Sorry for that hed. Can’t help it.
So anyway, The Tree of Life is okay…no, seriously, I think it’s amazing and can barely wait to see it again. My first consideration of it, a review for MSN Movies, is here.
No-one, I think, is in my "Tree"
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The Music Box Theater here in Chicago has been doing a retrospective of Terrence Malick’s movie for the past few weekends, and seeing those pictures on the big screen have been some of the most powerful movie-going experiences of my life, just in terms of pure aesthetic wonder. I was already close to crapping myself with excitement over THE TREE OF LIFE, and now your review has pushed me close to the edge. (I thought about framing that idea in less filthy terms, but it just didn’t seem as honest, y’know?)
Having lived in Houston while Malick was filming “Tree of Life”, I’m curious about some of the scenes filmed in the Museum of Fine Arts, particularly in the “Turrell tunnel”. When I heard from friends that Malick was filming in the Quaker’s light sculpture, I could only image the scene being a transcendent moment. Now that I read about the film being influenced by Tarkovsky, specifically “The Mirror”, I have even more anticipation.
Coincidentally, I feel the same way about “The Mirror” as you describe in the last paragraph of your review for “Tree of Life”, but I believe this is why I am so affected by the film. It brings up the same question much of the “great” art of the 20th century (and beyond) poses to the viewer. “If I don’t understand a piece, what makes it great art?” Leave it to the viewer to decide, but I’ll take a piece that resonates over much else.
So far, the most robust response to TREE OF LIFE I’ve encountered has been resoundingly negative (I’m speaking of Robert Koehler’s review, which you can find here: http://www.filmjourney.org/2011/05/18/cannes-ears-to-the-ground‑2/).
Yeah, Robert’s review is robust, all right, and good and pissed-off, too. I hold Robert in very high esteem as a critic, but I think his irritation sometimes gets the better of him here. To say that Pitt’s character is straight out of Lawrence and then to chide Malick for misapprehending Lawrence is rich. Imposing a conceit on a work and then chastising the work’s maker for not living up to the standard of the imposed conceit; damn, I should try that some time. (Is there even a name for that particular fallacy?) And then there’s all the sneering at the various composers beloved of the fave straw man of lefty materialists, The New Ager. Yeah, Gorecki sucks, you fucking hippies, and so does David Hykes! If Malick had any balls, he woulda gotten Merzbow to do the score. Whatever. Robert clearly sees the use of voice over and the various philosophical notions articulated therein as so much mush–“airy-fairy,” as Jeff Wells put it–but I think something else is going on, and I’m not sure what it is. If I figure it out and decide it’s lame, boy is my face gonna be red!
Koehler’s summer up a great deal of what I found so hateful in THE NEW WORLD—philosophy that was at once vague and on-the-nose, appropriation of Kubrickian grandeur with none of the sharp intelligence that grounded Kubrick, and worst of all, a fierce allergy to politics. It was the kind of thing that makes me wanna punch a hippie, a movie desperate to film people’s beautiful souls instead of their actual lives, the cinematic equivalent of a dreamcatcher hanging in a shop window, and it pissed me off like a white hipster wearing Hey-Ya-inspired Cherokee feathers. But the trailer for TREE is lovely enough that, shit, maybe I’ll see if Malick on a less inherently charged subject is more tolerable.
(note that like GK reviewing THOR, my bitterness here is largely disappointment—I pretty much worship BADLANDS, a movie with all the intellectual detachment and sharp observation that every other Terrence Malick joint has painfully lacked)
“philosophy that was at once vague and on-the-nose”
Not sure how this can function as a criticism since it’s having it both ways. In fact it makes it sound like his philosophy is remarkably nuanced. For what it’s worth, Malick’s philosophy is not exactly equal to what the characters are saying.
Secondly, I actually do think The New World is political–it’s fundamentally a movie about the American creation myth (emphasis on myth)–and as such there’s a great deal of sadness involved there, and the impending genocide of Native Americans hangs over the whole film. That said, the politics are not exactly “on the nose.”
GK, I’ve seen it twice. An immense experience.
Despite its political vacuity, borrowed Kubrickian grandeur and vague yet on-the-nose philosophizing, of course.
Like Ryan, I don’t see the argument against Malick’s supposed “philosophy” (or lack thereof). It’s a perennial problem with some of the criticism of Malick’s movies; with so little known about the man, the known facts get overemphasized, and people drag Heidegger in, and some kind of philosophical disquisition is expected and not found, or in other cases is found and then rejected. I personally find Malick’s grandeur to be an entirely different kind than Kubrick’s, and no less compelling for that. I also don’t see any “allergy” to politics; the films just aren’t operating on that level (although, as Ryan points out, there certainly is a political dimension to TNW). Anyway, isn’t it one of the first rules of criticism that you don’t critique a film for what it DOESN’T contain? Malick’s films also mostly lack sex and psychology, but that shouldn’t count against them.
What that guy said.
Looking forward to Dave Kehr and Co’s dismissal, pointing to the newfangled editing enable by newfangled editing software. Otto Preminger would never search for something in the editing room!
Although I do think, relatively speaking, TNW is the weakest of Malick’s films as director – emphasis on “relatively speaking” – I don’t get the charge of it being “allergic to politics” either. Your opinion may vary, but in addition to what Ryan talks about, isn’t the very fact of presenting Pocahontas and the rest of the tribe as neither savages nor one-dimensional noble people in of itself political in some way?
@ lbranzer: But my problem is that they weren’t people at all—they were symbols of ‘nature’ or something. I admit, my disappointment with the movie extends from the second half from the first—I spent the first half-hour thinking it was one of the most visceral experiences of a pre-industrial world I’d ever seen, evoking like nothing else what it would actually feel like to be on either side of the technological (and architectural) divide. The way the Europeans senselessly recreated a crowded block of London in the middle of the jungle was a smart, resonant image. And then it turned into a mushy (in the Lance Mannion sense) love story and I wanted Alex Cox to come storming through the set to rewrite the goddamn thing complete with cackling Spanish royalty and a grotesque fat guy ruling the tribe, just so there’d be some sense of the immense political context around the credulously swallowed myth of all-natural America, one of the more tiresome myths there is.
