Darwinism and the Impoverishment of Beauty

So far Terrence Malick's Tree of Life has divided reviewers in an interesting way. The film, which tells of a 1950s childhood in Waco, Texas, and cosmic beginnings and endings in the universe as a whole, won't open here in Seattle till Friday. However one gathers that Malick's epic has not only religious meaning but nods subtly, as several hostile critics have complained, to intelligent design.

"You have to ask if Malick is trying to make a case for intelligent design," muses Amy Taubin for