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Since his masterful 1973 film debut Badlands, Terrence Malick has only averaged roughly one film every decade. Yet when they arrive, they have a sensational and unique visionary style, grace and poetry. He reveals the strangeness of life and nature through astonishing camerawork and a remarkable lyricism, unmatched by any other filmmaker. With a reputation for near perfection, his films are creations of serene beauty that (with the exception of The New World) are all astonishing works of art.
Malick’s creations always have a real love of nature, brought across in long wide shots and by intercutting scenes with remarkable shots of the environment that create a strange and wondrous atmosphere. Admittedly, this is something that many have used to criticise the director’s work and in the disappointing case of his most recent film, The New World, they might have a point, as the technique feels overused and the characters undeveloped. However, in works like The Thin Red Line, the resonance of Malick’s style is clear, with the shots revealing warfare to be both an abominable alien aberration of nature, whilst also being something that, in the great scheme of things, is transient. This gives the film a sense of intelligence and beauty, even amidst the hellish scenario. The director’s style also lends a grand scale to his more domestic films, particularly Days of Heaven, in which it provides a greater sense of scale to what is essentially a small intimate drama.
The other consistent factor in the auteur’s work is his use of voiceover and music in his films, he attempts to “create dialectic between sound and image.” This is something that’s visible from the very beginning, in Badlands he combines a sublime soundtrack with Sissy Spacek’s telling of the tale in a rich Southern accent to create a strange and wonderful tableau of lost innocence and alienation. Perhaps most importantly of all, this creates an extremely dark, almost fairytale feel to the strange story of love and murder. Another technique that is continued in his other works is that the characters’ innermost thoughts and feelings are explored throughout and juxtaposed with the shots of wondrous nature and the extraordinary natural beauty that surrounds them. This enables the investigation of deeper themes, something particularly noticeable in The Thin Red Line where the director fully explores concepts of religion and human nature amongst the maelstrom of battle.
It may have been filmed in 2008, but it has taken until now for Terrence Malick to complete his latest project, The Tree of Life. It’s a film that follows the growth of Jack (Sean Penn) as he struggles to cope with the different philosophies of his father and mother (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain). This is interspersed with, amongst other things, prehistoric settings and dinosaurs. Hopefully, this marks a return to form for the visionary director, whose work is unforgettable, and casts what seems to be a strange and magical spell upon the audience.
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