Seconding Ryan’s notion that TNW is in fact a film about the American Creation myth. For perhaps obvious reasons, some people like to focus on the love story with John Smith and often ignore the love story with John Rolfe (the same way that some people ignore the love story with Sam Shepard in DAYS OF HEAVEN) even though that’s crucial to the film’s “message” if it can be called that: The reconciliation of the ideal with the pragmatic, of nature with civilization. There *is* a reduction there, of course, and a bittersweet lament for the loss of a purely idealized existence (where even things like vanity and pride have no place), but I think it’s one the film acknowledges as almost inevitable.
I *do* agree with TFB that the Naturals are treated in more symbolic fashion in the film, but it’s to emphasize how Pocahontas (who is btw never named in the film, until she takes the name of Rebecca later) ultimately becomes the one to straddle these twin, seemingly opposing worlds. I don’t know if one wants to call that “political,” but I think the film certainly has a lot more on its mind than just a bunch of shots of young lovers rolling around in tall grass.
As for THE TREE OF LIFE, I think it might be the greatest film I’ve ever seen – the most confident and, yes, controlled film Malick has ever made. Its structure may not be narrative, but that’s not to say that it isn’t there: In fact, it’s symphonic, and not just in its broad strokes – the supposedly loosey-goosey Texas passage itself seems to adhere to sonata form, too. Anyone who calls it undisciplined doesn’t know what he/she’s talking about; if only all films were this disciplined. Watching it I was reminded of Bertolucci’s prayer for Welles sometime in the mid-70s: “One day, he will make a film that will put us all to shame.”
As for the voiceovers, here’s what struck me about them: The opening quote is God asking where humans (specifically, Job) were, while many of the voiceovers are humans wondering where God is. The film is, on some level, an attempt to answer both questions.
There was a scene in the first half of “The new world” (don’t remember if it’s in both versions of the film) where you see the natives discussing whether to kill the new white colonists, saying something like: “so what if we help them? They are only a few, what can they do to us? We’ll always have time to kill them”. If it wasn’t for that scene, I could see a point in the idea that the natives are just “empty symbols”, but when Malick actually shows them arguing politics (“their” politics) and even being cunning about it… dunno, I don’t think so.
I don’t think it’s really that the natives are symbols in Malick’s film, so much as the worlds he creates are always somewhat generalized. The island natives in THE THIN RED LINE are pretty much interchangeable with the American natives in THE NEW WORLD. It’s a matter of the tone and texture of Malick’s filmmaking, what activities he chooses to represent and how he represents them. For instance, his treatment of war. Even when things get ugly between the British and the natives in THE NEW WORLD and, for that matter, between the American soldiers and the Japanese in THE THIN RED LINE, there’s always a graceful, almost beatific distance that’s maintained. It’s as if we’re seeing things from the perspective of a world soul, not exactly dispassionate, but not exactly personally involved either. Everything is set in this same heightened key, and sometimes it’s sublime, sometimes it’s really really tedious.
I’m very much looking forward to THE TREE OF LIFE.
“The Tree of Life” is the best American film I’ve seen since “Mulholland Drive” ten years ago. Both films had Jack Fisk as production designer, which makes me want to read a huge, detailed interview with Fisk. And see “Raggedy Man” again. Fisk also designed “There Will Be Blood,” which makes me think that this man is the ultimate secret weapon of the cinema.
While I was watching “Tree,” I could barely believe what I was seeing and hearing; it has a rhythmic audacity and it moves by so quickly that I was sure I was missing so much, but that’s part of what the film is about. Negative reviews of “The Tree of Life”? For THIS movie?! What does a filmmaker have to do? Get Christ down from the cross? He practically does that here!
Good stuff Dan.
FWIW, I’m kind of agnostic on “The New World” and I’m also not sure if Dave Kehr will find the same fault with “Tree” as he did with the earlier film. In point of fact, I think that “Tree” really refines the editing approach that Malick took on “World” in the service of something that coheres better than it did in the earlier film. Most of what can be deemed “jittery” cutting in “Tree” is in the early portions of the ’50s Waco stuff, and it speaks to a restlessness of perspective/consciousness and really works like a charm, I think. So many layers here.
I want to see this so much…
Bill: As Tallulah Bankhead once said to Chico Marx in a radically different context, “And you shall, dear boy, you shall.”
GK, I don’t think that editing is the issue. The films are edited based on the way he shoots and the way he represents the passage of time – there’s a cut, and you have no idea how much or how little time has passed. I took another look at THE NEW WORLD recently, and I think that he never quite addressed a central question: how did the settlers in 17th century colonial America move and behave? Same with the natives. I’m guessing that for someone like Malick, the question is irrelevant: humanity is humanity, behavior is behavior, and there you have it. But, for instance, if you look at the way the couples move through the house in the new movie, the way Penn and his wife move around each other, the way Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain move between the kitchen and the dining room and back – he’s pursuing her, she’s avoiding him – it’s extremely place-specific, and the way they’re behaving with each other is very true to a certain kind of hurt, rejection, need for control. And when you’re oriented in place, you’re oriented in time. It’s more than getting the spoken language right.
When Farrell wanders through the grass or gets his ear tickled or gazes longingly at Kilcher, all I see is a 21st century actor left to his own devices. When you go inside the fort, the behavior of the people in the first half is monotonous – lots of circling around each other. And while a lot of the physical work the Native American actors do is very good, some of it isn’t: there’s a shot of a woman, somewhere about two thirds into Farrell’s stay in the forest, that looks like something you might see at a dance club in NY or LA. But it’s Farrell, a good actor who just didn’t find his bearings in the movie, who the film keeps returning to, with the same expression on his face, making the same moves, and that makes the “editing” seem monotonous. After he leaves the movie and Christian Bale arrives, things change. Here’s someone who really seems to have thought about what it’s like to live in a world without media, where you feel the length of every day.
Again, I understand the dilemma. Malick encourages people to just be – he breaks up the continuity of the shoots, disorienting the actors in order to get them to approach every new take afresh. Nick Nolte told me that one day during the THIN RED LINE shoot, he was sitting there, taking a break, and only after a few minutes realized that he was being filmed, and it’s in the movie. So, it’s hard to just be and work out the physical vocabulary of a much earlier historical moment.
For all that, I think THE NEW WORLD is a towering film.
But THE TREE OF LIFE is something else again.
