Movie Review: A Hidden Life

A Hidden Life **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Terrence Malick.

Written by: Terrence Malick. 

Starring: August Diehl (Franz Jägerstätter), Valerie Pachner (Franziska Jägerstätter), Michael Nyqvist (Bishop Joseph Fliessen), Matthias Schoenaerts (Herder), Jürgen Prochnow (Major Schlegel), Bruno Ganz (Judge Lueben), Alexander Fehling (Fredrich Feldmann), Ulrich Matthes (Lorenz Schwaninger), Karl Markovics (Mayor), Franz Rogowski (Waldlan), Tobias Moretti (Vicar Ferdinand Fürthauer), Martin Wuttke (Major Kiel), Max Mauff (Sterz), Johan Leysen (Ohlendorf), Dimo Alexiev (Dino), Leo Baumgartner (Toni Strohhofer), Ulrich Brandhoff (Captain Jürgen), Konrad Hochgruber (Gänshänger), Moritz Katzmair (Prisoner Martin), Waldemar Kobus (Stein), Thomas Mraz (Prosecutor Lars), Karin Neuhäuser (Rosalia), Johannes Nussbaum (Josef), Alexander Radszun (Sharp Judge), Nicholas Reinke (Father Moericke), Sophie Rois (Aunt), Ermin Sijamija (Ermin), Maria Simon (Resie), Benno Steinegger (Corporal Grimm). 

 

Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life is the most complicated depiction of Christianity on film since Martin Scorsese’s Silence a few years ago. It always frustrates me when I hear people complain that Hollywood doesn’t make films for Christians – and then when they do, if they aren’t the easily digestible, pats on the back that most “Christian” movies are – but serious ones, that ask serious questions of those with faith, they are ignored. Malick has always been a Christian filmmaker – his films are infused with his Christian ideals from the start, and yet A Hidden Life may be his most overtly religious film. It also feels like a film that although it took place 80 years ago, is tailor made for the here-and-now. Malick isn’t interested in comforting people in this film – but confronting them.

 

The film tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), who isn’t a name you are going to read in any history books, and that is precisely the point. The film opens on his almost impossibly idyllic farm in the Austrian mountains – where Franz lives with his beautiful, loving wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner), their adorable children, his mother and sister-in-law. The farm looks very much the image of paradise – the beautiful green grass, the rolling hills, the mountains in the distance, etc. The small nearby town is quant, and full of brotherly love and good cheer. Everyone here works hard – but they don’t complain. The treat the earth right, and are treated right in return. Franz is living a completely unremarkable life – but a completely contented life – and isn’t that kind of the whole point?

 

But with Hitler’s rise to power, it complicates things. He is called in for basic training, and goes, and then is sent home again to be with his family. While there, he hears more and more about what is happening – the murder of innocents, the racist Nationalism disguised as patriotism (sound familiar?), etc. – and determines that if called to serve, he will not be able to do so. The town turns against him and his family – he is called a traitor, and is ostracized. His own mother cannot understand his position, his sister-in-law questions it – even the local Priest and Bishop, who are extremely sympathetic to his point-of-view, do not fully support him. There may be an out – he may be able to simply work in a hospital during the war, instead of fighting. How can he object to that? Because it still requires him to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler – and that he simply cannot do.

 

There are many remarkable things about Malick’s film – but perhaps the most remarkable from a story perspective is how Malick makes it clear that Jägerstätter does what he does, knowing the whole time it will not make a difference – will not really benefit anyone. No one hears about his story, it doesn’t inspire others to stand up to Hitler. He’s facing death – the ultimate sacrifice – and abandoning his family in doing so, and for what? It won’t help anything – but he has to do it anyway. His faith will not allow him to bend, to compromise. Malick is confronting us with that question – it is easy to stand up when they’re aren’t consequences, perhaps even easy to do when you doing so will make a difference. But simply doing the right thing because you must, even if it benefits no one is hard. Jägerstätter lived a hidden life – and it largely remains hidden, because it’s not an overly dramatic story.

 

Malick, then, is the right filmmaker for this material. Really, this is his first time returning to a true kind of narrative filmmaking since 2005’s The New World – his last few films have drifted and glided along, telling paper thin stories, that are really more about images and emotions, than narrative and character. I know many disliked To the Wonder, Knight of Cups and Song to Song (and outside of festival, which is where I saw it, did anyone even see Voyage of Time – did it ever actually come out?) – but while I will say they are the weakest in Malick’s filmography – they are still wonderful in their own way. In A Hidden Life, Malick shoots much of the film in the same style – the camera gliding, and swooping down on the characters from all angles – sometimes in close-up, sometimes not. The whispers voice-overs are still there as well – and the absolutely beautiful imagery, sound design and music. Even if you didn’t know who directed the film, it wouldn’t take more than a minute to figure it out.

