Terrence Malick is not a recluse.

May 12, 2013 1:44 PM

What Terrence Malick was doing for those 20 years. "The thing that really, really bothers me about the perception of Terrence Malick is the idea that he made Days of Heaven and then sat with his thumb up his butt for twenty years. That’s not what happened; he never stopped working. Terrence Malick is not a recluse. A recluse is Howard Hughes holed up in a hotel pissing into a milk bottle."
posted by goatdog (26 comments total)

This is a fascinating article, and it goes a long way towards explaining what to me seems like a truly absurd dropoff in quality from Badlands and Days of Heaven -- both of which are fantastic movies -- to Thin Red Line, which I find repellent on a visceral level. (I know a lot of people like Thin Red Line so I may be in the minority on this.) I found this part especially relevant:

The money and creative control given to Malick were, for him, unprecedented. But that sum might ultimately have been a double-edged sword in that it “may have given him too much freedom,” notes Gillis.

And also, oh my god:

Paramount had spent over $1 million developing the project, not shelving it until Malick failed to deliver an official script after a year, instead turning in as many as 40 pages of poetic descriptions at a time.

I haven't seen Tree of Life or To The Wonder, but from what I've heard they're equally as meandering and fatally self-absorbed as Thin Red Line. Reading between the lines in this article it seems as though Malick, at least to my tastes, was ruined artistically by the immense pressures of being considered A Big Filmmaking Genius.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 2:53 PM on May 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

He may be a recluse, but I like his taste in films:

-- "Beat the Devil," (July 5). Directed by John Huston, this 1953 caper film written by Truman Capote stars Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollabrigida and Tulsa native Jennifer Jones.

-- "The Lady Eve," (July 12). Preston Sturges' 1941 comedy with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda.

-- "Zoolander" (July 19). Ben Stiller writes, directs and stars in this 2001 comedy about a male model who gets caught up in international intrigue.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 3:03 PM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure that subject matter of The Thin Red Line or The New World were very well served by Mallick's style, but I though It was perfect for Tree of Life. I really think it's one of the greatest movies I've seen in the way it seems to actually be capturing an unforced moment in a real life at every instant.
posted by hwestiii at 3:07 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I love Terence Malick. That said...

Tree of Life:

40% amazing shit you've never seen before.
20% stuff that doesn't work but you love that he tried it
20% "I feel like that shot was in Koyaanisqatsi"
10% Perfume commercial
10% "Wait, is Terence Malick terminally ill or something?"

To the Wonder:

1) "That's what you get when you don't own any furniture."
2) "Stop fucking twirling."
posted by nathancaswell at 3:18 PM on May 12, 2013 [9 favorites]

Malick's love for Zoolander is well established, one of those morsels of information, absent any interaction with the public, that is regularly referenced to try and fill in the blanks and create a sketch of who he might be:

It turns out Malick is a huge fan of "Zoolander," Stiller's 2001 send-up of fashion fabulousness — so much so that for Malick's birthday one year, Stiller dressed up as the character Derek Zoolander, made a personalized video card and sent it to the director. "I think 'Zoolander' is one of Terry's favorite movies ever," said Jack Fisk, Malick's longtime production designer, who has known him for nearly 40 years. "He watches it all the time, and he likes quoting it."

posted by to sir with millipedes at 3:31 PM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

This article seemed to be denouncing the speculation about what Malick was doing during the twenty years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, but at the same time milks all of those rumors for a good long while before dropping the needle and telling what he was actually doing. That was super annoying.

Especially because it's honestly quite interesting that he was developing and working on films that just never ended up getting made. I had suspected that was the case (at least with one project, maybe not as many as there were), and I'm probably going to go see what else I can find about Q and Sansho.
posted by dogwalker at 3:35 PM on May 12, 2013

It turns out Malick is a huge fan of "Zoolander," Stiller's 2001 send-up of fashion fabulousness — so much so that for Malick's birthday one year, Stiller dressed up as the character Derek Zoolander, made a personalized video card and sent it to the director. "I think 'Zoolander' is one of Terry's favorite movies ever," said Jack Fisk, Malick's longtime production designer, who has known him for nearly 40 years. "He watches it all the time, and he likes quoting it."

I would have beers with this fellow.
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 3:43 PM on May 12, 2013

Well, that answers that.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:45 PM on May 12, 2013

Something this article didn't mention was there was a rumor floating around certain very in-the-know circles for a while in the late 90's that said that Terry was helping develop a sequel to The Goonies, where the characters would've been played by the same actors only all grown up.