Thanks Kent. I also think it’s worth mentioning that the three boys, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, and Tye Sheridan, are very extraordinary and alive in their moments/movements. I think Malick must have very much enjoyed capturing them.
Claire and I once met Ben Chaplin at a party. A really lovely fellow, he spoke at length about what a great experience and an honor it was to work with Malick for two films in a row, and gave the impression that the fact that he’s not in either “Thin Red Line” or “New World” for particularly long periods of time as being completely beside the point.
The boys? Every single move, look, whisper is true.
Actually, Ben Chaplin is featured fairly prominently in THE THIN RED LINE. But yeah, he’s almost gone from THE NEW WORLD.
After seeing “Tree,” I also thought right away of Tarkovsky’s “The Mirror,” but I’m starting
to think of it in relation to Terence Davies’s films, as well. I don’t think any director has made
a better memory movie about this particular family material. Malick starts out very high and he just
takes you higher and higher.
An aside: I don’t really smoke pot, but I think I might make an exception to this rule for my, say, fourth or fifth screening of “The Tree of Life.”
THE MIRROR illustrates everything that’s missing in Malick: political contextualizing (why was Mother so worried about a misprint in the newspaper?), a sense of humor (the mournful Spanish Civil War vet), and transcendence that’s earned through materialist/cinematic means (the difficult and rewarding barn-burning shot) rather than mere insistence.
“Yeah, Gorecki sucks, you fucking hippies, and so does David Hykes! If Malick had any balls, he woulda gotten Merzbow to do the score. Whatever.”
Sorry, but I’m a little confused. Malick’s use of Gorecki is being taken to task? I was hoping you’d talk about the music a little, Glenn and/or Kent. I’ve always liked the way he’s used music from Micky & Sylvia and Leo Kottke to Choir of All Saints and *gasp* Wagner.
On Glenn’s issue with my D.H. Lawrence reference of Pitt’s Mr. O’Brien, my point was that precisely because he is an explicitly Lawrencian character who defines himself in terms of “will,” to then have him also defined as “the way of nature” is quite contradictory. “Will” and “Nature” are opposite constructs in this universe, and which I think any close viewing of “The Tree of Life” should reveal. I think where Malick gets himself into trouble–well, beyond the somewhat questionable judgment of labeling characters from the get-go in such absurdly lofty identifiers–is identifying Mrs. O’Brien as “the way of grace.” “Grace” remains a fuzzy concept from the beginning of the film to its end, and it may very well be part of the film’s undoing from a philosophical standpoint.
Perhaps the most interesting visual detail (in a film that I find visually quite flawed and troubling) and correlative to this in the film is how “Will” is frequently viewed as a vertical form (the Houston skyscrapers, the oil refinery, the capitol building) while “Nature” is seen as a horizontal (the swimmin’ hole, the grassy lawns, the groves of trees, the flat beach). Yet even this notion breaks down when considering the verticality of the forest, one of the more cliched repeated images in the film. So unlike a Renoir or Antonioni, who reliably keep sure hands on their visual correlatives, this vertical-horizontal concept ball is perhaps fumbled by Malick. By the way, this is hardly the first time Malick has borrowed from Lawrence’s world for his storytelling; “Days of Heaven” can be seen as a Lawrence-like story from start to finish, and it’s quite easy to glean the Lawrence shadings in “The New World” as well.
Robert, this is a bit bizarre. The vertical-horizontal construct you’re suggesting is YOUR interpretation of its visual schema; you then fault the film for not adhering to your interpretation of it, “fumbling” this so-called “vertical-horizontal concept ball.” A little cart before the horse, no? To say nothing of, uh, reductive.
Chris O., the music is abundant and very rich. The Smetena that you hear in the trailer is also used pretty prominently in the movie, as is Tavener’s “Funeral Canticle.” There’s a little bit of the opening of Mahler’s 1st, and the Bach is really striking from a dramatic standpoint. “Lacrimosa 2” by Preisner is also featured prominently. Brahms’ 2nd is played on a record player. I don’t really want to go into more detail because you should be able to discover it for yourself.
I agree with you, his musical sense has always been extraordinary. The Wagner opening and closing THE NEW WORLD, for instance. The Orff in BADLANDS.
I agree, for the most part, about Malick’s musical sense, but I have to say that I find his use of Wagner in THE NEW WORLD a lot less powerful than Herzog’s in his remake of NOSFERATU. Before I explain further, I should say that I do think Malick is a much greater filmmaker than Herzog. Still, in NOSFERATU, Herzog plays on the frisson of terror in the Das Rheingold prelude as much as its ethereality. I think Malick tends to lean too close to the latter. Another filmmaker, whom Malick is oft compared to, Brakhage, he too had an acute sensitivity for the terror of being, as much as the glory. But whenever Malick deals with horrors or atrocities it’s presented with a veil over it. At least I think this is true of THE NEW WORLD and THE THIN RED LINE. BADLANDS and DAYS OF HEAVEN are different cases, and THE TREE OF LIFE may indeed turn out to be as well.
Will and Nature opposites? Read thee some Schopenhauer sir!
There is a persistent flaw in a lot of Malick criticism (in my opinion) that takes the stark dichotomies that Malick sets up at face value, when it seems to me that he is interested in (if you’ll pardon the word) deconstructing those very oppositions. The world DOES, quite paradoxically, pull in two directions.
RIght, Ryan. And the more persistent flaw is that 99% of the people reviewing his work aren’t as smart as he is, probably don’t understand most of the philosophical texts/teachings that Malick is drawing from at any given time, and therefore can’t presume to be making such quick conclusions about the work.
Having a degree from a prestigious university doesn’t automatically make you a great filmmaker, but I think it’s a safe assumption to make that your average critic can’t possibly fathom or process the totality of what Malick is giving us after only a viewing or two. It’s arrogant. That’s not to say that people shouldn’t be allowed to review his films, but a little more perspective (and respect) would be welcome.
If you have to understand certain “philosophical texts/teachings” for a movie to work, I don’t think the movie works. The point of a Platonist or Heideggerian film, if such things exist, would be, I would think, to put Plato or Heidegger across to the people watching the film, whether or not they’ve read Plato or Heidegger. Just as one doesn’t need to read Rorty or whomever to get what Preminger is saying about truth in ANATOMY OF A MURDER. So I think the educated and uneducated alike are free to talk about Malick after a viewing or two.
