Brad Pitt & Jessica Chastain Interview For ‘The Tree Of Life’

Terrence Malick’s ’The Tree Of Life’ is truly a hymn to life, excavating answers to the most haunting and personal human questions through a kaleidoscope of the intimate and the cosmic, from the raw emotions of a family in a small Texan town to the wildest, infinite edges of space and time, from a boy’s loss of innocence to a man’s transforming encounters with awe, wonder and transcendence.

The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and the meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Malick’s signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace, represented in the family by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain’s characters respectively, shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life. Check out what Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain had to say about the film below. ’The Tree Of Life’ is out in cinemas now.

Working with Terrence Malick must be an extraordinary and unique experience?

Brad Pitt: I could go on far too long about this (laughs), my section of the story takes place in the 50’s, Terry started by renting this entire block and dressing it as the 1950’s, therefore allowing us to go outside, wherever we wanted. His idea is, even though he gave us this very dense script, he never wanted us to do what he calls hammer and tongs – seeing to it as it’s written, he’s more interested in catching what was happening on the day. He’s like a guy standing there with a big butterfly net, waiting for that moment of truth to go by. The kids themselves weren’t given the script, they had a closet of clothes, they put on what they wanted to put on that day and that’s what we shot in. We would do two takes…..Terry would get up every morning and write for an hour, he would give us pages in the morning and we would develop something out of that. I think because of that the moments are fresh, they’re not preconceived in anyway, the lighting even, there was only one light in the house, everything else was natural light.

It was a pretty incredible experience, I don’t know if I could do them all that way because it is exhausting, but you see what you get. Also he does what he calls torpedoing a scene, the youngest child he called the torpedo, on the first take me and Jessica Chastain are having an argument, we’re going at it, raising our voices, doing what you do. Then on the second take unbeknownst to us he would send in the torpedo and get him to sit at the table, suddenly it changed the whole tenure and tone of the scene. This is something that would go on, on a daily basis. I could go on for days about working with Terry.

Jessica Chastain: For me it was a lot about giving up any idea of what the plan might be on the first scene, or on a day that we were going to film, it was all about capturing an accident. There was a scene where we were shooting a grief section and I remember I was watching Brad, he was so good, then there’s this Woodpecker going and Terry was like, “there’s a Woodpecker somewhere!” And he’d point the camera towards that. But there’s always ways to incorperate it,  even in the trailer when you hear the voiceover go “there are two ways through life, the way of nature, and the way of grace,” you hear a bird in the background, that’s actually from the set, when I was doing the voiceover.

Has working like that changed how you work since?

Brad Pitt: It’s changed everything I’ve done since. I’ve found that the best moments, what I find as the best moments, were not pre-conceived, they were not planned, they were the happy accident. In the things I’ve done since I’ve tried to go more in that direction. There’s intense study going into it but then going off the script a bit, seeing where it takes you, what happens.

The theme of creation, the mysteries, the religious themes run through the movie…

Brad Pitt: We had a lot of theological debates throughout the process, philosophies, religion, really interesting, he’s a very interesting man to talk to. I would say Terry is more of a spiritualist than a compartmentalised….version of Christianity, he has a more universal viewpoint in my opinion.

Did you relate to your character at all?

Brad Pitt: I can speak a little about the southern upbringing, but I find this film more universal. I hope it speaks to all cultures, in as far as childhood, deciding who you are going to be when you grow up, from child to young adult, you try things, some things work, some things don’t, you’re being honed by the influences around you. In this case the Mother represented grace and love and all that is pure and good, and the Father represents this oppressive nature, the nature that must survive, that will choke out this other plant in order to do so. The young child is trying both things on and figuring out what works for him and what he will be when he grows up. Then there are the bigger questions, the impermanence of life that we all go through.

