8, 132 Sunrises

Dear Mr. Malick,

What’s the secret?

I have struggled for weeks to write this and have failed each time.
It isn’t because I’m scared of it, although the subject of your work and its meaning are intimidating. It isn’t that I am shy, either. I’m usually pretty good at effusive prayers kneeling at the Altar of Film.
I have tried to boil down your little dinosaur movie but keep coming up empty-handed. That is the power and problem of the thing.

It’s maddening.

Then, I remembered an exercise in therapy past that involved free association, meant to illuminate The Story with disparate recollections. That might work as a sly mirroring of your editing technique, but again, if I got too wrapped up in those shards of memory, they would cut and I would bleed.

No one wants that.

Rather, I offer a single story to elucidate why your now-ten-year-old movie is the North Star in my cinematic firmament.

Fade in on the Woodlawn train station, situated in a mostly Irish section of the Bronx. It is a brutally cold and starless February night, 1999. I am returning to my dorm in Manhattan after the wake of a friend who killed herself. This bad death shoved me into adulthood in ways I wasn’t prepared for, scars that would come from suffering and disappointment. I had failed my friend. I had failed to see warning signs, failed to use the empathy I knew had been instilled in me through good schooling and good parenting to save her. I also failed in immediately understanding that was impossible. There was no rewind button.

I remember seeing her face that final time. I cried and tried to steady myself on the lip of the casket. A friend came and rested his head on mine.

The funeral parlor was warm.

Later on the platform in that weather that made light freeze, desperate to get away from everything, I thought I might turn to ice, starting with my tear-stung face. That would be fine, I thought. Just die. Die like sleeping.

Yet, I didn’t.

Instead, I did the most punk-rock thing I’d ever done in my whole life. I looked up into those cloudless heavens that stole my friend way too early, and I made a promise to her and the universe.

I would go on.

I would live in defiance of that bad death. No matter how terrible it got, I had to keep going. The escape hatch was soldered shut for good.

I had to keep my promise through more death, heartbreak, sickness, even more sickness, crushing loneliness, and the ever-nagging feeling that it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

Twelve years past and my jaw hurt from constantly gritting my teeth against the pain.

Then, I went out of the Los Angeles heat and into a cool theatre for the first showing of your movie, the one with the dinosaurs and that ethereal redhead. The story began with suicide, sped through time and space, and landed safely by the ocean. Its views of the universe, and our place in it, made me feel small, but not like dust particles. I was a child who knew Mother was close and so slept.

When it was over, I cried again. It must have been fifteen minutes since the lights had been turned on again. I suddenly felt self-conscious. I turned to my left and saw one of the ushers had taken the seat next to me and was just sitting there, silently keeping me company. I pulled myself together and he helped me up. It was a small act of compassion that I recognized while it was happening. I said thank you and went out into the sun, which seemed much brighter.

None of my pain had been reconciled by watching your movie, but I understood something very clear from it.

Every single day since my friend died had been a rough miracle. I saw a sunrise glow pink after a relationship collapsed and it was a miracle. My foot split open from a botched surgery, and it was a disaster-turned-miracle as I witnessed the care those doctors, nurses, and therapists gave to fix it. I felt a shiver down my back because a perfect stranger sang with me at a concert, and it was a miracle. I saw sea turtles, sharks, deserts and mountaintops, Irish rain, and Italian art — all miracles tumbling into one another and continuing on their way.

I saw an elephant look back at me, and a million different IVs stuck in the crook of my elbow.

I made love and lost my mind.

I spoke courageously, fought, and sometimes lost.

These moments all dwell in harmony, stars lighting this little searcher’s way.

So, I want to thank you. Thank you for helping me see it all mattered. Thank you for helping me take a step back and get ever closer to the world. Thank you for showing me — us — we must carry our joy and pain together in our arms. You’ve taught me a lot about praying, but most importantly, that there is no greater prayer than simply, fully living.

In other words, thank you for your “Tree of Life.”

Long may it grow.

With love and resolution,

Michael D.