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’.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.