The furious way that the beautiful free flowing style which Terrence Malick has curated over his career is talked about often disguises the fact that he has made just four features and one (some people say two), rare as hens teeth, shorts. So, after only a hand full of features in 37 years what is it about the director that has celluloid lovers chomping at the bit.
Until very recently there were only 2 published interviews with the modest director in existence and only a handful of photographs. His stubbornness with the press is legendary. His Tom Sawyer like trademark themes of innocents somehow lost within harsh mother nature, the beautifully paced editing and pitch perfect scores, his poetic and naturalistic voice overs and consistently jaw dropping cinematography has helped the film maker achieve a level of awe and mystery perhaps only reserved on a comparable level for one Stanley Kubrick.
The the differences between the two directors way’s of working of course, couldn’t be further apart. Pardon the comparison (I’d hope Malick wouldn’t mind) but If Kubrick was Sculptor then Malick is, absolutely an impressionist painter.
Lanton Mills, a 12 minute short which the auteur has had banished to the depths of the AFI library, the only place where it is still available to watch and where Malick studied after a short run teaching philosophy at MIT. It stars Harry Dean Stanton, Warren Oats and, oddly, Malick himself, as two Texan cowboys who head to a modern American city to rob a bank on horseback. An image which, in a way blunt way, encapsulates the director’s almost obsessive outsider theme which is apparent though all his features and even his own career.
In his time studying film Malick worked as a re-write man and helped shape, among others, an original script for Dirty Harry with Irvin Kershner at a time when Brando was slated for the role of Harry Callahan. A far cry from the script Malick would soon pen for himself.
His first feature Badlands (undoubtedly one of the greatest debuts ever made) sees Bonnie and Clyde style outlaws Kit and Holly on the run from the law, straight into the desolate heart of America. In the drop dead gorgeous Days of Heaven, it’s a steel worker and his girl who run away to hide on a farm in the wheat belt; More outcasts hiding in nature. The Thin Red Line goes a step further and looks at mother nature and man made horror living side by side; It’s characters delivering their pondering musings on both topics in multiple voice overs. Malick’s most recent offering, The New World retells a story of love between, man in a foreign land, Captain Smith and (an unnamed) Pocahontas; Once again, something alien and native to their surroundings living together.
After Badlands Malick started to develop, what Jim Caviezel would call, his painters way of directing; He scrapped the conventional ’set up/shoot/print’ way of working and began, on Days of Heaven (and every subsequent film) to encourage an almost improvisational shooting style and a tendency to leave as much of the written script as possible in the bin, which has often ran his footage into the ‘millions of feet’ territory. On The New World Malick even went as far as drawing up a Dogme’95 style set of rules which encouraged second filming units to “wander off and experiment”. It’s this free form approach, especially in the editing room which has caused Malick some serious problems in studio world.
Not even taking into consideration his obviously challenging transcendental, overtly philosophical unhollywood themes and literary quirks that run through his films, it’s Malick’s notoriously long shoots and ’slowness’ on set that has left him with as many detractors in the studios as he has devotees in the cinema. Actors too have often been left gritting their teeth on the wayside. Billy Bob Thornton infamously delivered three and a half hours of voice over for The Thin Red Line only to have all of it left on the cutting room floor; Gary Oldman, Viggo Mortenson, Mickey Rourke and Martin Sheen all suffering the same fate during the films massive post production period.
What was left of course remains perhaps the ultimate (and most beautiful) feature set during, but not really about, war. Shunned by the academy and most cineplex audiences as “too arty” at the time of it’s release, the film has since gained a monumental reputation and still remains, for me, to this day, one of my favorite cinema experiences.
Is Malick’s resistance to a conventional style of film making what draws people to him? It it his reluctance to discuss his films and his story telling that lets others build his myth as a film maker?; Perhaps most importantly though, is that all to change?
It must be noted that with the upcoming The Tree of Life, his career output is set to double; More films in the last twelve years than within the remainder of his career. Is Malick finally about to embrace his first real mainstream hit? Details (as always) are sketchy but the twittering-inter-blogosphere-world has joined forces into the shape of a massively geeked out sewing circle to gather the scraps. The film is a sprawling reworking of a script called Q which Malick had originally intended to be his third feature. A film about life in all forms to be set in India. Though after taking a year to edit and re-edit Days of Heaven he decided instead to take a 20 year hiatus, teaching in France.
The Tree of Life, reformed into the story of a young boy growing up in 1950’s Texas could not only be Malick’s most daring film to date it could certainly be his most personal. With Brad Pitt and Sean Penn starring and the simple plot leaving room for who knows what. With rumors of special effect mastermind Mike Fink bizarrely rendering dinosaurs (yup, dinosaurs) for the film (or rumor has it, perhaps an attached documentary) the mind boggles at what Malick is going to produce early next year… or quite possibly the year after… or the year after that…
Who knows… perhaps the cowboys will make it into town and finally rob the bank.
beccahutson
2 months, 2 weeks ago
What an interesting, enigma of a man. t is always refreshing, if only due to it’s rarity, to find a genius in a field so loathed to grab and grasp at the oxygen of publicity and posterity. The themes which run concurrently through his work seem particularly revealing, as does his reluctance to ‘make movies’ in the traditional ‘Hollywood way’, of a truly unique talent, a real auteur.
Great piece, thank you for bringing this incredible man to my attention.