But as to verticality and horizontality, one of the things I don’t like about Antonioni is precisely that he does keep such sure hands – I would say schematic hands – on his visual correlatives. I think a good director complicates these things. An analogy, perhaps, to what you see as incoherence is Hitchcock’s treatment of high places in TO CATCH A THIEF, or in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. In the former, I’ve always been struck by how he manages to sexualize roofs. But then, it’s no accident that Grant has gone into retirement on top of a mountain, or that Grace Kelly’s mother watches over Kelly in a suite on the top floor of a hotel. There are dangerous heights and domesticated ones. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST, you have Mason and Landau’s sinister/coded gay lair atop a mountain, but then there are Marie Saint and Grant’s trysts in the overhead bed on the train. The two don’t cancel each other out, they play off one another.
something I find particularly charming about Malick is his seeming desire to make a big hollywood film for the masses with such overt religious/philosophical themes. For all their complexity and depth (at least as I see it) his films are overtly solicitous to a very, very broad audience. Perhaps that explains what many such as Hoberman see as “kitsch.”
http://www.mechanicalwristwatches.com/mechanical-perrlet-watches-681.htmlwow, I’m impressed! really. it’s a great project that will help people in many ways.
I wish we could have used such technologies when I was getting education…
everything would have been much easier:)
Can’t wait for this one. I’ve said it once elsewhere, when Malick was in OK filming his new movie, He ate at a place owned by some friends more than one. He was affable, polite and not some loner. Just a nice older guy. And a good tipper.
Edo, I haven’t seen NOSFERATU since it came out, and I have little memory of it. But I find the surges of Wagner in THE NEW WORLD remarkable, less ethereal than uplifting. I will have to disagree with you about THE THIN RED LINE. Among other things, I find it a harrowing experience.
I might not have been making myself clear. I too find it harrowing. I think it’s a pretty great film. I just feel like those battle scenes lack something (and THE NEW WORLD ones even more so)… Didn’t you tell me once that a friend of yours had said about the film, “sometimes, you just have to shoot somebody.” That’s what I’m trying to express.
My friend was voicing the common complaint about the movie – that soldiers in battle don’t have time to contemplate the wonders of nature or the possibility of two warring forces in nature. I don’t agree with him, as it happens, simply because that’s not the film. The world is beautiful and mysterious, and I can only imagine the wonder that my father felt walking through the jungles in New Guinea for the first time when he landed there. But when the soldiers are confronted with their enemy, they don’t hesitate. If I understand you correctly, it’s the visceral element that’s lacking, the element that’s so present in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. But I don’t think that’s quite the case. The taking of the hill is a pretty just rendering of white-knuckled terror and adrenalin-fueled determination. It’s just that Malick doesn’t make an event of the visceral impact, the bullets hitting and the blood spraying, the way that many other filmmakers (some great ones) do at this juncture in history. So, I think the “sometimes you just have to shoot somebody” element is very present in the movie. But so is the “oh my god I just shot somebody” aftermath, which is extremely unusual.
I do think it has to do with the visceral element, but I would distinguish what I feel is lacking from the kind of spectacular violence that a film like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN traffics in. I’m thinking more of a certain physicality, where we feel sensations redolent of those the soldiers themselves might actually be feeling – like what you said “white-knuckled terror and adrenalin-fueled determination”. It’s certainly not something Malick shies away from representing, but I just feel he comes up short in the execution. Even in the sequence where John Cusack and his men take the hill, which is better than other portions of the film, there’s a lack of acuity and precision in the compositions and the cutting. That’s not to say there aren’t some sublime moments, such as when he cuts in a shot of smoke and wind blowing through leaves of tall grass or when he intervenes an incredible image of cloud-patched sky. But I think as an overall sequence, it’s uneven. It’s clear that the way Malick works is more intuitive than systematic. He makes up the film in the editing room shot-to-shot without putting much thought into how one shot is going to relate to the next while he’s shooting. What he gets is a mixed bag. Some of the shots are miraculous: one comes immediately to mind, where the camera glides serenely alongside Cusack and his men as they creep through the grass. On the other hand, some look like they could have been ripped from any other war movie of the past twenty years. We get a lot of imbalanced, hand-held set-ups deployed in that sequence, and, as it climaxes, the editing becomes more frantic and our sense of space disintegrates. Sound familiar? In one moment even, Malick attempts a rare use of slow-motion coupled with echoing breath effects and one of Zimmer’s trademark ambient drones to create a sense of tension and trauma. These gestures just feel rote to me, and that use of slow motion in particular feels clumsy.
Without commenting on the movie itself, I just wanted to point something out regarding that still above. It occurred to me while watching ToL that a lot of the sun-through-tree shots seemed too perfect. Now, looking at that still, I’m pretty certain a lot of the sun shots are digital additions. Look at the burst, look how symmetrical it is. Also, observe the soft lighting of the scene there, which appears to have been taken during magic hour, after the sun would’ve been bright in the sky – and how there are no significant golden beams hitting the actors or water from the sun burst.
I could be wrong…
Edo, you’re getting into a delicate and, I think, interesting area in film culture. As you know, there is a lot of emphasis on terms like “mise-en-scène,” “framing,” “sense of space,” “the shot,” “composition,” and so on. Rightfully so. However, they are 1) much more elastic than many people imagine, and 2) often, if not always, viewed by filmmakers as means rather than ends. As an admirer of Michael Mann, you must have a sense of this. In a lot of criticism or commentary I read, it seems as if Otto Preminger, John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock arrived at a pinnacle in the development of something called “film language,” and it’s all been downhill from there. This seems wronger and wronger to me all the time, and I say that as someone who loves all three very much (well, maybe the last two a little more than the first).
In fact, I would say that someone like Malick is working in a way that it absolutely foreign to someone from that era, that he’s thinking about the movement of one instant into the next, one sequence into the next, and then the movement of the whole film. In fact, the whole idea of what constitutes a “scene” or a “sequence” in a Malick film, and what separates either from an “instant,” is difficult to define. There are a lot of risks, of course, but there are risks to the way that Ford and Preminger and Hitchcock made movies, too. I guess that in one sense, they face opposite problems – for Malick or Mann, the risk of becoming too loose and imprecise; for the earlier filmmakers, the risk of being too rigid and airless.
