Thoughts on Terrence Malick

If one thought that all art had spent itself, that no-one made ambitious statements anymore, one only need take a cursory glance at the films of Terrence Malick. His films are imbued with allusiveness, beauty, ambition and technical mastery. Most of his films are of an emphatically grandiose ambition. He is certainly among my favourite directors and many others would concur that he is one of the very best alive. He has made just six films in the last forty-two years. He is a recluse, never grants interviews and steers clear from the public eye. His background initially was in academia, abandoning an Oxford PHD thesis on Heidegger to pursue a career in film.

There are parallels with Stanley Kubrick. Like Kubrick, Malick has a European technique coupled by an American sensibility and his films deal with deeply American subject matter. The cross-cutting, the dynamic camera work and tracking shots that characterise his films stand alongside far more comfortably with European cinema than American. Thematically, it is purely American and culled directly from its folklore. In many ways, he is the American equivalent to Andrei Tarkovsky or Robert Bresson. He creates films about spiritual transcendence coloured by the American landscape.

His first film, Badlands, was shot on a shoe-string budget and starred Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. It was based on a real event in the 1950s, where two adolescent lovers went on a killing spree after the young male killed his partner's father on a random act of impulse. They are both recalcitrant, almost psychotic youngsters who become embroiled in a murderous trek through the terrains of South Dakota. The simple narrative follows them travailing through these dry terrains, beautiful landscapes and Sheen's eventual death penalty.

The film is ravishing because of two reasons: its beautiful shots of landscapes and minor details, which enrich the film enormously, and the dialogue and relationships between the characters. It had a dramatic arc which would diffuse in Malick's subsequent films. The dialogue is pithy and sometimes becomes incongruously comic. They are both simple people from humble backgrounds and hardly stop to think about the moral implications of their actions. The film is narrated by Spacek's character in flowery, occasionally deadpan, prose. Malick's incredible camera work shines through especially well in a scene where both Sheen and Spacek contemplate the moon in a star-laden horizon. Many of these shots were not scripted and Malick captured them with both intuition and mastery.

Badlands, 1971

Seven years later came Days of Heaven, which was shot over an arduous period of two years. It takes place in American plains and Malick and his crew patiently waited for dusk to shoot astonishing takes of flames and saturated, orange-hued horizons. Malick only shot the film in early morning and early evening and Malick patiently observed the surroundings to capture the right takes. In terms of cinematography, it manages to surpass his debut. There is a startling scene of a herd locusts rising in the sky, shot with meticulous detail and bravura.

The drama, as a whole, is nothing special. Set during the depression, it follows a love triangle between a couple who pretend to be brother and sister to ingratiate themselves with the owner of the ranch. The owner takes a liking to the girl and they marry, resulting in a turbulent relationship between all parties. The narrative is a mere backdrop to the astonishing visuals on display. 

This film once more demonstrates Malick's gift of finding beauty in minutia. Mundane acts, such as eating or brushing one's hair, are shot with such lyricism that they acquire a further layer of beauty. Many things we take for granted in our daily lives - landscapes, routine - are remonstrated as something far more meaningful.

Days of Heaven, 1978

Twenty years would pass until his next feature, which I would consider to be his best, The Thin Red Line. It featured a star studded cast led by Sean Penn. Following this film, Malick's work became more elliptical. Now his films consisted of an unceasing montage of image and sound. It is a second world war film, following the treacherous battle of American troops against the Japanese in the South Pacific. 

It is a very literary film, following multiple perspectives and interior thoughts. It is very dynamic both because of its multiple perspectives and because of the beautiful, swaying camera which veers and rotates around these wrenching battles. The perspective alternates between the soldiers, who see the battles with anxiety; the natives, who feel intruded upon; and the army officers who have an implacable thirst for battle. Like Kubrick's Paths of Glory, Malick sees these kinds of military ventures as immoral and as needless loss of life. The film hardly results in easy viewing, the level of bloodshed being stratospheric, but the dynamic way in which Malick approaches the material transcends the viewer in a way few such war films do. It came out around the same time as Saving Private Ryan and identified itself as its more intelligent art-house cousin.

Now drama and narrative flair became of little importance to Malick. The images were now accompanied by cryptic poetic epigrams. Cinematography and narrative now became dislocated. The montage of visuals stretched for long periods, with apparent disregard for narrative or character development.

The Thin Red Line, 1998

Following The Thin Red Line, certain people thought that Malick had become self-parodical, a cheap imitation of his former glories. This was the criticism some leveled at The New World (which I haven't seen). It was also what some people said about the otherwise acclaimed The Tree of Life. This was his most ambitious film to date, attempting to scale heights few people dare aspire towards. It followed the origins of the cosmos in counterpoint to the family life of a Christian family (drawn from Malick's own childhood). Malick shoots hours and hours of footage and what we see is the cream of it. The epigrams which featured in The Thin Red Line reappear, this time voicing Christian reverence and belief. These can often sound platitudinous at times and I am sure swathes of people dismissed the film as high-minded humorless nonsense. Whatever its failures, its technical brilliance is a true sight to behold.

To the Wonder came only a year or so later. It featured the more cringe-inducing aspects of Tree of Life and, for the first time in Malick's career, its release fell to an indifferent silence. I saw it at a cinema and I was agog by it. (By all means, if you ever get to see a Malick film in a cinema, do so.) The shots of cathedrals, coasts, meadows are sumptuous to see in the big screen. Semantically, the film says pretty trite things about 'love'.

For all these later releases, Malick shoots hours and hours of footage. When it comes to editing, he leaves huge star actors out of the film. (Many have since stated that they will never work with him again.) Although Malick works with star actors, I see him approaching them the same way Bresson approached his 'models.' He does not use them as actors, he uses them as mere bodies to be framed within his visual paintings.

So, is all that he does now is navel-gazing? I think not. Malick is a master, who makes spiritual films that reconfigure the quotidian into great beauty. Let's thank our lucky stars he is around.