 

Some (many) will then complain about the film. They will find it too long (at nearly three hours), or feel that any film about Nazis shouldn’t be this beautiful, or that any films about evil Nazis that barely mentions the Holocaust, and shows none of it, is irresponsible. None of that holds much water with me – Malick depends on you knowing that Nazis are evil, and what they are doing. The film is beautiful, in part, to show the sacrifice that Jägerstätter is really making by living his idyllic world for no reason (and to contrast his old life, with the misery of life in jail). To me, the film became an almost overwhelming experience. This is Malick not quite at his best (I don’t think it’s quite the film Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World or The Tree of Life are) – but pretty darn close. It is an overtly political film, an overtly religious film – more so than every before. It still does address Malick’s many pet themes – it shares with The Thin Red Line its view of war as the ultimate violation of man’s covenant with god – and nature. I wouldn’t quite call it a return to form for Malick – because I liked his recent films more than most. But it’s still his best in a while – and one that I hope people will actually go and see. It says a lot about humanity – both in the past, and in the here and now.

Movie Review: Song to Song

Song to Song **** / *****

Directed by: Terrence Malick.

Written by: Terrence Malick.

Starring: Rooney Mara (Faye), Ryan Gosling (BV), Michael Fassbender (Cook), Natalie Portman (Rhonda), Cate Blanchett (Amanda), Lykke Li (Lykke), Bérénice Marlohe (Zoey), Holly Hunter (Miranda), Patti Smith (Herself), Val Kilmer (Duane).

 

With Song to Song, Terrence Malick has made the best of his loosely related trilogy of films also including To the Wonder and Knight of Cups. While the films all pale in comparison to the five films – Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World and The Tree of Life – but are still films that only Malick could have, or would have, made. I know and sympathize with the directors fans who would rather him do something more narratively based again – with those say that he has now completely devolved into self-parody and navel gazing. No, I take that back – fuck those people. The more I see of this style from Malick, the more I like it – perhaps Song to Song isn’t really the best of the three most recent films (not counting his doc, Voyage of Time) but that because I’ve seen the last two films, I better knew what to expect this time, and how to watch the film. The film is far from perfect – it is flawed to be sure, and repetitive, but it is an honest attempt by a great artist of reaching out and interacting with the world around him – one he doesn’t fully understand. I too, would love to see Malick make something as brilliant – as perfect – as Badlands or The Thin Red Line again. But I also don’t mind when Malick does something like this.

 

Song to Song takes place in Austin, in the middle of the music scene. No, the music scene in Austin is nothing like this – and I feel confident in saying this, even though I have never been to Austin, or been a part of any scene. It doesn’t matter. The main character is Fate (Rooney Mara) – a natural for Malick’s style (t’s easily the best performance in these trilogy of films) – a singer/songwriter of some kind (he never learn what kind) – who falls for another musician – BV (Ryan Gosling), who has started to work with her boss, Cook (Michael Fassbender) – a music executive who seduces everyone, and destroys almost as many. The three of them become close – BV never knowing that Faye and Cook used to be something more than they are now. Eventually, things fall apart between all them as they often do. There are other lovers – Cook marries Rhonda (Natalie Portman) – then degrades and destroys her. BV dates the more high string Amanda (Cate Blanchatt). Faye dates a French artist, Zooey (Berenice Marlohe). The narrative brings all of these people low – both figuratively and literally (characters literally spend a lot of time lying down on floors in the second half of the film – not as upright in the beginning). The film is told in what has become known as Malick’s signature style in these films – a lot of repeated imagery, women seen from behind, the world seen over the shoulder of broad shouldered men, twilight hour beauty bumping into the cityscapes. Whispered voiceovers, and half heard conversation. There are fractured family connections and a rather old fashioned, Christian point-of-view, which doesn’t necessarily judge the characters for their digressions, but does show how it leads them down some dark paths.

 

If I like Song to Song more than To the Wonder or Knight of Cups, I think it’s because the characters came more into focus for me in this one. Ben Affleck is a (deliberate) blank in To the Wonder, which is really more the story of his wife (Olga Kurylenko, brilliant in that film) who is destroyed by her marriage to him. Christian Bale plays an empty shell of a person in Knight of Cups, who drifts from one meaningless relationship to the next – it’s fascinating, but it’s hard to care for him. Here, you do care for, at least, the two main female characters. Portman has less screen time than Mara, but she delivers one of the best performances of her career as Rhonda – the teacher/waitress with a big smile and light in her eyes when she meets Cook – and is bowled over by him. He almost cannot take her joy, and destroys her – something Portman makes clear by the end. Mara is the main character, and one hopes she’ll work with Malick again – he knows precisely what to do with her strange onscreen quality. This is another performance where she makes the case that she’s one of the best currently working – her Faye is a confused, searching mess – drifting from one thing to the next, not as an empty shell, like Knight of Cups, but in a legitimate search. Fassbender is also a Malick natural – he was told to base his character on Satan, and he is able to show that through his physical premise. I’m not sure I want to see a return Malick engagement for Gosling – who skill is often verbal, which isn’t really of use to Malick, although it is fun to imagine this movie is what his La Land character was up between the time Stone left him and he opened his club in L.A..

