The Final Take with Parker Mott

"To the Wonder"

Only just over a year and another Terrence Malick work has hit cinema’s mainland, sure to polarize populist moviegoers lost in Malick’s conceptual sea. His next film usually materializes out of thin air after a decade’s pass. We never know what (and when!) to expect. A Malick movie is really a cosmic event and last year’s Palm D’Or winner “The Tree of Life” was of equal beauty and splendor. It was on a grand scale visually, but it told a story that was personal, powerful, and spoke bravely on complexly universal grounds.

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4 Stars out of 4
(139 minutes)

Expect feeling over truth in The Tree of Life.

In The Tree of Life we have a director – Terrence Malick (Badlands, The Thin Red Line) – who creates his own Film of Genesis. He describes the profound and paradoxical ways of life through an ineffable cinematic meditation. It’s a cosmic film that could mean so much, and then more. It’s a lovely, riveting meander through time exploring the cosmos in relation to a small and ordinary life of the O’Brien family. They live in suburban Texas in the 1950s, a common time and milieu in Malick’s films as this was where and when he was raised. It is the family, in particular one of the sons, who we follow as they endure life’s ways of nature and grace. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(135 minutes)

John Smith (Farrell) and Pocahontas (Kilcher) discover love in The New World.

I was not convinced The New World would make for a Terrence Malick movie. Too much plot, arc, and romance. Yet again he managed to create a dispassionate Bonnie and Clyde (Badlands) and Saving Private Ryan (The Thin Red Line). So my skepticisms were assured in The New World, a story that’s greatest philosophical notion is the sense of discovery. Malick has not played historian or anthropologist here; here remains a studier of metaphysics. He scribbles drawings of the trees, sky, and shaking grass instead of discerning the melodramatic surfaces of the characters. Once again most of the story comes from above. (continue reading…)

4 Stars out of 4
(171 minutes)

The fallen angels of C Company in The Thin Red Line.

The Thin Red Line is not a war movie. Instead of being a clear representation of World War 2 it takes place out of time in some exotic, unknown space in some sort of beautifully haunting reverie. Instead of showing soldiers fighting rigorously on the battlefield, it studies them and their thoughts that exist outside of the action. Well, this is not about soldiers but fallen angels. This is not about war is hell but that war is a passage through heaven on the way to hell. The film is majestic, with each frame being tarnished by the surrounding madness and chaos, descending upon the natural world. Okay, the surface of The Thin Red Line is a war movie but it exists at higher ground, about ideas instead of what it is like to pull the trigger. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(95 minutes)

Hell ensues from above in Days of Heaven.

Days of Heaven does not just embody its world, it confronts it. It is a story of romantic crises yet the film is distant and dispassionate. The environment is enlivened with a lively but silent and still romanticism surrounding characters who are flat and unexpressive. It’s a period piece, circa 1916, but at the same time floats completely out of space and time. The world of Days of Heaven, Texas, comes to life while restrained by its graceful, self-effaced plot. We see a world touched and, with its profound imagery, personified. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(95 minutes)

Kit (Sheen) and Holly (Spacek) as the Starkweather-Fugate couple in Badlands.

“Little did I realise that what began in the alleys and back ways of this quiet town would end in the Badlands of Montana.” – Holly Sargis, the voiceover to Badlands

Terence Malik’s Badlands is a tough film for me to sell. It’s a story about killers that provides no moral leftovers. It’s one driven by characters yet it is very detached. It is unflinchingly violent but is told like a happy-go-lucky fairy tale. I don’t think I’ve convinced you yet. My skepticisms were similar after first viewing Badlands, and after a second I’ve come to really enjoy it. Some of my skepticisms remain but that is part of what makes it fascinating. (continue reading…)