, Craig. 2008. ‘Book Review: A Secular Age: Charles Taylor, A Secular Age’, European Journal of Sociology 49.3: 455-61.
Celeste, Reni. 2007. ‘The Frozen Screen: Levinas and the Action Film’, Film-Philosophy 11.2: 15-36. Online: http://www.film-philosophy.com/2007v112/celeste.pdf.
Chang, Pi-Jung. 2010. ‘Ethics of Reading and Writing: Self, Truth and Responsibility in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time’, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 36.2: 61-87.
Cohen, Hubert. 2003. ‘The Genesis of Days of Heaven’, Cinema Journal 42.4: 46-62.
Cooper, Sarah. 2007. ‘Mortal Ethics: Reading Levinas with the Dardenne Brothers’, Film-Philosophy 11.2: 66-87.
Cox, David. 2011. ‘The Tree of Life Is a Colossal Commercial’, The Guardian. Online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/jul/11/tree-life-terrencemalick.
Critchley, Simon. 2004. ‘Introduction’, in Critchley and Bernasconi 2004: 1-32.
Critchley, Simon, and R. Bernasconi (eds.). 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Crowell, Steven. 2012. ‘Why Is Ethics First Philosophy? Levinas in Phenomenological Context’, European Journal of Philosophy 19.4: 1-25.
Derrida, Jacques. 1999. Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (trans. P.-A. Brault and M. Naas; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Downing, Lisa, and Libby Saxton. 2010. Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (London: Routledge).
Ellos, William J. 1998. ‘Some Narrative Methodologies for Clinical Ethics’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7.3: 315-22.
Fagenblat, Michael. 2010. A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas's Philosophy of Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Foster, Nicola. 2008. ‘Photography and the Gaze: The Ethics of Vision Inverted’, Parallax 14.2: 78-92.
Girgus, Sam B. 2007. ‘The Modernism of Frank Capra and European Ethical Thought’, in Paul Cooke (ed.), World Cinema’s ‘Dialogues’ with Hollywood (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave): 86-102.
———. 2010. Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the Feminine (New York: Columbia University Press).
Halliwell, Leslie (ed.). 1988. Halliwell's Filmgoer's and Video Viewer's Companion (London: Grafton).
Lanzmann, Claude. 1994. ‘Holocauste, la représentation impossible’, Le Monde (Supplément Arts–Spectacles): i, vii.
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (trans. A. Lingis; Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press).
———. 1978 [1947]. Existence and Existents (trans. A. Lingis; The Hague, NL: Martinus Nijhoff).
———. 1981 [1974]. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (trans. A. Lingis; The Hague, NL: Martinus Nijhoff).
———. 1984 [1981]. ‘Interdit de la représentation et “Droits de l’homme”’, in A. and J.-J. Rassial (eds.), L’Interdit de la représentation. Colloque de Montpellier (Paris: Seuil): 107-13.
———. 1990. Difficult Freedom: Essays in Judaism (trans. S. Hand; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press).
———. 1996a. ‘Transcendence and Height’, in Peperzak, Critchley, and Bernasconi 1996: 11-32.
———. 1996b. ‘God and Philosophy’, in Peperzak, Critchley, and Bernasconi 1996: 129-48.
———. 1998. Éthique comme philosophie première (Paris: Éditions Payot et Rivages).
———. 1999 [1995]. Alterity and Transcendence (trans. M. B. Smith; London: Athlone Press).
MacCabe, Colin. 2011. ‘Cannes 2011’, Critical Quarterly 53.2: 95-99.
Malick, Terrence (dir.). 2011. The Tree of Life. Fox Searchlight. DVD.
Martin, Christian. 2003. Roland Barthes et l’ethique de la fiction (Bern, SW: Peter Lang).
McCarthy, Todd. 2011. ‘The Tree of Life: Cannes Review’, The Hollywood Reporter. 16 May. Online: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/tree-life-cannesreview-188564.
Nye, David. 1994. American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Peperzak, A., S. Critchley, and R. Bernasconi (eds.). 1996. Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Pfeifer, Moritz. 2011. ‘Either and Or: On Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life’, Senses of Cinema. Online: http://sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/either-andor-on-terrence-malicks-tree-of-life/.
Plate, S. Brent. 2012. ‘Visualizing the Cosmos: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and Other Visions of Life in the Universe’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80.2: 527-36.
Rassos, Effie. 2001. ‘Performing the Everyday: Time and Affect in John Cassavetes' Faces’, Senses of Cinema. Online: http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/16/cassavetes_faces.html#14.