 

No, this movie isn’t perfect. Not every interlude works – in this case, I really don’t know what purpose Blanchett’s character serves. She is, as always, gorgeous, and Malick knows how to shoot her at her best, but that whole subplot dragged. As with the previous two films as well, the film grows repetitive – showing us things two or three (or four or five) times we didn’t need to see as often.

 

Yet, I also think that Malick working in this vein makes it impossible to make a “perfect” film – and we shouldn’t demand one from him. Nor should we try to fit him inside the box he clearly doesn’t want to be in. Malick’s recent trilogy of films are his most problematic, most inconsistent of his career. But isn’t it exciting to see a director in his 70s continue to push himself, continue to explore? If you don’t think it is, that says more about you than it does about him.

Movie Review: Voyage of Time: Life's Journey

Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey

Directed by: Terrence Malick. 

Written by: Terrence Malick.

Narrated by: Cate Blanchett.

 

Please Note: I saw this film at TIFF in September – and I saw the feature length (90 minutes) version of the film NOT the IMAX version which is opening today. I want to see that version as well, but figured there was no point in NOT posting my review of the version I saw since the film is going to be seen. I do not know when/if this feature length version will be released.

Is there a more divisive director among cinephiles right now than Terrence Malick? When he returned to filmmaking in 1998 with The Thin Red Line – after a 20 year absence – his return was celebrated and heralded, in part because The Thin Red Line is a masterpiece. He only took seven years off before making The New World (2005), and again, the reviews were overwhelming great. Six years later, there was The Tree of Life (2011) – his boldest film to date, a brilliant combination of the epic and the intimate – the history of the world, and the history of one family at the same time. While all of these films had their detractors, they were in the minority. But the ranks of detractors seems to be growing now with each new Malick film – and Malick is working quicker than ever. To the Wonder (2012) was a visual wonder, but narratively it was weaker than what he had done before. Knight of Cups (2016), was, again, visually wonderful, but perhaps even weaker as a narrative (I would argue more diffuse, and repetitive than To the Wonder – not worse, as I like Knight of Cups more). Both of those films, even to those of us who liked them (and I liked both, without loving either) seemed like extensions of The Tree of Life rather than distinct films on their own right. Malick had become increasing disinterested in things such as narrative and character – and concentrated on the poetic – both in terms on his imagery, and the voiceover narration – something that has always been a hallmark of his films, but he’s relied on more and more, while making those voiceovers more and more enigmatic in each film. It was probably only a matter of time before Malick made a film like Voyage of Time – a film that forgoes narrative and character altogether, in favor of his love for beautiful imagery – drawing the history of the world together in one 90 minute block. There is also a 45 minute version of this film (which I have not seen as of this writing) – done for IMAX theaters, and the basic word is that film is better, in part because its more straight forward and easily to understand (because Brad Pitt’s narration explains it). In this 90 minute version however, Cate Blanchatt’s narration barely explains a thing – in fact, it could best be described as nearly self-parody on Malick’s part that instead of explaining things, confuses them. I should say here that I don’t necessary see that as a bad thing.

 

Voyage of Time is like the dawn of the universe sequence in The Tree of Life, exploded for 25 minutes into 90, adding more narration about “Mother” (some concept of New Age, hippie Christian god I suppose), intercut with some scenes of modern day, who like in all of Malick’s films, struggle with their place in history – and in relation to nature. I think, in all honesty, it’s probably best to ignore much of those sequences – and even Blanchatt’s narration – which can be calming and hypnotic in its own right, especially if you focus on the sound of her voice, and not necessarily what she is saying. In terms of eye-popping visuals, Voyage of Time has more than any other film you will see this year – and that’s true even if, or perhaps especially when, you don’t really know what you are looking at.

 

The film is a visual wonder, as it recreates the creation of the world, eventual evolution – all the way until the Dawn of Man. Honestly, I think the film could have done with less Dawn of Man stuff – that segment of the movie, featuring actors in bad makeup, is almost goofy and unintentionally funny. And yet, almost everything until then is among the most beautiful visuals you will see in a movie theater. Some of it is standard, if gorgeous, nature photography – Malick spends a lot of time underwater, with magnificent sea creatures, but also shows erupting volcanoes, underwater lava, and the swirling cosmos through the film. If you come away from this film not being blown away by the visuals, I’m not sure what you were watching.