I don’t remember the moments you describe feeling clumsy, but perhaps less acute than other moments that, to my mind, constitute some of the more remarkable passages in recent cinema: the soldiers shot down in the grass and the parting of the clouds that you describe, for exaomple (which comes earlier than you describe, I think), or the exchanges between Nick Nolte and Elias Koteas. And there are moments I do remember, scattered throughout the film, in which emotions are being “played” rather than embodied, like the Ben Chaplin flashbacks or John Savage’s monologues or certain moments with the Japanese prisoners. But within the totality of such a great film, I don’t really care. The film is powerful enough to carry those moments.
But really, I don’t believe he’s thinking in terms of “shots” or “compositions,” but of passages, moments, events in time.
Kent, I think we’ve spoken about this before, and I agree with you in principle. I actually wanted to bring up Mann in my last post, because I think Mann, on this score, is a good example of someone who does a little better by me than Malick. I opted not to, because I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself and my argument by invoking a director toward whom I have a historical proclivity. Since you’ve brought it up, however, I’ll explain further. The shootouts in COLLATERAL and HEAT, the boxing sequences that open and close ALI, the prison break, bank robbery, and Bohemia Lodge sequences in PUBLIC ENEMIES, the climactic few minutes of LAST OF THE MOHICANS – these are, to me, models of a kind of filmmaking that is more about, as you put it, “passages, moments, events in time” than it is about shots and compositions. The thing is, in Mann, there’s still a great deal of attention to what one might call the ‘academic’ elements so as to render more vivid and present the events he’s looking to capture.
For instance, Mann and Malick both shoot with multiple cameras, but Malick gives his camera operators A LOT more free reign to just follow the action, where Mann is very careful about placing them in certain positions, getting certain angles, achieving certain gestural effects in the way the cameramen move alongside the actors. You can tell he’s thinking about how a sequence is going to come together, how one shot is going to interrupt or lock into place with the previous one. He may not be thinking as precisely and pre-meditatively as a Ford or Hitchcock, but he’s still thinking about getting particular effects. For me, it’s a kind of precision that proceeds from a cinema after Bresson. Other folks who I’d rope into this would be Denis and Assayas, and maybe Wong Kar-wai as well. Again all four of these filmmakers are cases where I think there’s a lot more thought put into each individual piece of filmed material.
Denis said this wonderful thing once: “each shot needs to have its own danger.” With Malick, I just feel like it takes a half dozen cuts to get what Denis gets in a single cut.
But you know what I’m looking forward to THE TREE OF LIFE. I’m really *really* looking forward to it.
This far into his career, it’s pretty absurd of me to take issue with Mr. Malick’s use of voiceovers but damned if that didn’t make THE THIN RED LINE borderline risible for me – I’d have taken five minutes of Mickey Rourke’s excised sniper in that extraordinary siege of the hill for all of Ben Chaplin’s maudlin insistence of how much he wants to cop a feel off of The Glory (has ANYONE seen MR’s work in some five-hour edit otherwise unavailable to us mere mortal cinephiles?). And there we are – it didn’t nearly bother me as much in THE NEW WORLD, which I agree could’ve stood to have some realpolitick to balance out all that 17th century interiority, that of The Naturals and otherwise. But that would seem to be one of Malick’s great talents – expressing interiority while coaxing narrative across a lustrous, externalized present moment.
Must say, I find Malick/Kubrick a dialectic hard to synthesize in my own mind, not least for the pronounced transcendental humanism Terry’s cinema seems to express in a way Stanley’s never quite did – pronounced to a degree I doubt a blind person could miss it. Apropos THE MIRROR, part of the inscrutability of that film – and what seemed to discourage Vadim Risov from taking the camera’s reins that time around for Andrei – was its deeply autobiographical emphasis. So, too, it sounds like, here, and further sounds like we’re in for an incredible cinematic experience, Mr. Hoberman’s demurring agnostitheism notwithstanding. Can’t wait – when’s it gone open Stateside?
(P.S. – Nice meme-check on Andrei’s dismissal of “experimental” art; homeboy sure did not wear a labcoat, did he? It’s been hard to play with musicians who embrace the “experimental music” rubric over the years, but it’s just so ingrained in the alt-cultural nomenclature and anyways, no one likes hearing me explain how Tarkovsky called bullshit on their (non-existent) Bunsen burners…)
And now it’s won the Palme D’Or: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/malicks-the-tree-of-life-wins-palme-dor-at-cannes/article2031340/
Ryan, best to see the film first, and then we can perhaps discuss the “will” vs. “nature” dichotomy. It’s the most direct conflict inside the film’s narrative, certainly its third (longest) section. These are terms not being imposed on the film by critics, by the way; these are Malick’s terms, baldly declared on the soundtrack. His proclivity for on-the-nose voiceover actually makes it very easy to respond to the film, which really isn’t all that complex.
Bilge, the horizontal-vertical element is really quite in your face when you watch the film. It slapped me plenty of times while watching, let me tell you; it certainly wasn’t something I was looking for. I don’t think it’s reductive to read this in the film; it’s just another aspect, and allows for a cinematic reading, which I thought would be of some interest. I would have liked to have seen it more expressly handled, with sure hands. Sure hands doesn’t make for a lesser artist. Does it make Vermeer a lesser artist that he always ensures that the light source in his paintings is from the left side of the frame?
Of course, I have to defer to those who’ve seen it. I am curious about the voiceovers in Tree, since I’ve never felt that the voiceovers in his previous films have ever imposed any “top-down” meaning on the images.
Rather, they seem to inhabit the localized/non-localized (or personal/impersonal) manner of Whitman or Emerson). And I think these themes are classic theological themes, which is probably how Malick approaches them in his previous films.
which is to say that the difference between the earlier two and the later two films is that while the early films quite obviously have an unreliable (or naïve) narrator, i think Malick radicalizes his approach in the later two by de-personalizing the narration, further pursuing what can be called our “impersonal” reliance on language (hence it’s ultimate inadequacy).
Ryan, the new movie is, like the last two, a choral work with multiple narrators. I’m not sure why that makes them more radical than the first two films, but I think your invocation of Emerson and Whitman is on the money. The new one put me powerfully in mind of the former.
