The Tree of Life script

The script to the 200th episode went through a few revisions. This is the (mostly) final draft, but I still ended up changing a few things post-recording. You might notice some differences. Text in bold is stuff that I definitely took out after recording for sounding needlessly inflammatory. 

 AUDIO 1
 [30:40 Music]
  [0:40] We open with Job, Chapter 38. The Tree of Life abbreviates the word of God with verses 4 and skipping to [Blank] 7. In total, the words should be: 4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. 5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? [1:46:00] God, almost in mocking tone, tells Job that a mortal man does not have the wisdom that God has and should not question His will.   
 [10:20]  [overlay: job] The Book of Job is a book in the Ketuvim or ("Writings") section of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, and the first poetic book in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. [2:04:23] There are differences between them. For example, in the aforementioned quote, “angels” is in the New International Version of the Holy Bible whereas the phrase “sons of God” in other texts is in its place, [0:44]  much like in the film. But minor differences aside, [job1] the story is that Job has been blessed with wealth and a good family. Satan tells God that Job only praises His name because of such good fortune. [job2] God disagrees, and allows Satan to punish the righteous Job, taking away his wealth and killing his children. [job3] The Book of Job addresses the question: "Why do the righteous suffer?" In antiquity, the conventional answer was that God punishes the sinful and rewards the virtuous.   
 AUDIO 2
 [job4] In the story, Job's good life is eventually restored, but he never actually learns why any of this happened. He remains unaware of God's dealings with Satan or the fact that he – Job – was not on trial but rather God's system of divine retribution. [9:41] The story of Job's suffering attempts to answer a broad, philosophical concept through a something that feels both personal but also universal, [10:40] much in the same way that The Tree of Life broaches this same question while showing us something intimate but relatable, a family's growth and loss. [5:10] There are a great number of ways to interpret the Book of Job, especially from a perspective outside of the Abrahamic faiths or secularism, [1:13:37] but one is that this is an early form of apologetics – a way to explain away why bad things happen to good people.   
 [57:44] If God never explicitly tells Job why this happened, then one might argue that the real answer to this question is: [1:46:41] We do not know, but God does know, and that will have to be enough. To fervent believers in the Abrahamic God, this may be sufficient, [1:01:30] but to others, a non-answer is unsatisfactory. When Job asks why this happened to him, God says the quotation at the beginning of the film, which is not the explicit revelation [1:01:52] Job was hoping for but more akin to what is called an argument from ethos, an argument from the authority of the speaker alone. The only answer is...I am [1:02:40] God, and I know what I'm doing. An argument from authority.
 AUDIO 3
 [1:02:12] In The Tree of Life, characters question – in whispered tones, never aloud – why God does what He does. [6:31] The mother and father have lost a son, R.L. Other characters give these parents empty platitudes to soothe their grief: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, one says. [7:46] Although not made as explicit as with the quote, this is once again a reference to the Book of Job, in this case, Chapter 21. [8:39] Another character says that the son is now in God's hands, another common salve to heal the broken heart. But the mother questions this, saying that the son was always in God's hands, [10:39] therefore blaming God rather than praising, twisting and dissecting this platitude with skepticism.   
 [2:13] The mother says the Nuns taught her "We must choose between the way of grace and the way of nature." Grace here means generosity, inner strength and a willingness to take on suffering. [4:44] This ties to Job again, likening personal suffering to righteousness. We have been told to suffer, told to take on pain and not question this barbarism, this subjugation. [6:14] If God works all things towards good, then our suffering is part of His plan. If we question it, He will argue only from ethos – in a whirlwind no less. [2:05:15] The way of Nature, as she describes it, is the opposite. Nature is indifferent to us. If God is in nature or is nature, then God is not graceful. [6:17] The son's premature death has no excuse, no higher reason. This loss shatters her sense of grace.   
 AUDIO 4
 [6:48] In The Tree of Life, we break from this sadness, this whispered funeral for both the boy and for faith, [20:42] to witness the cosmos. The birth of everything. We never see God, we only see what we assume is His handiwork. In witnessing this over hushed questions like “Where are you?” and [22:47] lamentations about loss, we potentially see two things: that our concerns are universal and cosmic, [23:35] heard by the universe, by God, or that our concerns and cries of despair are nothing in the void of space. We worry about ourselves and our loves ones, and we are nothing compared to this vastness, [24:06] the infinite space, the creation of worlds upon worlds, and we are caught up in our problems that us are so important but are so petty to the universe, even to God. [24:41] When Job asks God to justify himself, God speaks of creating the universe instead. In The Tree of Life, we are seeing this, we are visually witnessing God's vague justification.   
 [27:01] This abrupt shift into the creation of the universe mimics the only answer given to Job. [1:01:30] Halfway through the film, the family is in Church, and not surprisingly, the sermon is about Job, who thought his righteousness would save him. [1:04:30] Shortly thereafter, the father tells one of his sons, Jack, that someone cannot succeed if he is too good. [59:03] The father has seen his dreams of being a musician, of having wealth, of having something greater for himself...lost. [49:58] He sees other men, those he thinks as worse men, succeed because of their wickedness. The father, like Job, questions divinity, questions retribution of sin and the rewards of virtue.    
 AUDIO 5
 [59:47] The relationship between Jack and his father mirrors that of humankind and God. The father shows affection towards his sons, but he demands this affection be returned rather than earned. [1:08:00] He asks for tribute. He tells Jack “Don't you have a kiss for your father?” Jack and his father have a contentious relationship. Jack, in whispered narration, asks [1:14:40] “Why should I be good if you aren't?” Most of these voiceovers in the film are clearly addressed to God himself, but this one, seemingly to Jack's father, connects the two.   
 [2:02:43] This is another question that is difficult to answer as it relates to God. If God creates such destruction and operates under a different set of rules than humankind, how can we see Him as our model of behavior? [2:03:22] How do we reconcile the wrath of God with the rules God lays out for us? [44:50] In the beginning of the film, the father helps plant a tree in the yard and [46:50] explains the rules and boundaries of the yard to his son, much like the tree of knowledge and the most important rule in the Garden of Eden. Jack questions his father's rules. [1:31:00] Jack can't put his elbows on the table, but his father can. This hypocrisy is at the heart of this troubling question about the nature of God, the concern over the claim of omnibenevolence.
 AUDIO 6
 [1:21:00] The dinner table is a microcosm of the relationship between humankind and God as it relates to his disproportionate wrath. One child quietly asks his father to be quiet, and the father becomes violent. [10:45] After the death of one son, the father laments that he made him feel shame. … “Shame” is often a byproduct of the high-impossible rules allegedly laid out for a perfect being. [12:00] There is a loss of humanity is feeling shame for not living up to the standards of God, a loss of humanity in taking on guilt, a loss of humanity in accepting suffering – not for misdeeds – but out of the assumption that it is good and holy.
 [34:33] The Tree of Life plays out like a dream. We drift from vignette to vignette, through non-traditional narrative, [38:05] and we live not in the actions of the family but in their thoughts. We live in their minds, the only place where it is safe to question the goodness of God or the existence of God. [18:37] We hear these thoughts interspersed with shots of the world, and the question of nature or grace comes to mind. [26:31] Are we seeing “grace” or we are seeing nature? The father feels like the avatar of nature and the mother the avatar of grace – but both, the film seems to claim – are under the control of God, the aegis of God.   
 
