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Terrence Malick Beyond Nature And Grace: Song To Song And The Experience Of Forgiveness, Elisa Zocchi

Journal of Religion & Film

In The Tree of Life Terrence Malick poses the question of the relation between the order of grace and the order of nature in the cosmos and in human existence, a question presented through the relation of mother and father in the O'Brien family. The aim of this article is to analyze this issue and to present the role of glory in The Tree of Life as the transfiguration of nature operated by grace. Specifically, the example of forgiveness as one strand of this glory seems to be an helpful tool to understand the movie. Forgiveness, already present in The …