The southern upbringing, I’m making it a cliché almost, but there is truth to a purity and sweetness to the mother, and a more father-knows-best mentality, a father is provider. And in the film you see the American dream as we grow up to understand, it is not working for….the father is on the tail end of that, there’s a lot of anger because of it, he intern passes that on to his sons inadvertently and unintentionally. I do think that there are parts of the story that are very personal to Terry, there are elements of the story that are personal to me, but I don’t think it mirrors, or is an exact template of either one of us.

How did you go about shaping your character Jessica?

Jessica Chastain: When I first read the script I realised she’s the kind of woman that you just aspire to be. She’s all goodness, trusting, forgiving, all love. It’s difficult because you think, “gosh, how can I play a character that is this spiritual and loving and pure?” Then I kind of realised that the way into her was through her love for her children. I thought if I do that then that’s the key of finding of who she is. That’s where I started. Also I watched a lot of movies from the 1930’s and 40’s that Terrence Malick asked me to watch, I watched a lot of Lauren Bacall, he asked me to because there was a different way of talking back then. Terry said to me, which I find is true, and which I do a lot, the way we speak nowadays, we speak so fast because we’re afraid someone is going to cut us off, so we talk kind of rambling (laughs). But if you watch movies from the 40’s and 30’s there’s this confidence and directness, it’s very slow how they speak, which is actually the way Terry speaks in real life, he speaks very slow and direct, you don’t expect it to take as long as it takes (laughs), but you’re listening to every word. Those were the places that I started. I got to work with Terry about three months before we started shooting, I went to visit him a couple times. I had to cultivate a grace within myself, which meant a lot of meditating, a lot of reading about the spirit.

How was it portraying that grace?

Jessica Chastain: It was tough, in a way sometimes it was like acting with a straight jacket on, there’s these scenes where Mr. O’Brien, Brad Pitt, would be doing something that’s not necessarily the most generous or kind, especially to the boys. And me being who I am in the film, I just wanted to go up to him and say, “stop!” Because a lot of it, a lot of the movie, the way we filmed is so…..Terry would give us the lines, but then he’d also add lines as we’re filming, then also you’re encouraged to do want you want to do.

Making the film it was a huge lesson in completely letting go of control, of what you expect an outcome to be. That was a great lesson that I took away from the film, absolutely being in the moment when acting. With Terry you can’t plan any moment, there’s a section where a butterfly lands on my hand, it’s not on the script, we didn’t put anything on my hand to make it land there, he creates a set where he allows for those moments to happen.

In that it was evolving in captured moments, when you saw the film what surprised you most about it?

Brad Pitt: I was surprised first off all by the structure, I thought it was quite ingenious. This marriage with the micro and the macro I found most interesting, he tells this micro story of this family in this small town in Texas. Then that’s juxtaposed with the macro of the birth of the cosmos, cells splitting. I find that quite extraordinary, there seems to be some parallel truths in that.

What attracted you to the story?

Brad Pitt: We were already on board as producers. One of the unfortunate things about this business is that sometimes great stories have a great difficulty getting made, even when there are people involved like Terry Malick. We’ve witnessed a lot of really strong scripts go by the way-side and not get made. We wanted to ensure this one did, so I jumped in.

I was a little hesitant about playing the oppressive father, but I felt like the story was so important….and to me really about the kids journey. I think about everything I do now, what my kids are gonna see, how they’re gonna feel. But I think they know me as a Dad, I hope they would just think I’m a pretty damn good actor (laughs).

How do you pick your roles? You seem to pick these meatier character studies.

Brad Pitt: Like the film itself, you want to discover, you want it to be about something, you want to find something new, I always have. I want to find something different, that’s been my focus. Also about 10 years ago I started thinking about what my favourite films, they weren’t the big commercial things, they were things that had a little more depth, things that had bigger questions, or were REALLY REALLY funny. I do like a comedy. There’s some great comedy coming out of America right now, Zach Galifiankis, Jonah Hill and Danny McBride. But the point of it for me is to keep messing it up. I figure there’s only so many more of these I’ll get to do and I wanna make sure it has some worth to me, and it has some more worth out there than that is something that is disposable.