Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Filming Reconciliation: Affect And Nostalgia In The Tree Of Life, M. Gail Hamner
Filming Reconciliation: Affect And Nostalgia In The Tree Of Life, M. Gail Hamner
Journal of Religion & Film
This paper uses the affect theory of Gilles Deleuze, Raymond Williams, and Lauren Berlant, and the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to examine how affect constellates to film Christian reconciliation in Terrence Malick’s 2011 release, The Tree of Life. As a working shorthand, we can understand affect as the fungible set of bodily processes that affirm, sear, or reshape a body’s and society’s relational structures. I contend that the film’s fluid montage—analyzed with Deleuzian film theory—generates a non-reactionary nostalgia that binds Christian theological hope to the persistent melancholy of loss through the blurring of perception, memory, dream, and fantasy. Such blurring …