Thanks, Kent. “Radical” is probably an overstatement…I merely mean that rather than filtering the narrative through one voice the newer films seems to layer and play those voices within and against one another.
TTRL in particular, seems to have different levels or layers of voiceovers from the very specific and internal to the very broad and general (the “main” narrative of Pvt Train, often mistaken for Caviezal’s character).
Somehow I thought TREE opened this weekend, and can’t quite believe I’ve got to wait at least four days to see it…it worked out okay; I got to see MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. A lovely film – but that’s a different post.
So many good topics are opening up here – I’d like to pitch in my two cents on the Kubrick/Malick comparisons, and specifically on the topic of music. Have there been any other American directors as brilliant with integrating previously written/recorded music as these two? There are differences of course, and I feel like no one has mentioned the fact that Kubrick also had an element of irony, even semi-Brechtian detachment, that is nowhere to be found in Malick’s stuff – a point easily made through music selection. As much as Kubrick’s use of Strauss in 2001 is clearly meant to sweep the audience up into the world of the movie, he could also deploy music as a tonal and/or thematic counterpoint or ironic shading – “We’ll Meet Again” being an obvious example. The really amazing thing is that he could made it work both ways – was “We’ll Meet Again” as weirdly elegiac until it was used in DR. Strangelove, or was it just that Kubrick noticed it first? We mortals can only shake our heads and wonder.
In terms of the Wagner in TNW – I love, love, love it – it’s perfect, not an ounce too ethereal – as Kent says, it’s more uplifting, and I’d even add giddily exuberant – not qualities usually ascribed to Wagner, sure, but that’s what happens when you juxtapose that music over those images. Farrel feeling the water through the grating where he’s imprisoned, the whites seeing land, the “Naturals” seeing the ships (although now that you mention it, perhaps as Edo says, there is a darker element to this, considering the strife that will eventuate) – but overall, it perfectly captures the anticipation, excitement, anxiety, and finally, mind-boggling awe that must have accompanied such an encounter. (Which is why I can’t help but manically scratch my temples in irritated confusion when people say they wish Malick had introduced POLITICS into the mix…it’s just not that movie!)
It’s late, and I’m happy they won the Palme D’Or, and I’m rambling…
On one related side note, regarding Wagner – has anyone else heard that interview with Horner re. TNW? As I recall, Horner makes no attempt to hide his frustration with Malick’s methods, and recalls, with great dismay, when Terry showed him the cut with Wagner included…Horner was not pleased.
Zach, I’ve listened to that interview. Horner, of course, is famously combative. I once spent some time with another major composer who talked about how many jobs he’d gotten as a result of James Horner walking off or getting fired from a project. Admittedly, Ennio Morricone also had somewhat dismissive things to say about Malick (though nothing like Horner).
That said, I have to hand it to Horner; he said that, had Malick not “messed it all up,” THE NEW WORLD could have been another TITANIC. A notion I found utterly absurd until AVATAR rolled around. A wildly different movie, to be sure, but with some surprising echoes of TNW…
Wasn’t Horner once equally incensed about the harried experience of composing for ‘Aliens’, one of his best scores?
“Have there been any other American directors as brilliant with integrating previously written/recorded music as these two?” If you’re not restricting yourself to classical music, then yes.There’s Tarantino. There’s Fincher. There’s Wes Anderson. There’s Anger. There’s Conner. But then there’s also MS. “Be My Baby” and “Rubber Biscuit” in MEAN STREETS? “Big Noise from Winnetka” in RAGING BULL? The uncanny use of “Atlantis” in GOODFELLAS? The music and the images become one.
Haven’t seen the film yet, but mentioning Anger and Conner in this context makes me think of how relevant the whole American avant-garde tradition is in relation to Malick, maybe more than any other working American director. Is there anyone else who keeps a foot that much in the tradition pioneered by Brakhage, Mencken and Bailie? The differences may outweigh the similarities (especially the part where Malick has a crew and actors and millions of dollars) but the comparison is probably at least as relevant as Kubrick…
@ Kent…well yeah, I mean, y’know, besides them…
I knew I should have thought more about that one. (Tarantino did cross my mind, but somehow Marty didn’t…but of course, as far as Pop goes, Marty can’t be beat) Lynch, too, for that matter. And Hopper probably deserves a shout for Easy Rider. I also think P.T. Anderson certainly changed the world a bit with Aimee Mann in Magnolia, although I’m not sure that music was technically available before it was used in the movie (I don’t think it was written specifically for the film.)
And David Chase! Because let’s be honest, The Sopranos is top notch cinema, and the music choice in that series was stellar.
It hadn’t occurred to me before that Malick and Kubrick stand out among Americans for their regularly astonishing use of preexisting classical music. Lots of people use such music nicely, but music seems much more central in M&K’s work. For instance, Woody Allen used to use common-practice music a lot, but even when the music worked with the movie it seemed like an ornamental afterthought. Whereas with the Handel in BARRY LYNDON and the Orff in BADLANDS, “the music and the images become one,” as Kent said of Scorsese.
I would like to thank Bilge for bringing up James Horner’s delightfully moronic comments about THE NEW WORLD and how it could have been more like the movie Horner won an Oscar for, if only Malick had just *listened*. I still hate him for that.
And I’m pretty sure ALIENS is his very best score, not just one of his best. Since then his scores have pretty much all been a hazy pink cloud that connect as one.
Zach, I just took another look at EASY RIDER. It’s a beautiful film, but I don’t think that the music works in any very special way. It’s just kind of there as a sympathetic backdrop. The silences in the film are a lot more eloquent.
Sutter, you should take another look at CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and the use it makes of the Schubert Quartet.
The credit sequence of DAYS OF HEAVEN, the old photos and the Aquarium from “Carnival of the Animals,” is a heart-stopper.
I’d add Demme for “Something Wild”. Even “Silence of the Lambs” had Brooke Smith singing along to “American Girl”–an inspired way to introduce her character. Ditto Soderbergh’s introduction of Fonda with “King Midas in Reverse”…
>And I’m pretty sure ALIENS is his very best score, not just one of his best. Since then his scores have pretty much all been a hazy pink cloud that connect as one.
