Terrence Malick: Between the Narrative

It started over ten years ago. I walked out of the screening of a film (I forget which one - probably with good reason!) and there it was; one of the most intriguing posters I have ever seen. Peering from a few blades of grass were a few familiar looking eyes. The title, however, was not familiar; this was particularly strange in that period of my life. I was intrigued! What plonker was making a WWII movie a few months after Saving Private Ryan?! Were they mad, or just stupid? Terrence Malick? Never heard of him; probably some MTV Video junkie with too much luck. Well, it shows what I knew!

It turns out that, along with the return of George Lucas (Star Wars: The Phantom Merchandising Opportunity) and Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut) that year, there was another esteemed auteur returning to cinema. And, people seemed to be even more excited about him than the company he was keeping!

Terrence Malick made two of the finest films of the '70's (Badlands and Days of Heaven); which in my book is the finest period of film-making, full-stop. Then he up and disappeared. No explanation and no goodbyes; just gone! As the man never gives interviews we are still not entirely sure what he got up to in those years; one, unlikely, theory is that he was a hairdresser in Paris. However, the good news is that he is now back in the film-making business. After '98's The Thin Red Line he made The New World in '05 and has a new film, Tree of Life, due later this year.

Suffice to say, after the intrigue generated by many news articles, I was at the cinema for The Thin Red Line on opening night. I expected it to be good; never did I imagine that it would change my perception of what good cinema was forever!

I believe that the theme of my filmgoing life can be summed up by what happened at the end of the film. I sat, eyes wide, mouth wider, mesmerised. Behind me I heard an exodus the likes I have never seen in a cinema before, or perhaps since! Teenage boys fled, grown men proclaimed it "the worst film they had ever seen", and women wept (okay, I made that last one up!). Within the space of a minute I sat alone; well, almost alone; one other couple seemed awestruck as well. I loved the film, but the wider movie going audience did not seem taken by it at all.

For years after, if I mentioned The Thin Red Line, people would cringe and tell me how awful it was, and then talk about the wonders of Saving Private Ryan. Now, I agree that Saving Private Ryan is a terrific movie; it is technically brilliant, the script is tight with clearly delineated characters, and the action scenes are visceral with a good sense of geography. However, it is also very manipulative and one dimensional. The Nazis could have stepped straight-out of a comic book and the bookend scenes in the army graveyard are horrifically obvious. It is, essentially, a finely made boys on a mission movie, an A-Grade Dirty Dozen if you will, dressed up in Dad's finest tuxedo. It has one message: War Is Bad (mmm-kay!).

The Thin Red Line, while also technically brilliant, plays a different tune. And this is where, I believe, the bulk of the movie audience gets off the train. The film is not about a narrative, or characters, it is about war itself. And not the idea of war that has permeated the public conscious for the past few millennia; with horror intermingling with thoughts of glory and brotherhood. It takes a step back and asks from where does war come. As Man, the bringers of war, partake in it, and as Man is hewn from nature, what is it in nature that gives rise to such horrific acts. Why do strangers, men with no personal grudges, travel so far to kill each other? Where does all of the hatred come from?

To raise such high-minded questions and then provide a succinct answer would be somewhat presumptuous. Malick instead offers thoughts, moods, and ideas, and lets the audience make up it's own mind. Ambiguity can be a wonderful tool when handled correctly; provided, of course, that the audience is open to it.

Most filmgoers appear to want an easy entertainment and not be challenged at the movies. Fair enough, I feel that way sometimes too; hence my eager anticipation of the bound-to-be-mindless Transformers 2. However, most films that I connect with and revisit, year-in, year-out, are films that challenge me; whether it be through narrative structure, subject matter, or ambiguity. To truly appreciate a Terrence Malick film you need to squeeze in-between the narrative and bathe in all of the complexity that is there to be found.

If I was asked who my favourite director was I would have to say Malick. There are others that I admire, yet, no one, to my mind, has a body of work as consistently brilliant, or that I connect with as much on a personal level, as him. 

I am sure that I will revisit his individual films as I carry on through my blog journey. The point of this blog is that if you have never taken the time to journey into the head of Terrence Malick, and if you love all that the medium of film can offer, I really think that you should take the time to do so.