I wish to see this movie
posted by ninjew at 3:51 PM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Learning about what Malick was doing in the twenty years where we saw no finished output from him was interesting, but holy hell does that article have a giant chip on its shoulder for some reason.
posted by chrominance at 3:51 PM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Conversion Experience: Terrence Malick’s "To The Wonder"
posted by homunculus at 4:09 PM on May 12, 2013

one of the more interesting things about the 20 years b/w days of heaven and the new world, is that many of the projects taken up and then abandoned, either as scripts wrote of films shot, are adaptations that required more narrative concision than the ones he chose (including Dirty Harry, McMurty's Desert Rose, Percy's The Movie Goer, a biopic of Jerry Lee Lewis, and others.)
posted by PinkMoose at 4:13 PM on May 12, 2013

repellent on a visceral level

This is a perfect description of my response to The Tree of Life. Thank you.
posted by iotic at 4:51 PM on May 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

to Thin Red Line, which I find repellent on a visceral level

As someone who is cinematically (and overall aesthetically) tone-deaf, I'm genuinely curious how you, or anyone for that matters, see The Thin Red Line repellent, and how it differs form his earlier works. I don't mean to say I think it otherwise, but just that I'm curious.
posted by SollosQ at 4:59 PM on May 12, 2013

This was very interesting. I am really wondering, given his film-making style, how he expected his scripts to be filmed. That is, was he expecting half the script to be ignored or left on the cutting room floor?

Also Days of Heaven is one of my favorite movies, The Thin Red Line and Tree of Life both were fantastic but had bits that didn't work/were real awkward. I need to see Badlands again, as well as the new one.
posted by mountmccabe at 6:55 PM on May 12, 2013

As someone who is cinematically (and overall aesthetically) tone-deaf, I'm genuinely curious how you, or anyone for that matters, see The Thin Red Line repellent, and how it differs form his earlier works. I don't mean to say I think it otherwise, but just that I'm curious.

Yes. I am also interested in hearing this (that may sound snarky, but I am actually just curious).
posted by Hypnotic Chick at 7:10 PM on May 12, 2013

I'm genuinely curious how you, or anyone for that matters, see The Thin Red Line repellent

I want to preface this with the disclaimer that clearly this movie touches a nerve in me personally. If you do like the movie, great! I'm not trying to flame you. And there's no doubt that the movie is unimpeachable on a technical level. But I think the reason I have such a base-level negative reaction to the movie is actually moral revulsion. To me, the movie is like being stuck in a corner with someone who is extremely high and blathering nonstop about how we're all connected, man! and look at the birds! they're so pretty! how can there be any suffering in the world when there are birds and shit! oh, your arm is broken? you have terminal cancer? no, don't go to the hospital, man! just look at the birds!

And you JUST CAN'T ESCAPE from this dude who is STONED OUT OF HIS MIND and wants to share every! horrible! banal! thought! that goes through his head, no matter how trivial. For example, here is a for-real section of dialogue from the movie that I got from IMDB:

This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?

Now perhaps that reads well to you, which is fine. That's a matter of taste. But my skin crawls with anger and disgust just reading that awful pretentious gibberish . . . and wow, 90% of the dialogue in the movie is like that! And the underpinning philosophical message -- that there just wouldn't be war and everything would be kittens and smiles if we would just look at the birds and nature and shit -- is so insultingly reductive that I can't believe a grown adult actually wrote this pseudo-hippy word salad.

(p.s. Contrast this with Days of Heaven, which has a similar floating, dreamlike atmosphere and is populated with realistic characters instead of wooden puppets for Malick's weird obsessions.)
posted by Frobenius Twist at 7:51 PM on May 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

I'm sure many of you have seen this, but just in case you haven't, you should read it if you enjoy the hilarity of his writing. For months after watching Thin Red Line, my husband and I would walk around saying things like..."Why is there hate in the world? Why is the sky blue?"

While Thin Red Line doesn't make me as angry as Frobenius Twist, I don't like it nearly as much as Days of Heaven. I think because I enjoyed a more centralized plot. That being said, I very much enjoyed Tree of Life. I'm in a different place now, facing mortality with my mother, having a child of my own, maybe that just resonated more to me than a war story perhaps. Regardless, I will always love the cinematography in his films, and I can respect the pacing even if it annoys me.
posted by fyrebelley at 9:17 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I kinda sorta liked TTRL. It had a great cast, and there were some interesting scenes. But yeah, the idea that soldiers in the middle of combat inevitably turn into Romantic poets is kind of hard to grok.

But I definitely gave up on Malick after The New World.

