This is the seventh entry in my Director Profile series.
ABOUT TERRENCE MALICK
In my not-so-favorable review of Miranda July’s The Future, I described July as a “take it or leave it” filmmaker; an artist that people tend to wholly embrace or find horribly grating. There’s very little middle ground. Either you like what Miranda July does, or you don’t. Another such auteur is likely Terrence Malick, a filmmaker whose work is famous for its emphasis on visuals and beauty over plot and character. If someone were to go on a 20 minute anti-Malick rant, I likely would be hard-pressed to retort without going into overly-snotty territory. Few people can argue that Malick doesn’t achieve what he sets out to each and every time. If it’s not your taste, so be it. You’re not wrong.
Malick’s oeuvre is fascinating to examine for several reasons. First, he has not made a great many films, but those he has made have been widely studied and dissected to the point of insanity. His first film came in 1973, and it was entitled Badlands. This year saw the release of the highly anticipated The Tree of Life, which is Malick’s fifth film. For those keeping score, that is five films over the course of 38 years. (Much of this is due to the 20 year hiatus between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.) In that time, android Woody Allen has directed 40 films. As such, films scholars treat the release of a new Terrence Malick movie like an event matched only by the messiah’s second coming. (At long last, old uncle Terrence will bless us with two brand new hours of swooping cameras, orchestral music and poetic shots that allegedly add up to some greater meaning!) The big question when it comes to Malick’s filmography is this: does he have these grand statements in mind? Or is he just making everything up on the fly with little regard for a film’s ability to be comprehended? There’s enough evidence to support both positions.
In many ways, it may be most beneficial to view Malick’s filmography as a whole rather than as five separate films. However, I will do this profile the same as every other. The only exception: Henceforth I will no longer hand out career grades. The fact that I’m even writing about a filmmaker would hint at their importance.
THE FILMS
Badlands (1973)
For better or for worse, one of the trademarks of a Terrence Malick film is his tendency to keep his characters’ emotions at arm’s length. As a result, what may be a powerful, cathartic payoff in someone else’s film becomes something slightly colder and more distant in the hands of Malick. The question the viewer faces is whether or not this sense of aloofness Malick creates is an asset or a flaw. For many—myself included—this style only makes his films all the more powerful. While he often utilizes voiceover narration, he has little interest in getting inside the heads of certain characters. In the case of Badlands, there is no way to read the mind of Martin Sheen’s Kit Carruthers. He is a man who is willing to kill someone at the slightest suspicion they might betray him, and in any other film he’d be ripe for psychoanalysis. No such thing can be found here, and that makes the viewing experience fascinatingly problematic. In many ways, we are witnessing a murderous rampage as it would occur in real life; without a powerful soundtrack, slow motion or temper tantrums on the part of the killer. He just does it, and he doesn’t think about it.
It’s this kind of blatant disregard for the audience that makes a Malick film so compelling to writers and scholars. That he is able to directly challenge us yet compel us is a phenomenon that few can adequately explain. There comes a moment in the film when Sheen places two passers-by in a cellar and then shoots through a hole in the door. We never find out if he actually hits them—Kit and his young lover Holly (Sissy Spacek) run away before they can get an answer to that question—and that is what makes that sequence haunting. It all just happens, completely devoid of the flashy cinematics seen in even the best movies. As the audience watches this all unfold through the eyes of Holly, we observe a madman who doesn’t really seem all that mad. In fact, if you were to walk down the street and run into a man like Kit you likely wouldn’t think twice about it. That is a far more horrifying thought than seeing Hannibal Lecter and thinking “yeah, that guy’s nuts.” By making Badlands as strange and flat as possible, he makes it all the more haunting. At any moment, the girl next door could run off with a madman, and she wouldn’t even know what she was getting herself into.
(Grade: A)
Days of Heaven (1978)
If there is a Malick film I wasn’t able to completely get behind, it is likely Days of Heaven. While I appreciate it as art (there is not a person on Earth who could argue against the fact that it is visually stunning), I don’t think it is a stretch to say that much is lost when it is viewed on, say, a computer screen. I’d imagine if I sat down in a dark theater—in an environment where nothing exists between my eyes and Malick’s imagery—I would be climbing the nearest mountain and proclaiming my love for Days of Heaven. But alas, I could only borrow it from my local library and watch it while my dog was barking out the window at something or other. It probably doesn’t need to be said that some of the majesty is lost in that scenario. Am I in a situation where I can adequately judge Days of Heaven? Probably not, but as it is right now this is the only film where Malick’s “visuals first, story second” style truly irked me at times. While much of the film worked—the locust infestation sequence is all kinds of awesome—there were a handful of moments that just felt empty. Even by Malick standards.
If Malick has made one point over the course of his career, it’s that nature is a large, infinite thing and we mere humans are just a miniscule part. We may think we rule the world, but in reality we’re just visitors. What we do in this brief time is up to us. Days of Heaven is perhaps the most literal example of this, and the climactic infestation is an example of the visitors being ushered away when they are no longer wanted. Then at the center is a third-party narrator (Linda Manz) who likely views the central love triangle (between Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Sam Shepard) in the same way that Malick does: from afar. It may sound hypocritical for me to say that Malick’s coldness usually works, but not here. Heck, it is hypocritical, but that’s how I feel right now. Days of Heaven is a film I’ll need to see again one day, but right now I see it as the least of his works. Keep in mind, this is relatively speaking. Days of Heaven is fascinating stuff, if not always engaging.
