The mystery of Terrence Malick | Little White Lies

The mys­tery of Ter­rence Malick

03 May 2011

Words by Martyn Conterio

A man with a straw hat, sunglasses, and a denim shirt holding a video camera on a film set.
A man with a straw hat, sunglasses, and a denim shirt holding a video camera on a film set.
How has the Illi­nois native main­tained his mon­u­men­tal rep­u­ta­tion over the course of his long and elu­sive career?

Is there a more mys­te­ri­ous film­mak­er alive today than Ter­rence Mal­ick? For a direc­tor active dur­ing the Easy Riders/​Raging Bulls era of auteur-led 1970s Amer­i­can cin­e­ma he is a vague, near invis­i­ble pres­ence, yet his rep­u­ta­tion is monumental.

Since Bad­lands in 1973, there have been three more fea­ture films with a fifth about to be released (The Tree of Life) and a sixth in the can. Malick’s is a slen­der body of work. He hasn’t spo­ken to the press for near­ly 40 years and refus­es all inter­view requests. In 2007, he was coaxed out of the shad­ows to appear at the Rome Film Fes­ti­val, where he gave a short talk on his favourite Ital­ian films. The stip­u­la­tion being he would not talk about his own.

The myth of Ter­rence Mal­ick has grown steadi­ly and more so since he began work­ing again. A 21-year gap exists between Days of Heav­en and The Thin Red Line, released in 1999. His return was greet­ed with enthu­si­asm and award nom­i­na­tions. Yet the lat­ter World War Two-set pic­ture is a lan­guid work lack­ing nar­ra­tive focus. Only the ros­ter of stars used to prop up its main­stream appeal caus­es dis­trac­tion – a stip­u­la­tion of 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox in cough­ing up more than half the bud­get was the inclu­sion of famous faces, and plen­ty of big name actors want­ed to work with Mal­ick whether they made final cut or not.

In place of usu­al sol­dier types we get poets and philoso­phers. In this world, a man, him­self, is noth­ing. And there ain’t no world but this one,” observes exis­ten­tial­ist Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn). Lat­er he also tells a fel­low GI that he only ever feels lone­ly around peo­ple. The counter-point to Welsh is Pri­vate Witt (Jim Caviezel), a man who expe­ri­ences the world around him on more spir­i­tu­al terms. I’ve seen anoth­er world. Some­times I think it was just my imag­i­na­tion.” They are pecu­liar GIs for an audi­ence to deal with.

Poet­ic voiceover is anoth­er firm ele­ment and fea­tures heav­i­ly in The Thin Red Line and 2005’s The New World. What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land con­tend with the sea? Is there an aveng­ing pow­er in nature?” The Thin Red Line, in part, is the sto­ry of the world under the fir­ma­ment of man-made chaos and the spir­i­tu­al strug­gle endured by its char­ac­ters on a vari­ety of emo­tion­al and intel­lec­tu­al lev­els. It has very lit­tle to do with the orig­i­nal source mate­r­i­al pro­vid­ed by James Jones’ novel.

Added to this is the beguile­ment of cin­e­ma itself to com­mu­ni­cate ideas on inner expe­ri­ence. The word mag­ic is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Mal­ick, but what is actu­al­ly con­jured? One can eas­i­ly suc­cumb to their pho­to­graph­ic beau­ty but the real mag­ic lies under­neath – more so than pret­ty pic­tures and poet­ic dialogue.

The Thin Red Line often coun­ters typ­i­cal scenes of con­flict with war’s effect on non-human sub­jects: a tiny bird strug­gles for life; snake nav­i­gates through long grass con­front­ed with a sol­dier in its path; a pic­ture post­card hill­side is reduced to vol­leys of dirt by a suc­ces­sion of bombs. While rumours sug­gest that Mal­ick put togeth­er a much longer cut, at just over two-and-a-half hours, the the­atri­cal ver­sion is curi­ous­ly rud­der­less. Char­ac­ters come and go, strong nar­ra­tive plot points are few and far between, the cap­ture of the hill as an objec­tive inter­sect­ed with the per­son­al tur­moil of the soldiers.

After anoth­er hia­tus, Mal­ick returned in 2005 with The New World, his inter­pre­ta­tion of the meet­ing of Poc­a­hon­tas and John Smith. Inno­cence in Malick’s work reap­pears as a major theme and is very pro­nounced here. It’s not just a clash of cul­tures occur­ring between natives and colo­nial­ists but a clash of real­i­ties. Poc­a­hon­tas suf­fers for her choic­es and grow­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. She is forced to aban­don and dis­con­nect her­self from her old ways and becomes an object of curios­i­ty for Europeans.

It is a trag­ic sto­ry and per­haps Malick’s best after Bad­lands. Inter­est­ing­ly, both fea­ture young girls whose con­fu­sion is played upon by old­er men. The film exists in three dif­fer­ent cuts giv­en the director’s tin­ker­ing, even after its ini­tial the­atri­cal release. The DVD edi­tion is yet anoth­er version.

The influ­ence of philoso­pher Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger on Mal­ick has been com­ment­ed upon but no major study exists to explore to what extent. Mal­ick stud­ied at Har­vard, Oxford and lat­er the Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute and trans­lat­ed Heidegger’s The Essence of Rea­sons’. Per­haps it is too uncom­fort­able for some to align an adored film­mak­er with a Nazi philoso­pher. But it’s per­haps an influ­ence amongst many. FW Murnau’s Sun­rise and City Girl are clear film influences.

Next up is The Tree of Life, star­ring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jes­si­ca Chas­tain, now set to receive its world pre­mière at the 64th Cannes Film Fes­ti­val lat­er this month after a very pub­lic fias­co between the film’s respec­tive UK and US dis­trib­u­tors. The Bur­ial, which may or may not be its actu­al title, stars Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck and Javier Bar­dem and is in post-pro­duc­tion. Mal­ick might also give us a first: a con­tem­po­rary set­ting, but noth­ing is known of the project for certain.

Could Bad­lands have crip­pled Mal­ick by being pitch-per­fect? Maybe he finds film­mak­ing itself too much of an endurance test to work con­tin­u­ous­ly or he just needs to find mate­r­i­al to real­ly sink his teeth into. There is no argu­ing the beau­ty and pow­er of his films but there’s an under­cur­rent of indecisiveness.

Each film, curi­ous­ly, feels like an obit­u­ary. Death is always present, be it the death of time, life, expe­ri­ence or inno­cence and all that it cre­ates and leaves behind. Can Mal­ick get cin­e­ma to encap­su­late inner and out­er expe­ri­ence suc­cess­ful­ly? Is it capa­ble of such depth? Can it be as com­plex as a nov­el such as James Joyce’s Ulysses’ or a philo­soph­i­cal tract?

What makes Malick’s film­mak­ing career so strik­ing is that each of his fea­ture film’s are acces­si­ble to wider audi­ences despite con­tain­ing com­plex the­mat­ic under­cur­rents. Still, there’s major work to be done on the study of Malick’s cin­e­ma and his con­tin­ued silence only fur­ther intrigues. He’s con­tent to allow the work to speak for itself with­out giv­ing the world a run­ning com­men­tary and destroy­ing the magic’.

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