Seriously, Pocohontas as Stevie Nicks? No thank you.
posted by bardic at 9:30 PM on May 12, 2013

Oddly, of the 3 Malick films I've seen (Badlands, Thin Red Line, and Tree of Life) I only felt as if one was a successful film. That film would be Badlands. Apparently from there he strayed from storytelling into Zen koan. That's fine if that's what you want, but I have a hard time sitting through hours of his meditative experimentation. I thought Tree of Life would have been great as 2 short films (one of which, I would have avoided), an exceptionally interesting animation on the creation of the universe, and a rather pedestrian family melodrama, the retelling of Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle".
posted by evilDoug at 9:37 PM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Thanks Frobenius. I don't want to push back too hard because I'm not trying to convince you out of your opinion. I do want to say that my interpretation of those lines isn't "that there just wouldn't be war and everything would be kittens and smiles if we would just look at the birds and nature and shit".

Instead, I think that the point is that so many living things survive because of violence they perpetrate on other living things. The crocodile that opens the movie is a natural entity, but its life is contigent upon killing other living things. I don't think the movie is saying that we can live in peace and harmony by just looking at birds...I think its suggesting that war may be a manifestation of something fundamental and terrible.

I think Mallick is grappling with a very basic and upsetting reality, but I'm not sure he has any answers.

But look, I can easily be wrong. I saw this insightful clip yesterday of some actors speaking about Mallick and what seems to be his very ad-hoc approach to film. Maybe I'm giving too much credit?
posted by Hypnotic Chick at 9:45 PM on May 12, 2013

I just think he's just not quite as clever as he thinks he is.
Which may be why I personally can forgive the silly.
That and his films are beautiful.
posted by fullerine at 2:13 AM on May 13, 2013

At my worst, in my absolutely lowest moments, when I think I could die and the world would subsequently be a better, happier, more beautiful place, I go to YouTube and I search for the Sissy Spacek - Martin Sheen scene in Badlands when they head out to the woods, Carl Orff's Gassenhauer playing in the background. There they dance - or skip around, awkwardly, dazedly, woodenly - and I feel better about every thing again.

Just one of those things.
posted by rahulrg at 2:58 AM on May 13, 2013

I haven't seen any of his newer films yet -- I was actually scared to watch Tree of Life, had the Blu-Ray home, and then gave it back to the library after my three weeks was up. I had two divergent reactions to The Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven: both are compellingly beautiful films that juxtapose human action against an incredible landscape, while rejecting a Lean-ian epic narrative arc; indeed, while rejecting much concept of narrative at all. I found the combination both a superb use of the filmic art and incredibly frustrating.

10% Perfume commercial

Ha. I described TTRL to a friend as just like the then-prevalent perfume ad with -- Kate Moss? -- that had this breathy narrator repeating "Kate ... I love you Kate" or whatever it was. Not all of it, mind you, but way more of it than you'd expect given the subject matter of World War Two.

This great evil. Where does it come from?

It should be noted that I suspect this dialogue is a conversational recasting of On the Nature of Good (or similar translation), and perhaps other works, by St. Augustine. It does not appear to source from James Jones.
posted by dhartung at 3:05 AM on May 13, 2013

I don't think the movie is saying that we can live in peace and harmony by just looking at birds...I think its suggesting that war may be a manifestation of something fundamental and terrible.

Huh, that's an interesting read on the film that I hadn't thought of. This is certainly something I'll give Malick: his recent movies have become almost cinematic Rorschach tests, where you bring as much to them as they give to you. As negative a reaction as I have to TTRL, it's definitely not objectively bad art, in comparison to some artistic efforts that are prima facie awful.

It should be noted that I suspect this dialogue is a conversational recasting of On the Nature of Good (or similar translation), and perhaps other works, by St. Augustine. It does not appear to source from James Jones.

That's also really interesting. Perhaps my abject lack of knowledge of philosophy informs my view of Malick.

And one more thing: I remember watching TTRL and thinking, what's with all of the birds? The fact that he's a birdwatcher, as mentioned in the FPP article, explains that small but vexing (at least to me) detail.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 5:27 AM on May 13, 2013

Perhaps my abject lack of knowledge of philosophy informs my view of Malick.

A refreshing clarification.

Despite art being subjective, Malick is still one of the only ( to my knowledge ) filmmakers with a harvard philosophy degree. A biographical detail that pretty much underpins everthing he's ever released.

It's always interesting to me when Art leads you to the larger questions instead of the converse. Malick led me to Heidegger. Eco led me to Foucault.

Doesn't matter what road you took to the party, just as long as you get there before it's over.
posted by Hickeystudio at 5:32 AM on May 14, 2013 [1 favorite]