Badlands
Terrence Malick has long been considered one of the preeminent living American filmmakers, although he is in some ways as famous for his sporadic output as he is for his films. Twenty years separate two of his films, Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), and on the whole he has made only five movies in 38 years.
TIFF is screening a Malick retrospective at the Bell Lightbox this weekend, culminating in the release of the director’s latest film, The Tree of Life, which just won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Before enrolling at the American Film Institute, Malick was on the way to getting a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford. A disagreement with his thesis supervisor caused him to drop out and focus on film instead, but there remains a distinguishable philosophical core to his films, all of which explore humanity’s relationship to nature and the supernatural, while reflecting on what counts as morality in between.
Malick’s films are also notable for their majestic cinematography and his complex, captivating characters — characters that are always, as Linda says of people in general in Days of Heaven, “half angel and half devil.”
Badlands
Loosely based around a real-life crime spree perpetrated by Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend in the 1950’s, Badlands ingeniously mixes elements of two contrasting genres. Kit’s (Martin Sheen) increasingly psychopathic behaviour sets about a chain of events that could’ve been lifted from a Jim Thompson noir. The film, though, is told from the point of view of Kit’s 15-year-old girlfriend and accomplice, Holly (Sissy Spacek), which ends up making Badlands something of a brutal coming-of-age story. Holly’s childhood innocence pervades the whole movie, which is eerily detached from the violence around her. It’s that detachment, as well as Sheen’s charisma, that gives Badlands its appeal. It might be the most straightforward story Malick has written, but possesses the same intellectual rigour as his later, more ambitious films. Screens June 4, 7, and 14.
Days of Heaven
Generally considered Malick’s masterpiece (with some competition from The Thin Red Line), it follows Bill and Abby, two married farmhands who try to con their dying landowner out of his money by pretending to be brother and sister and getting Abby to marry him. The deceptively simple love triangle becomes part of the film’s much larger thematic ambition. Featuring some of Malick’s most striking and beautiful images, and unless Tree of Life manages to top it, it’s the best example of Malick’s extraordinary ability to put human stories in the context of the grand religious and philosophical ideas. Screens June 4, 11, and 15.
The Thin Red Line
Malick returned after a 20-year hiatus with this war film, centred around a group of American soldiers fighting in the South Pacific during World War II. When I was 11 and it came out, I thought it was the more boring version of Saving Private Ryan, which was released the same year. Not surprisingly, my 11-year-old self was wrong. Thin Red Line features an absolutely epic cast (Nick Nolte, John Travolta, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson). Like Days of Heaven, the film is preoccupied with much more than just the particular battles it dramatizes, or even just World War II. Something much bigger underlies it, exploring the nature of conflict and war as a constant feature of human life and nature as a whole. Screens June 5, 8, and 13.
The New World
Though as visually stunning as anything he’s made, this retelling of the Pocahontas story, with Colin Farrell cast as Captain John Smith, is perhaps the least successful of Malick’s films. As in all of his work, there’s a meandering plot, a preponderance of natural imagery, and lots of voiceover. In this case, it just doesn’t add up as well as in Days of Heaven or Thin Red Line — it’s more overwrought than it is moving. That said, the film’s cinematography and poignant finish partially redeem it. Screens June 5 and 12.
The Tree of Life
Booed by some at its Cannes screening, it’s generally garnered positive reviews and is being compared to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for its cosmic scope. Though Sean Penn stars as the protagonist Jack as an adult, the film focuses on his childhood during the 1950’s and his relationship to his father, played by Brad Pitt. What’s caused all the discussion is a “history of the universe” sequence in the middle of the film. In any case, Tree of Life is one the most highly anticipated films of the year. Last week it ran on only four screens and made $372,000, giving it a per screen average of $135,000 — more than triple of any other film. The Tree of Life opens June 17.