 

I think it’s easy to dismiss a film like this as New Age claptrap – and honestly, if I took the narration read by Blanchatt more seriously, perhaps I would. I would even venture that perhaps all the critics who have seen both versions of the film – and prefer the shorter, IMAX one may in fact be right – no matter how beautiful this film is, it undeniably also drags at times as well. Yet, I have to say that I’m glad a film like Voyage of Time exists – and that a director like Malick keeps pushing himself further into the non-narrative realm. After all, who the hell else is doing what Malick is doing? Ultimately, I do believe that Voyage of Time may be Malick’s least interesting film – I’m eager to see the IMAX version, but not necessarily rewatch this version any time too soon. Yet all those quibbles aside, Voyage of Time still remains a must-see film, by one of the most unique filmmakers of our time.

Movie Review: Knight of Cups

Knight of Cups

Directed by: Terrence Malick.

Written by: Terrence Malick.

Starring: Christian Bale (Rick), Cate Blanchett (Nancy), Natalie Portman (Elizabeth), Brian Dennehy (Joseph), Antonio Banderas (Tonio), Freida Pinto (Helen), Wes Bentley (Barry), Isabel Lucas (Isabel), Teresa Palmer (Karen), Imogen Poots (Della), Peter Matthiessen (Christopher), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Fr. Zeitlinger), Cherry Jones (Ruth).

 

Depending on who you listen to, Terrence Malick has either spent the last few films refining his style – continuing his bold move away from the restraints narrative and character, and into something altogether new and more spiritual, or else he has devolved into navel gazing, self-parody who has thrown out everything relatable and human in his movies to make empty exercises in style. His latest film, Knight of Cups, is not going to change anyone’s minds as to which position they have staked out. It is clearly a continuation from his masterpiece The Tree of Life (2011) and the more problematic To the Wonder (2012) – to complete a trilogy of self-exploration for Malick. He continues with the style he has been working with since his stunning debut, Badlands (1973), and refining ever since, stripping away things like narrative and dialogue, in favor of long, languid tracking shots, and whispered voiceover. The details of what the characters are talking about are unimportant to Malick, and he refuses to put them through a three act structure. What he is able to do though, is evoke the emotions of the characters. The film play like memories – the specifics of the argument, the party, the sex, involved is somewhat hazy – but we remember how it made us feel.

 

For a director so intensely private, he has certainly explored what biographical information we know of him in the last three films. The Tree of Life remains his masterpiece – one of the best films of the decade, a combination of the epic and intimate – exploring the history of the world, alongside the history of a single family (Malick’s). His follow-up, To the Wonder, worked best when it was exploring a failed marriage (again, Malick’s) – and the brief respite in the middle of the movie, when the male protagonist (Ben Affleck) is actually with a woman he loves – before trying with his wife, who he is ill-suited for, again. It stumbled in a subplot involving Javier Bardem as a priest, visiting the poor people in Oklahoma – which struck me as condescending, and I don’t think the connection between love and faith that he was striving for every really worked. Knight of Cups is set in present day Los Angeles, but is based on Malick’s time there as a screenwriter in the 1960s and 1970s – as he wonders from one party to the next, one beautiful woman to the next, looking more like a zombie than anything else. There are scenes of his family, and we recognize the character types that the father, mother and brother from The Tree of Life, just decades later, still repeating the same patterns.

 

The film stars Christian Bale as Rick, the screenwriter, who is in every scene of the movie, but doesn’t really seem to do much. Malick has often cast actors purely for their physical presence – sometimes aggravating them (Colin Farrell complained that Malick saw him as nothing more than a “fucking osprey” when filming The New World), but Bale (who co-starred in The New World), clearly gets what Malick wants, and delivers it. It’s not a great performance – it may not even be a performance at all, really – but it is perfect for what Malick is doing in the film. For that matter, so is the series of beautiful women who enter and leave Rick’s life. Often, the details of what happened, what went wrong, are left out – as he drifts from Imogen Poots’ wild child, to Frieda Pinto’s model, to Teresa Palmer’s stripper, to Natalie Portman’s married woman, the details of these women are lost in the film. That doesn’t even mention the various other women, who we often glimpse for just a few moments – sometimes naked, sometimes, not. The only one that comes close in Cate Blanchatt, playing Rick’s ex-wife, who is the only woman we really hear on the soundtrack, in those ethereal voiceovers, expressing her regrets (we get a little from Portman to, actually). I know some find Knight of Cups to be sexist – or at least clueless about women, and that’s fair enough – you cannot argue that Malick’s camera doesn’t see these women as beautiful objects, because it does. But that is also kind of the point, as Rick drifts from one to the next, without ever bothering to see them as real people. He’s an empty shell of a person, drifting from one experience to the next. Some of those experiences seem like fun – the parties, filled with celebrities, who often just enter the corner of the frame, and then move on, for example. But they are just an escape. Occasionally, his agents will show up and talk about money, and jobs – although we never see him working. His apartment is nearly empty – two robbers come in, and complain that they have more stuff in their place, and they’re poor. His family enters – his brother (Wes Bentley), angry, and trying to recover from a suicide attempt, his father (Brian Dennehy), stubborn and intractable, his mother (Cherry Jones), ethereal and fragile. Even in these scenes, Rick seems more like an observer than an active participant.