(Exceptionally meaningless grade, subject to change: B)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
I wrote about The Thin Red Line here not too long ago, but this can best be described as the first film of the new Malick era. In his later years, he was somehow able to ramp up his ambition—and pretension—to even higher levels. Also, in a more transparent movie-making world, the sloppiness of Malick’s production methods started to be exposed to the public. Here is a film chock full of actors who could all (and have all) been the star of their own film, and in some cases Malick led them to believe that they were the leads. Yet when the final film was released, most of them were surprised to find that their roles were significantly cut down. In some cases, parts were almost completely removed. News from the film’s set confirmed that Malick is a director who spends production just capturing as much as he can, and only afterward does he try to create a cohesive whole. He’s a man who likely knows what he’s searching for; it just takes him a really, really long time to find it.
Yet The Thin Red Line is an example of Malick’s tendency to challenge narrative norms paying off in spades. It takes the story of a group of soldiers fighting in Guadalcanal and attempts to make it not just the definitive World War II movie, but the definitive war movie. It is without a clear beginning, middle and end because mankind’s desire for conflict lacks a beginning, middle and end. It takes a three-hour snapshot of war and lets the audience do the rest of the heavy lifting. Where past Malick films have restricted voiceover narration to a single person, The Thin Red Line’s point of view is far more omniscient. It takes us inside the minds of most every soldier as they force themselves into battle even when it is the last thing they desire. Yet the over-crowdedness never becomes annoying. If anything, the film’s saturation with big-name stars only drives home Malick’s point: there are a million different movies going on here. This is just what he’s decided to show you.
(Grade: A)
The New World (2005)
Malick has never been much for subtlety, but he is always looking to tone down extraneous melodrama whenever possible. If other filmmakers were to depict the Pocahontas story, they likely would make it so that the characters somehow seemed aware of their own historical significance. The entire story would be about love and how awesome it is and how it conquers all and whatnot, but Malick (as usual) does not approach The New World looking to exclusively tell the story of John Smith (Colin Farrell), Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) and John Rolfe (Christian Bale). If anything, he wants to stress just how unimportant this relationship ultimately is. Malick’s admiration of the Earth and all its foliage can easily be seen here, and he spends the film stressing—through the use of his stunning-as-usual visuals—how the world is actually much bigger than the story of these three lovebirds. As the English explorers arrive, they are facing a land that is completely unknown and mostly unsoiled by their hands. The New World is the story of how they began to contaminate it, and it is done through Pocahontas. Those expecting Malick to tell one of history’s great love stories were disappointed; he has something far more tragic in mind here.
Many have cited The New World as an example of Malick’s coldness as an artist, and how he refuses to engage with the emotions of his characters. Some (including composer James Horner) have stated that Malick is unable to comprehend such human feelings as “love.” Perhaps this is true, but Malick’s films have never intended to be about love or anything like it. If anything they are about how the feelings of the characters fit into a larger picture. Those bemoaning his inability to tell an emotional story are asking him to make a different film than the one he intended. He is always looking to make something completely different, and as a result his films will forever be divisive and occasionally frustrating. Also, he is going to make production as maddening for his actors and collaborators as possible. (“Hey, Colin. Sorry to interrupt but I’d like to get a 30-second shot of this wren over here. Oooh, and is the water rippling over there? Score!”) He is nothing if not a man with a vision, but it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears for him to discover what he’s looking for.
(Grade: A-)
The Tree of Life (2011)
(Review here.) Essentially a 138-minute journey into Malick’s stream of consciousness, The Tree of Life is as unconventional and fascinating a film as will come out in this or any year. It is no more and no less than a meditation on the meaning of life, and just why things happen the way they do. This is undoubtedly the most personal film Malick has made, but it is also his most ambitious. How people react to this ambition is up to them. The film begins with a tragedy and then journeys into the memory of Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) as he ponders the origin of the universe and just where he and his family fit in, if at all. Judging by his films, Malick is a man who spends much of his time sitting around and bemoaning the fact that he is just a single man existing in a freaking huge universe. To him and Jack, there absolutely has to be a reason for it all, right? And for there to be a reason, wouldn’t that imply that there’s a heaven waiting on the other side?
The Tree of Life is a religious film without ever being about a specific religion. It is about one family but also about every family. There is not a person alive who has not experienced a loss, or—on the flip side—the birth of a new life. In each of these circumstances, it is natural to reflect on why you are so lucky… or so cursed. The Tree of Life touches on all of these ideas in fascinating and moving ways; in a way that is always stimulating and never boring. It is undoubtedly a challenging film—it demands that the audience pay attention and evaluate every moment, even when it illustrates the entire history of the universe—but those who allow themselves to engage with it will be rewarded when all is said and done. Roger Ebert has wisely likened The Tree of Life to a prayer, and I can think of no better analogy. Like a prayer, it reflects on all that has happened and all that will come; all while dreaming about an afterlife that may or may not exist.
(Grade: A)
IN SUMMATION:
There are only two real possibilities. Either Terrence Malick is a genius and one of the greatest directors of our time, or he is full of crap and we tend to look for more in his films than is really there. If you think The Tree of Life is just a collection of images that doesn’t really add up to anything, it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to convince you otherwise. However, I think The Tree of Life is the most character-driven film he’s ever made, and for once the major events in his protagonist’s life don’t feel like they are being dealt with at arm’s length. For the most part, Malick is a man who makes films for different reasons than just about everybody else. Multiple times he has taken what could have (and maybe should have) been a simple story and tried to tell something much larger in scope. He doesn’t know how to do anything small or modest, and while that may annoy some, I find that to be Malick’s most admirable trait. We have enough filmmakers just trying to get by; there need to be a few crazies to keep things exciting. It saddens me to think of a world where Malick isn’t spending three years in post-production, looking for that perfect shot of grass blowing in the wind.
Past (and probably poorly-written) Director Profiles:
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