Ricco, Jean Paul. 2014. The Decision Between Us: Art and Ethics in the Time of Scene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Saxton, Libby. 2010. ‘Blinding Visions: Levinas, Ethics, Faciality’, in L. Downing and L. Saxton (eds.), Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (Abingdon, UK: Routledge): 95-106.
Schrader, Paul. 1972. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Sikka, Sonia. 1998. ‘Questioning the Sacred: Heidegger and Levinas on the Locus of Divinity’, Modern Theology 14.3: 299-323.
Sobchak, Vivian. 2008. ‘Embodying Transcendence: On the Literal, the Material and the Cinematic Sublime’, Material Religion 4.2: 194-203.
Sterritt, David. 2011. ‘Days of Heaven and Waco: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life’, Film Quarterly 65.1: 52-57.
Stone, Alan A. 2011. ‘The Tree of Life’, Journal of Religion & Film 15.2, Article 14. Online: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol15no2/Reviews/StoneTreeLife.html.
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Urbano, Ryan. 2012. ‘Approaching the Divine: Levinas on God, Religion, Idolatry and Atheism’, Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought & Culture 15.1: 50-81.
Valier, Claire, and Ronnie Lippens. 2004. ‘Moving Images, Ethics and Justice’, Punishment and Society 6.3: 319-33.
Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2004. ‘Levinas and the Face of the Other’, in Critchley and Bernasconi 2004: 63-81.
Watkins, Gregory. 2008. ‘Introducing Theories of Religion through Film: A Sample Syllabus’, in G. Watkins (ed.), Teaching Religion and Film (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press): 233-50.
Wike, Lori. 2000. ‘Photographs and Signatures: Absences, Presences and Temporalities in Barthes and Derrida’, InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies. Online: http://www.rochester.edu.
Aristotle. 1998. The Metaphysics (trans. H. Lawson-Tancred; London: Penguin Books).
Auerbach, Jonathan. 2007. Body Shots: Early Cinema's Incarnations (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Bart, Peter. 1998. ‘The Silent Treatment’, Variety 373.6: 4.
Barthes, Roland. 1972 [1957]. Mythologies (trans. A. Lavers; New York: Noonday Press).
———. 1981. Camera Lucida (trans. R. Howard; London: Fontana Paperbacks).
———. 1985 [1963]. ‘On Film’, in The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962–1980 (trans. L. Coverdale; New York: Hill & Wang): 11-24.
Bruns, George. 2004. ‘The Concepts of Art and Poetry in Emmanuel Levinas’s Writings’, in Critchley and Bernasconi 2004: 206-33.
Calhoun, Craig. 2008. ‘Book Review: A Secular Age: Charles Taylor, A Secular Age’, European Journal of Sociology 49.3: 455-61.
Celeste, Reni. 2007. ‘The Frozen Screen: Levinas and the Action Film’, Film-Philosophy 11.2: 15-36. Online: http://www.film-philosophy.com/2007v112/celeste.pdf.
Chang, Pi-Jung. 2010. ‘Ethics of Reading and Writing: Self, Truth and Responsibility in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time’, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 36.2: 61-87.
Cohen, Hubert. 2003. ‘The Genesis of Days of Heaven’, Cinema Journal 42.4: 46-62.
Cooper, Sarah. 2007. ‘Mortal Ethics: Reading Levinas with the Dardenne Brothers’, Film-Philosophy 11.2: 66-87.
Cox, David. 2011. ‘The Tree of Life Is a Colossal Commercial’, The Guardian. Online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/jul/11/tree-life-terrencemalick.
Critchley, Simon. 2004. ‘Introduction’, in Critchley and Bernasconi 2004: 1-32.
Critchley, Simon, and R. Bernasconi (eds.). 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Crowell, Steven. 2012. ‘Why Is Ethics First Philosophy? Levinas in Phenomenological Context’, European Journal of Philosophy 19.4: 1-25.
Derrida, Jacques. 1999. Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (trans. P.-A. Brault and M. Naas; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Downing, Lisa, and Libby Saxton. 2010. Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (London: Routledge).
Ellos, William J. 1998. ‘Some Narrative Methodologies for Clinical Ethics’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7.3: 315-22.
Fagenblat, Michael. 2010. A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas's Philosophy of Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Foster, Nicola. 2008. ‘Photography and the Gaze: The Ethics of Vision Inverted’, Parallax 14.2: 78-92.
Girgus, Sam B. 2007. ‘The Modernism of Frank Capra and European Ethical Thought’, in Paul Cooke (ed.), World Cinema’s ‘Dialogues’ with Hollywood (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave): 86-102.