 

For about the first 90 minutes of this two hour movie, Knight of Cups works wonderfully, drawing a portrait of an empty man, leading a hollow life, where he should be happy, but clearly is not. The cinematography, by three time defending Oscar champ Emmanuel Lubezki (Lubezki is one of the best cinematographers in the world, but how the hell has he won three Oscars, and none of them for a Malick movie?), is wonderful. The film works – it gets to you, lulls you under its spell. But then, the movie repeats its cycle at least one too many times – its point has been made, perhaps already more than once, and then Malick belabors it a little bit, and the film sputters a little coming down the stretch. It regains a little for the very end of the film – which is really a beginning – but it does feel a little drawn out.

 

I do have sympathy for those who wish that Malick would go back to something more narrative based than his last few films. The Tree of Life maybe the best film of his career (it, at least comes close) – but To the Wonder and Knight of Cups are easily the least of his films. Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998) and The New World (2005), were all beautiful film, filled with stunning cinematography and Malick’s dream/memory like imagery – they also had larger stories to tell, and characters to explore. By the evidence of the last three films, Malick has lost all interest in doing that now. Maybe, he’ll turn back towards that in the future (the films are coming much more frequently than they used to), but I wonder if we really want or need Malick to do that. After all, there are lots of filmmakers who are telling stories with three act structures, and character development, etc. There is only one doing what Malick is doing. If we can handle 10 superhero movies a year, surely, we can have one deep dive in Malick’s subconscious every few years, right? As imperfect as Knight of Cups is, I’m glad it’s in the world.

Classic Movie Review: Badlands (1973)

Badlands (1973)
Directed by: Terrence Malick.
Written by: Terrence Malick.
Starring: Martin Sheen (Kit), Sissy Spacek (Holly), Warren Oates (Father), Ramon Bieri (Cato), Alan Vint (Deputy), Gary Littlejohn (Sheriff), John Carter (Rich Man).

In broad strokes, Badlands resembles any number of “lovers on the run” films – from Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde (1967) to Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994) and many other films before and since. It tells the story of a young couple, Kit (Martin Sheen) and Holly (Sissy Spacek) who go on the run after he kills her father and end up on a doomed cross country killing spree. That sounds like a setup for an exciting, frantically paced movie about romantic outsiders – two people united against the world. But this being a Malick film, of course it’s different. It’s different in that Malick’s film is more deliberately paced – more lyrical and beautiful. Like all of his films, it is about people who look at their place in the larger world and struggle to find meaning in their small lives. The violence in the movie isn’t exciting – but it isn’t especially brutal or bloody either. But perhaps the biggest way Badlands doesn’t resemble most “young people in love on a crime spree” movie is simple – I don’t think Kit and Holly really love each other. At times, they barely seem to like to each other.

Like all Malick films, the narration in the movie is pervasive. The narration here is delivered by Spacek’s Holly in an almost flat monotone voice – that betrays little to no emotion. Her narration most often seems at odds with the visuals of Malick’s movie – she sees the events as a fairy tale, and doesn’t like to dwell on the unseemly details. The murders throughout the movie don’t have much of an effect on her. She’s lost in her own teenage girl world – wondering about her place in the world, wondering about her “boyfriend” Kit – and what will happen to them. Halfway through the movie she makes a promise to herself in the narration – that she’ll never again get involved with someone outside the law like Kit again. But she doesn’t leave him – not then anyway. She’s bored by everything – and that includes Kit – but what would happen if she left?

Kit takes Holly along, I think, because he needs someone to see what he is doing. He is a violent man, who sees himself a victim of society (he complains that “they’ll probably blame me for that too” about a trivial thing, as if blaming him for the murders he has committed is somehow unjust). He wants desperately to be valued, loved – or at the very least have his existence acknowledged. Late in the film, after Holly has left him, he unpacks her suitcase, and throws all her things away – keeping only her journal – which he reads. He wants to see if there is at least one person in the world who “gets” him. I doubt he was happy with what he read. Kit’s problem, one of them anyway, is that he isn’t as deep as he thinks he is. People compare to James Dean throughout the movie – and it’s an apt comparison, as Martin Sheen looks enough like Dean to pass, and seems to be channeling him at times – but Kit is not the deep, suffering outsider Dean played in East of Eden. He’s an empty sociopath who wants to believe he means more than he does. He wants to leave his mark on the world – and when you don’t have the brains or talent to do it in any other way, the easiest way to do that is with a gun. He doesn’t feel anything when he kills his victims – and he doesn’t go out in a romantic blaze of glory. Why would he? He enjoys the attention he receives after his arrest far too much to give it up. For once, people are listening to him – taking him seriously. He has, in essence, gotten exactly what he wanted.