I’m fond of his score for “Star Trek II” although he lifted wholesale a lot of his work from “Battle Beyond the Stars.” Even so, he caught the whole sailing-on-the-wide-open-sea feeling – it’s the only Trek movie theme that comes anywhere near Goldsmith’s superlative work in The Motion Picture.
/puts on Vulcan ears and crawls quietly away
>Even “Silence of the Lambs” had Brooke Smith singing along to “American Girl”–an inspired way to introduce her character. Ditto Soderbergh’s introduction of Fonda with “King Midas in Reverse”…
Plus the contrast of Dr. Lecter’s bloody work with the aria to the Goldberg Variations. Subtle? No. But it works…
“I’m fond of his score for ‘Star Trek II’ ”…
Oh crap, yeah, I like that one a lot, too.
Also:
“Sutter, you should take another look at CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and the use it makes of the Schubert Quartet.”
Absolutely. Fantastic work by Allen there, and probably the single best use of music in any of his films, although several others, such as some of what he does in BROADWAY DANNY ROSE and RADIO DAYS, comes close.
I like Allen’s use of Bach – one of the English suites, I think – in the background when we see the footage of Professor Lewis Leavey (sp?), the philosopher about whom Allen’s character is making a documentary in CRIMES.
On the one hand it’s a joke – here’s this guy talking in an inscrutable accent about deep philosophy and wearing coke bottle glasses and on top of that there’s BACH in the background f’chrissakes – but on the other hand it totally works “played straight,” too. Allen’s character describes him as “an intellect,” and the contrapuntal piano lines winding in the soundtrack convey precisely that. They also establish a distinct auditory world from the usual upbeat jazz that accompanies Allen’s comical scenes (e.g. when he is following Alan Alda around with a camera), and the grim Schubert mentioned above.
Allen also does good stuff with Bach in HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, in the scene where Michael Caine first attempts to seduce Barbara Hershey.
I will plump for Allen’s use of Gershwin in Manhattan.
Gordon, that’s the HANNAH scene where to change the music to a frantic passage he has a character bump into the record player, right? I guess I found that kind of gimmicky. Also, while I don’t have any absolute objection to the use of music as an simple indicator of personal type (Bach = intellectual) it seems hard to deny that some of the other filmmakers we’re discussing use music in a much richer way than this. Think of Tarkovsky’s various uses of Bach.
However, I vividly remember loving the Schubert quartet in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, and I haven’t seen the movie in at least a decade, probably more. And in any event, I’m sure we all can agree on the jaw-dropping opening of DAYS OF HEAVEN; I know the makers of VISIONS OF LIGHT do.
The Siren is right. (I hadn’t seen her comment before.) I don’t like the movie very much, but the Gershwin in MANHATTAN is not at all the kind of background mood-setting device I’m criticizing in, for instance, HANNAH.
>it seems hard to deny that some of the other filmmakers we’re discussing use music in a much richer way than this.
Maybe – I’ve generally read Malick’s use of music as a straightforward evocation of mood (usually elegiac, transcendent, etc.), which doesn’t seem much (if at all) more sophisticated than what Allen does; but perhaps I haven’t looked into it enough. Kubrick, of course, is famous for playing music against the scene, and thereby creating effects like the waltz in 2001, the nuclear explosions under “We’ll Meet Again” in Strangelove, the soldiers marching to the Mickey Mouse theme in FMJ. That persistently ironic approach to scoring might itself be deemed “gimmicky” if one were in an uncharitable mood – but then again, I wouldn’t dispense with the Blue Danube docking sequence for all the world.
Thanks for your response, Gordon.
“Sophistication” has nothing to do with what I often find so haunting and heartbreaking about Malick’s use of music. I just think that the effects he achieves with music are a lot more nuanced, elusive, and original than what you get in most movies’ use of classical music; and that he pairs music with his stories and images in an extremely precise way, much more precise than Allen; and that the flows of his images, voiceovers, music, and narrative somehow come together to create something really extraordinary.
To be clear, I don’t think Malick and Kubrick use music similarly at all. As you suggest, with Kubrick there’s often a lot of wit and irony in his use of music; sometimes this is just straight-up sarcasm, but sometimes it’s creepy, horrifying hints of dark wit and dark irony, like in that beautifully extended scene with the Schubert trio in BARRY LYNDON, where Barry meets the Countess.
Linklater’s pastiche of seventies pop and rock in DAZED AND CONFUSED! And I think Tarantino has his moments, especially in RESERVOIR DOGS.
I also think Sophia Coppola has proven herself to have an excellent ear. SOMEWHERE is, I think, her best yet in that respect.
I would only rejoinder that for his comic purposes I think Allen’s use of music is very precise indeed; but that he is aiming for something more easily put-into-a-box than what Malick does, particularly in films such as Crimes & Misdemeanors or Hannah, where the emotional lines and character motivations, as well as the quasi-Shakespearean schema (“high” tragedy or melodrama interposed with “low” comic bumbling), seem pretty easy to suss out. Unless there’s a whole other layer I’m missing, which could certainly be the case. Whether he’s sticking Gershwin under a skyscraper, or Bach over a pontificating intellectual, Allen is often wonderfully on-the-nose, but I think this suits the meticulous carpentry of some of his best comedies… he is indeed playing a very different ballgame than either Kubrick or Malick do (and they from one another too, of course).
Yes, I think Gordon is right about Woody Allen. He’s just as “precise” as Kubrick or Malick, just going for something very different. Having said that, I find the use of the Sidney Bechet song over the opening montage of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS very haunting. And there’s the Josephine Baker song, “La Conga Bilcoti.”
Edo, I don’t remember any of the music in SOMEWHERE, but it’s a beautiful film. But Linklater is a very special case. In general, I think he’s the most underestimated American filmmaker. He’s doesn’t usually use music in the manner that’s under discussion here, but of course DAZED AND CONFUSED is the exception. As someone who is only a few months younger and lived through the same moment, I was amazed by his choices in that film and the uses he out them to. Especially “Slow Ride” over the closing images – an ode to freedom.
There’s a wonderful use of a song by The Strokes in the film (it’s in the trailer as well). In LOST IN TRANSLATION, there’s an amazing use of Sometimes by My Bloody Valentine, and, of course, Just Like Honey at the end.
Yeah, if you were within a couple of years of the ages of the characters in DAZED AND CONFUSED, you had to be struck by how true it all felt, and the music was a huge part of that.