———. 2010. Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the Feminine (New York: Columbia University Press).
Halliwell, Leslie (ed.). 1988. Halliwell's Filmgoer's and Video Viewer's Companion (London: Grafton).
Lanzmann, Claude. 1994. ‘Holocauste, la représentation impossible’, Le Monde (Supplément Arts–Spectacles): i, vii.
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (trans. A. Lingis; Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press).
———. 1978 [1947]. Existence and Existents (trans. A. Lingis; The Hague, NL: Martinus Nijhoff).
———. 1981 [1974]. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (trans. A. Lingis; The Hague, NL: Martinus Nijhoff).
———. 1984 [1981]. ‘Interdit de la représentation et “Droits de l’homme”’, in A. and J.-J. Rassial (eds.), L’Interdit de la représentation. Colloque de Montpellier (Paris: Seuil): 107-13.
———. 1990. Difficult Freedom: Essays in Judaism (trans. S. Hand; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press).
———. 1996a. ‘Transcendence and Height’, in Peperzak, Critchley, and Bernasconi 1996: 11-32.
———. 1996b. ‘God and Philosophy’, in Peperzak, Critchley, and Bernasconi 1996: 129-48.
———. 1998. Éthique comme philosophie première (Paris: Éditions Payot et Rivages).
———. 1999 [1995]. Alterity and Transcendence (trans. M. B. Smith; London: Athlone Press).
MacCabe, Colin. 2011. ‘Cannes 2011’, Critical Quarterly 53.2: 95-99.
Malick, Terrence (dir.). 2011. The Tree of Life. Fox Searchlight. DVD.
Martin, Christian. 2003. Roland Barthes et l’ethique de la fiction (Bern, SW: Peter Lang).
McCarthy, Todd. 2011. ‘The Tree of Life: Cannes Review’, The Hollywood Reporter. 16 May. Online: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/tree-life-cannesreview-188564.
Nye, David. 1994. American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Peperzak, A., S. Critchley, and R. Bernasconi (eds.). 1996. Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Pfeifer, Moritz. 2011. ‘Either and Or: On Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life’, Senses of Cinema. Online: http://sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/either-andor-on-terrence-malicks-tree-of-life/.
Plate, S. Brent. 2012. ‘Visualizing the Cosmos: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and Other Visions of Life in the Universe’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80.2: 527-36.
Rassos, Effie. 2001. ‘Performing the Everyday: Time and Affect in John Cassavetes' Faces’, Senses of Cinema. Online: http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/16/cassavetes_faces.html#14.
Ricco, Jean Paul. 2014. The Decision Between Us: Art and Ethics in the Time of Scene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Saxton, Libby. 2010. ‘Blinding Visions: Levinas, Ethics, Faciality’, in L. Downing and L. Saxton (eds.), Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (Abingdon, UK: Routledge): 95-106.
Schrader, Paul. 1972. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Sikka, Sonia. 1998. ‘Questioning the Sacred: Heidegger and Levinas on the Locus of Divinity’, Modern Theology 14.3: 299-323.
Sobchak, Vivian. 2008. ‘Embodying Transcendence: On the Literal, the Material and the Cinematic Sublime’, Material Religion 4.2: 194-203.
Sterritt, David. 2011. ‘Days of Heaven and Waco: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life’, Film Quarterly 65.1: 52-57.
Stone, Alan A. 2011. ‘The Tree of Life’, Journal of Religion & Film 15.2, Article 14. Online: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol15no2/Reviews/StoneTreeLife.html.
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Urbano, Ryan. 2012. ‘Approaching the Divine: Levinas on God, Religion, Idolatry and Atheism’, Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought & Culture 15.1: 50-81.
Valier, Claire, and Ronnie Lippens. 2004. ‘Moving Images, Ethics and Justice’, Punishment and Society 6.3: 319-33.
Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2004. ‘Levinas and the Face of the Other’, in Critchley and Bernasconi 2004: 63-81.
Watkins, Gregory. 2008. ‘Introducing Theories of Religion through Film: A Sample Syllabus’, in G. Watkins (ed.), Teaching Religion and Film (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press): 233-50.
Wike, Lori. 2000. ‘Photographs and Signatures: Absences, Presences and Temporalities in Barthes and Derrida’, InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies. Online: http://www.rochester.edu.
Published
2014-12-16
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Brereton, P., & Furze, R. (2014). Transcendence and The Tree of Life: Beyond the Face of the Screen with Terrence Malick, Emmanuel Levinas, and Roland Barthes. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 8(3), 329-351. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v8i3.329