Sheen’s performance is probably the best of his career – and one of the best of all time really. As I mentioned before, he seems to be channeling James Dean – which the real life inspiration from Kit, Charles Starkweather did as well. That’s how Kit sees himself – and wants the world to see him as well. But Sheen doesn’t make Kit into a romantic character – yes, he and Holly romanticize themselves, but the movie never does – but instead sees him as a rather pathetic person – trying desperately to find some meaning in his meaningless life. Malick doesn’t so much hate Kit as pity him. He could have made Kit a more despicable person - the real Starkweather killed a 2 year old after all – but including such an incident would let the audience off the hook easier. You don’t have to feel anything – not even pity – for someone that despicable.

In many ways, Badlands is the most straight forward film of Malick’s career – it certainly has a more straight forward narrative than anything else he has done. But the film is still very much a Malick film – the visuals have the painterly quality of all of his film. But Malick sees the Midwest where the pair drive through as both beautiful and empty – which is a description that could apply to the characters as well. In many ways, while Badlands is not the best film Malick has made, it is his most influential. You can see echoes of it in recent films like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Sun Don’t Shine. Watching it this time however, I was drawn to thinking about Gus Van Sant’s so called “Death Trilogy” of Gerry, Elephant and Last Days – not because of the imagery – Van Sant’s films don’t look at all like Malick’s – but because of their ultimate meaning. Van Sant made three films about young men who kill – the first, about a man who kills his friend, the second about a pair of school shooters, and the third about a rock star who commits suicide – but ultimately finds no meaning in their actions. Malick finds the same meaninglessness in Badlands. In that way, Badlands almost acts as a corrective of a film like Bonnie & Clyde, which saw its young lovers as romantic figures of youthful rebellion. They may pay for their sins, but you walk out of the movie loving them just the same. You don’t walk out of Badlands loving Kit and Holly. You walk out pitying them.

Movie Review: To the Wonder

To the Wonder
Directed by: Terrence Malick.
Written by: Terrence Malick.
Starring: Ben Affleck (Neil), Olga Kurylenko (Marina), Javier Bardem (Father Quintana), Rachel McAdams (Jane), Charles Baker (Charles), Romina Mondello (Anna), Tatiana Chiline (Tatiana)

Terrence Malick has always been different from most filmmakers. Throughout his career, every film he has made moves further away from a traditional narrative than the one before it – culminating with 2011’s The Tree of Life, a masterpiece that felt like the film Malick had been building towards for his entire career. After a very quick turnaround, at least in Malick’s world, he finished his follow-up – To the Wonder – just over a year later. The two films share a lot in common – a lot of sweeping landscape shots, not a lot of dialogue, lots of whispered voiceovers. But To the Wonder is a smaller, simpler film than The Tree of Life. That film combined the epic with the intimate, and was one of the few films ever made that tried to capture the totality of human existence – starting with the big bang, going through evolution, and then capturing the life of a child and his family from birth to the afterlife. The Tree of Life was, simply put, a huge film and one of the most ambitious films a mainstream American filmmaker has ever made. To the Wonder doesn’t have such epic concerns on its mind. Instead, its narrative is simple really – the story of a doomed love affair.

The film opens with Ben Affleck’s Neil in Paris, falling in love with Marina (Olga Kurylenko), and bonding with her young daughter Tatiana (Tariana Chilline). These scenes have a simple beauty to them – nothing is really said, because nothing needs to be said. These two are in the first blush of romance, where everything seems idyllic and perfect, and you cannot imagine that anything will ever go wrong. But this cannot last, we know even if the characters don’t, and when Neil asks Marina and Tatiana to move with him back to Oklahoma, we know things aren’t going to be as perfect there.

Most of the movie takes place in a small, rural town in Oklahoma, and for a while it seems, like this idyllic romance will last. But Marina gets restless – there is nothing but open spaces around her, and very little for her to do. At first, Tatiana is thrilled by everything around her – even a trip to a bright, fluorescent lighted supermarket seems like an adventure to her, but soon she starts complaining that she has no friends. No one likes her, and she’s all by herself. Neil and Marina start fighting. When her visa expires, it seems only natural for her to return to France – we think this chapter in their lives is over, but it is not. Marina is even more miserable in Paris – she cannot find a job, Tatiana has moved in with her father, and she’s alone and desperate – and so she comes back to America, and she and Neil get married – we know, and I think they do too, that this marriage is doomed from the start.