 AUDIO 7
 [38:25] We blame God for our existence because if we never existed, we would never face death. We would never face anything. [2:03:28] We would remain nothing, as blissfully unaware and absent – not even imaginary, only a void of infinite nothingness, as happy and unhappy as we were before we were sparked into being, into consciousness. [2:04:15] And so, we personify life, we anthropomorphize existence as God, as someone or something that chose our lives and concluded that we must: BE. [2:04:58] And if we must be, then we must face not being, we must face death after we are spent and used up. We blame God for this because we need to blame someone. [2:05:35] Nobody decides to be born, so it can't be our fault, so it must be someone else's fault.   
 [2:06:05] Someone to blame for our heartaches and our tears and our failed dreams and our lost loved ones. If there is a God, then he can be blamed for both our lives and deaths, [2:07:08] and if there is no God, then there is no one to blame. In the end of the film, the living and the dead are reunited. [29:46] In the creation scenes, we see life beginning in water, [2:06:44] and in the end, in death, people return to it. [2:12:23] The final shot is a bridge over water. The bridge is our life, a connection from the beginning of the water to the end. [16:45] When Jack, as an adult, wanders the desert – devoid of water – he is wandering without grace. [2:07:32] He finds it, in the end.
 
 AUDIO 8
 [2:07:55] The Tree of Life does not require the audience to believe in the historicity of Job to find meaning in it. Whether one believes or disbelieves in God, the ending of the film still rings true. [2:08:44] Screaming into the face of the universe about our loss, about our brief existence, a formal complaint about the state of our lives into the hands of a creator or an indifferent universe will not yield a result, an answer. [2:09:05] Either God exists and answers only from the authority that His wisdom outclasses our own or God does not exist, and there is nobody to complain to in the first place. [2:10:19] That's not a viewpoint of pessimism, though. Acknowledging this is part of maturity. Making peace with this is part of life.