With some films, I do wonder if the director is relying on the music a bit too much. Not everyone in the audience will have the same emotional or nostalgic connection to a composition. So while one person is swooning over the use of a favorite tune, another may be saying, “Why is this cheesy piece of pop/soul/rock/classical/whatever playing over this scene?”
Check and check again re. Allen (particularly, as The Siren notes, Gershwin in Manhattan) & Linklater.
@ Kent – Agreed about Linklater being the most underestimated (interesting to say that instead of “underrated” – I know you choose ’em carefully) American filmmaker. Another director who gets somewhat overlooked for not having an immediately recognizable “style.” DAZED, besides having a terrific soundtrack, is also probably the best American film made about High School Life. For me, anyway, it’s bar none. Besides its many virtues, there’s a great sense of place, and I say that as someone who went to school in rural NY, not suburban Texas. The film is transporting – also a laff riot.
Also, as for EASY RIDER – I had always assumed that it had a special stature, soundtrack wise, for *first* including current pop songs in the soundtrack, paving the way for Scorsese et. al. But I won’t claim my history is solid on that account.
Zach, when it comes to “paving the way” for MS, I think SCORPIO RISING is the movie you’re looking for, as opposed to EASY RIDER. Marty had already used pop music brilliantly in WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR by the time EASY RIDER came out, the “Watusi” scene in particular.
I guess I hold the minority view on Allen’s use of classical music.
It feels totally silly to talk in terms of a “precision” scale, so I’ll just say that the effects he achieves with music often seem generic to me. This is certainly true with [Bach = intellectual], but for me it’s also true of his more emotive use of Bach in HANNAH. I think the effects he achieves are blunt enough that a number of other pieces of music would have worked similarly.
Trying to describe the effects of the Bach in SOLARIS, MIRROR, or SACRIFICE makes me feel really inarticulate; it’s something unique, I struggle for words. Whereas, while it’d be wrong to reduce the effect of the Bach in HANNAH to, say, wistful romanticism, I don’t have that sensation of radical inarticulacy. I don’t have the sense with Allen’s use of music, as I do with so much in Malick – or Herzog, to name another – that “I can’t even BEGIN” to describe the effect of the music in that context. (Probably like most who post here, my first reaction with that kind of thing is to then try, fumblingly, to describe what’s going on; but that’s another matter.) So I stand by my use of Allen as an illustration of what’s special about Malick and Kubrick’s uses of classical music, though I will take another look at CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS.
Anyway, when it comes to pop music, for my money Lynch seems like very tough competition.
No one has mentioned Godard’s use of classical music, especially from “First Name: Carmen” onwards?
>“Slow Ride” over the closing images – an ode to freedom
I wish I could see it like that, or at least only as that. The final fade-out–it’s one of the most beautifully timed ones I know of–puts me in mind of a camera shutter closing for good, with the movie’s events shifting over from the present-day highpoints in a young man’s life into the ghetto of memory. It’s loving and it’s inevitable, but it’s happening just the same.
As well as I can remember, there are only a couple of pop music cues in Fassbinder’s IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS (those being Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” and Roxy Music’s “A Song for Europe”), but they’re perfect, and they’ve stuck with me.
RWF was great with music. “The Great Pretender” at the end of “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” instantly expanded the film’s scope in my eyes–made it a different experience for me.
I think Terence Davies’s emotional connection to the music he selects is so naked it overwhelms the nostalgic limitations jbryant warns against. Wong Kar-Wai as well, “I Have Been in You” no less than “California Dreaming.”
@ BLH, I LOVE the way RWF lets “A Song For Europe” play out in its entirety, as I recall, in “13 Moons.” An insanely galvanic moment. And yes, “The Great Pretender” is a massively wonderful punchline, as it were, to “Petra,” and again, allowed to play out.
Zappa music doesn’t get much play on feature film soundtracks, maybe because it’s hard to fit in; maybe also because some filmmakers consider him louche or something. In any event, Wong Kar-Wai did right by Zappa for sure, as did Cauron in “Y Tu Mama.”
In re: Zappa, as did Timothy Carey.
@ Kent – thanks for pointing out the Anger precedent.
Since we’ve crossed the pond(s), I’ll second Wong Kar Wai having a wonderful knack for pre-recorded music (Chungking Express is only the beginning…In The Mood For Love, Happy Together, and so on…) as well as, of course, Godard, whom I first neglected to mention when I was thinking specifically of American directors. I was first introduced to Mozart’s resplendent Sonata #18 through WEEKEND, in a sequence I will never forget.
Also, Carlos Reygadas seems to have learned well from some of his forbears – the musical cues in JAPON are pretty brilliant.
And how could I forget Leos Carax? His use of Bowie’s “Modern Love” over the long tracking shot of Denis Lavant run/dancing his heart out in Mauvais Sang floors me every single time, and that’s just one of a few stellar examples.
And, to stump again for PT Anderson, much of what works in Boogie Nights is propelled by excellent cues, up to and including ELO as the coda.
Oy vey. Jarmusch! Waits. Young. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Lurie. Whew.
nrh, the discussion had been confined to American filmmakers. Invoking Godard broadens the scope.
Sutter, it’s not that I disagree with you – Woody Allen does use music in a less mysterious manner than Tarkovsky or Malick. But it’s not like he’s trying and failing to work the way they do: it’s a lighter approach and he knows it. It doesn’t strike me as something that needs to be seen in a hierarchical framework.
To continue in the Godard/Carax vein, Garrel’s use of The Kinks’ This Time Tomorrow in Regular Lovers and VU’s All Tomorrow’s Parties in She Spent So Many Hours Under the Sun Lamps. And maybe this is too obvious but pretty much all of the pop tunes in Denis’ films.
Outside/Inside America: Antonioni with “Heart Beat,Pig Meat” and “Tennessee Waltz” in ZABRISKIE POINT. Wim Wender’s amazing soundtracks starting with his early days using Dylan and The Kinks.
Going back to Scorsese I gotta say Mott the Hoople on ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE blew me away in 1975.
But,I don’t get comparing Herzog and Malick’s use of Wagner’s Das Rheingold prelude. It seems to me as fruitless as comparing Ulmer and Boorman’s use of Beethoven’s seventh symphony in THE BLACK CAT and ZARDOZ.