Had Malick simply stuck with this story of two people in a doomed relationship, To the Wonder could have been a wonderful, small example of pure cinema. Not as ambitious as The Tree of Life, or perhaps even any of this other films, but a beautiful, perfect little film in its own right. In its way, the familiar narrative of To the Wonder helps the film – we don’t necessarily need to hear the conversations between these two characters, because we already know what they’ll say to each other. The performances by the two leads are wonderful in their own quiet way as well. Affleck, like Colin Farrell or Christian Bale in The New World, seems to have been cast more for his physicality than anything else. He seems bigger here than I have ever seen before – imposing. He is in no way abusive, but we know he never really opens up either – preferring to spend time by himself, walking, or simply sitting back and listening as Marina goes off on him. There is also a darkness in him, that is never fully explored – which is somewhat disappointing. He is a passive man, unable to verbalize what he wants – which makes him the perfect character for this movie. But the real star here is Kurylenko, who is beautiful in the film, but also gives the impression of being slightly unhinged. Unlike Affleck, she lives in the moment – allows whatever emotion she is feeling at the time take over. It’s this impulsiveness that attracts Neil to her in the first place – but what will ultimately drive him away as well. Affleck needs to be this silent, this still, for her performance to have the impact it does.

Unfortunately however, Malick decided to add two subplots to To the Wonder that ultimately detract from his simple narrative. When Marina goes back to Paris mid-film, Neil moves on with his life, and falls in love with Jane (Rachel McAdams), a woman he knew as a teenager, and who he reconnects with. This is really more of an interlude than a subplot, as their entire relationship begins, flourishes and ends within 10 minutes, and then Jane is never seen again. This relationship cannot have the emotional impact that Malick wants it to have, because it feels rushed. Plus, how are we supposed to know that this relationship, which Malick sees only as perfection until Affleck, driven by guilt, goes back to Marina, wouldn’t have imploded the way the central relationship does? Afterall, they relationship between Neil and Marina seemed perfect too for a while – and one of the characters is still the same in this relationship –the silent, passive, brooding Neil.

The bigger problem though is Javier Bardem’s subplot. Bardem plays Father Quintana, who like Marina, is another foreigner trapped in rural Oklahoma. Quintana is struggling with his faith, doesn’t know if he still believes. He tries to connect with the people in his parish, but he doesn’t seem able to. Their messy lives are mirrored by their messy houses and lawns, and he feels no connection to them. Malick almost seems to be looking down on these poor, working class people, and these scenes left a bad taste in my mouth. Anyone who saw The Tree of Life knows about Malick’s religiousness – and here he seems to be trying to connect faith and love, but it never really gels. Considering Malick apparently cut out several other subplot – Rachel Weisz and Amanda Peet are among the actors who received the Adrian Brody treatment - he probably should have cut this one to. Whatever he was trying here, doesn’t work.

So To the Wonder is Malick’s most problematic film – his one film that doesn’t achieve the heights Malick was reaching for. That doesn’t mean though that To the Wonder isn’t still a very good little film in its own right. What Malick is attempting, few if any other mainstream American directors would even consider trying. And when To the Wonder works – and since most of the movie concentrates on Affleck and Kurylenko’s relationship most of the movie does work – it is a beautiful film, one that you have to let wash over you. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is once again magical, as it drifts along the fields of Oklahoma, or through the mainly empty house shared by Affleck and Kurylenko. Malick is one of the few filmmakers who truly trusts his audience – who he insists that you meet him halfway, and go along for the journey with him. I know that despite the fact that The Tree of Life was 2011’s most critically acclaimed film, that many audience members hated the film – were bored and confused by it. And if you were one of those people, there is no reason why you should see To the Wonder – you’ll hate this one too. But if you are a Malick fan, and I am, than To the Wonder is a must see – a beautiful, if flawed, little film. When the film works, it is simple perfection. I just wish Malick had have been a little less ambitious this time around. The movie doesn’t need all the stuff Malick tries to cram into it.

Movie Review: The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life ****
Directed by: Terrence Malick.
Written by: Terrence Malick.
Starring: Brad Pitt (Mr. O'Brien), Hunter McCracken (Young Jack), Sean Penn (Jack), Jessica Chastain (Mrs. O'Brien), Laramie Eppler (R.L.), Tye Sheridan (Steve), Fiona Shaw (Grandmother).

Note: I can think of no way to discuss The Tree of Life without spoilers. Being a big fan of director Terrence Malick, I avoided all reviews of the film before seeing it, so all I knew walking in was what I got from the previews. I think this is probably the best way to see the film, so you may want to stop reading this review now and return when you’ve seen the film. It is a masterpiece.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is the most original, daring movie to come out of Hollywood in years. The film will be either a love it or hate it experience for most viewers. Some, like me, will be swept up into Malick’s gloriously inventive, visually stunning, richly emotional film, and others will think it’s a slow moving piece of crap where nothing happens. And others will simply be confused. I would say that this is the type of film Hollywood doesn’t make anymore, but the truth is that Hollywood never made films like this. The only comparable film I can think of is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and even that doesn’t quite do The Tree of Life justice. It is quite unlike anything I’ve really seen before.

I am struggling to come up with a way to describe The Tree of Life. It certainly does not have a traditional narrative arc that we have come to expect from movies. Instead, The Tree of Life really is about the human experience – about everything from birth to death, not just of one human life, but of all human life. Yes, it does focus on one family in Texas in the 1950s, and one thinks that they represent Malick and his family, as he is from Texas and would have been the age of the protagonists, Jack (an amazing Hunter McCracken) during that time period. But they stand in for the rest of the us. So while this undoubtedly an extremely personal film for Malick, it is also somewhat universal. No wonder he took so much time to make it.

The film opens with scenes of Jack as an adult (and played by Sean Penn). He is a successful businessman of some sort, seemingly lost in the modern world of sky scrapers and glass office buildings. The walls almost seem to be closing in around him, trapping him. We see him go about his daily routine, and while there are a few words spoken, none of them really matter – except a phone call with his father, where all we can make out is Jack apologizing to his old man. Yes, he thinks about him every day, but he shouldn’t have reacted like that. “Him” is Jack’s younger brother R.L., who we know died when he was 19. We see their mother (Jessica Chastin) breaking down and crying, while their father (Brad Pitt) maintains a hard, cold exterior – not wanting to show any weakness to anyone, not even his own family.

We get a few scenes of them as they were in the 1950s, before Malick takes us on a dazzling, special effects laden ride lasting about an half an hour. In this sequence, the film’s most daring, innovative and astonishing sequence in the film, Malick takes us from the Big Bang through the ages as single cell organisms expand and divide, come out of the water, and then evolve – eventually becoming dinosaurs. He ends this sequence with meteors hitting the earth, and the beginning of the ice age. Through this, we get a few snippets of voice over, but mainly just the music. The sequence will call to mind the worm hole sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and on another level, the opening of that film involving monkeys. Like Kubrick, Malick is not simply telling a story about specific humans, but about the human experience – human history from the beginning, perhaps right until the end.

From there, the film becomes more narrative driven – at least in terms of what we had seen up until that point. We move from the history of the world, to the history of one boy – Jack. We see him come into the world, and for a while, we see the world as he would see it as a child – confusing, big, only catching glimpses of the adult world that he does not comprehend – the carefree days of being a child, the jealously that comes when another child is born and enters his world. Finally, when Jack is around 12 or, the movie slows down, and tells the story of one summer in his family’s life. The film however much more attuned to the emotions of the characters, the memories of that summer, and what emotions is brings up in the characters, than following a specific arc.

The critics who believe that Malick does not care about actors, or as one critic put it “cares more about the grass under the actor’s feet than the actor himself” are just plain wrong. The performances in Malick’s films are absolutely crucial in establishing the films tone, and their emotional resonance. Here, Brad Pitt delivers one of his very best performances as the strict, but not unloving, father. To some, he will seem overly strict – perhaps even cruel – but I think Pitt does an amazing job at making this man entirely realistic and sympathetic. He is not an uncaring monster, but a man who was raised a certain way, fought in a war, and wants the best for his children. He does not want them to make the same mistakes that he thinks he has made. The only way he knows how the encourage his children is the push them – to expect the most from them. He may seem strict, but he is far from abusive. His kids may at times hate him – but what kid does not at times hate their parents. For her part, Jessica Chastin’s performance is much more about body language than about what she says – she rarely says much of anything in fact. She is more loving, provides a safe place for her children to go – but is also the model 1950s housewife, rarely questioning her husband. The key performance in the movie, and perhaps its best one, is by Hunter McCracken, who captures the confusion, joy, pain and embarrassment of being a child better than just about any child actor I have ever seen before. I’m not sure if Malick simply drew it out of him, or he really is that good, because it is a quietly astonishing performance.

I know there are some people – many perhaps – who are going to hate The Tree of Life. After all, it doesn’t give audiences what they have come to expect from movies – not even the films of Terrence Malick, which while abstract, were always more narratively driven than this film. Malick takes him time making his films – since his debut film Badlands in 1973, he has only made four other films – Days of Heaven in 1978, The Thin Red Line in 1998 and The New World in 2005. All of those films are masterpieces though. He may take his time, but he delivers. But those films, as great as they are (and if you haven’t seen them, do so) all seem like a warm up to The Tree of Life, and film that is quite simple at another level from his previous films – on another level from the films of almost any director. You may hate The Tree of Life, but I guarantee you that if you watch it, you will never forget it. It is a one of a kind masterpiece, and the most ambitious film I have seen in years. There are few films that you know while watching it for the first time that you know will be talked about and debated in films classes forever. The Tree of Life is one of those films.