Mar 12, 2017 Let's appreciate our lord and savior, Terrence Malick, in this week leading up to his new film, Song to Song. Post your lists and any other rare Malick collectibles here. 1. The Tree of Life 2. To the Wonder 3. The New World 4. The Thin Red Line 5. Days of Heaven 6. Knight of Cups 7. Badlands
Mar 12, 2017 After my recent rewatch of The New World, mine is probably like this... 1. The Tree of Life 2. Days of Heaven 3. The New World 4. The Thin Red Line 5. Badlands 6. To The Wonder 7. Knight of Cups I pretty much love of all them with exception to Knight of Cups, but I'd be willing to give it another chance at some point.
Mar 13, 2017 Y'all know where I stand So is everyone else not bothered by the awkward tonal shifts near the end of Days of Heaven? Those f---ing banjos kick in and k--- everything.
Mar 13, 2017 Oh, and what's going on with Radegund? It's apparently in post-production and a total 180 from most of his post hiatus work. New photo dropped recently. Don't know the cast, story based, no Lubezki got Song to Song and VoT still, but man I'm shook up about this.
Mar 13, 2017 Should be hard, the cast is pretty dope, and the pic gives me Days of Heaven vibes. It'll be interesting to see him work in a more linear style again, just since he's grown so much from the 70s. Also, while I love Lubezki, I think it'll be refreshing to see him working with another cinematographer again. Malick hasn't let me down yet tbh, so I'm ready for anything.
Mar 14, 2017 To The Wonder Voyage of Time: IMAX Experience Knight of Cups Tree of Life Days of Heaven Badlands The Thin Red Line Unseen: The New World
Mar 16, 2017 It was hard for me to get into Malick. I mean i always loved Thin Red Line but it took me 3 viewings of The Tree Of Life to feel that fire in my soul. One of the greatest films ever made
Mar 21, 2017 Imma say it now. Song to Song is my favorite film since The Immigrant. I didn't think the man still had it in him to drop something this major again, but this is special. The epitome of simp cinema.
Mar 21, 2017 new world over TTRL rly? rank that and tree of life as my two *personal-film-watching-is-subjective* favorites
Mar 21, 2017 Malick perfume commercial with Angelina Any sequence similar to The High Priestess in Knight of Cups? It's the craziest s--- ever. I've heard Fassbender's character is pretty dark which is what I'd love to see more of from Malick. Those neon shots of him in the trailer look sinister af.
Mar 21, 2017 There are neon sequences but none of them really resemble anything from Knight of Cups. As for Fassbender, yes, his character is like the representation of Satan in this story, hes a disgusting being lol, and he kills it.
Mar 21, 2017 @Pinhead thoughts on Knight of Cups being his most impenetrable and distinctive film? I think it's sort of like anti everything he's done, it's so detached from emotion and placed firmly in the head of the protagonist that you don't get the sense of wonder and pure beauty that his other work is so drenched in. It's in many ways his most difficult film imo, such a complex structure. I rewatched it this weekend after Song to Song and was startled by how they're practically polar opposites of one other in terms of the emotion they're driven by. That's kinda why the critical reaction to his recent work gets me so frustrated because each of his films post-Tree of Life are so wildly different from one another in approach that it's like people are purely judging them on a surface level and not bothering to look into what they really have to say. Like, Ive seen KoC three times now and the third time felt like a sort of revelation in understanding what he was trying to accomplish with it, I highly doubt these naysayers were able to immediately pinpoint his intentions upon first watch. Fake news strikes again smh.
Mar 21, 2017 Hard to deny that (I've been trying), but as you watch more its structure will become increasingly clear. Right from the get go Malick explains what I think the film is about. A common thing I've noticed through Malick's career is how often we see his characters lost and trying to find their place in unfamiliar locations. In Badlands, Sheen talks about reaching the magical skies of Saskatchewan. Witt mentions seeing a new world in The Thin Red Line after spending time with the natives. The New World is self-explanatory. To the Wonder has Ben and Kurylenko dealing with that out of continent disconnect. The Penn arc of The Tree of Life has him wandering around not dissimilar to how Rick does. I like to think of Knight of Cups as the natural extension of Penn's character. He's rich, successful, but extremely reserved and detached from all the beauty around him. Running through as many different settings as he does recognizes the idea that it isn't where you are that matters, it's what's going on in your head and who you have around you that does. He's constantly around elite architecture, surroundings that are a pure byproduct of money and the growing universal disconnect from the physical into the digital, always retreating to natural landscapes when the shallow vices of Hollywood life leave him with nothing. Aquariums, pools, the ocean, mountains, women, etc are the only real moments we see Rick come alive and express himself. I differ here. Rick's yearning for *something* (the pearl aka a girl aka family) breaks my heart when he seemingly has all the tools to fix himself. There's a super awkward scene where he's at a dinner or something with his dad who's unable to assimilate himself into the discussion, Rick suffering from the same anti-social behavior at numerous points during the film. His mother, tears in her eyes, staring out into the ocean with her narration telling Rick that she hopes he has kids, well after Cate asked him if he wished they had babies. Around that point he's visibly taken aback by seeing an ultrasound at lunch with her. Definitely, but if people just looked into what the title of the film means, or the tarot cards that guide us through the story, there wouldn't be any confusion about what we're seeing. Each women Rick's with, each experience with the people that lead him around, are all cumulative factors in him finally transcending his depression. The stairs/elevators/hills/planes/helicopters show us his progress, his career gets better and better after each card, and the girls he's with have a direct effect on who he ends up with next. When the partying isn't enough, his "you don't want love, you want a love experience" with ScarJo leads him back to the one relationship he could find love with again, only to bring more pain. He meets a fellow detached wanderer in the model chick, them seeming totally in sync despite her holding back from letting him all the way in. Her house has Buddhist furnishings, practicing yoga as Rick watches on. She picks up on where Rick's head is at, as others have, and tells him she can't wreak havoc on men's lives anymore. They finish, he goes back to the Tarot place which is now out of business. We get more of what I've already discussed as a quick interlude into The High Priestess - a young, drug fueled affair that's clearly lust based as a reaction to losing model chick. It finishes with a girl hanging from the rafters of a party, swimming in mid-air (the pearl!), high Rick musing over how he can reach her. He's still just an observer in these spaces, the journey is still the same. Then we have Death, where Portman comes into the picture. I have no doubt that the trip to the monastery with her was inspired by the model chick. His talks with Rick over the importance of *this* moment and the monk's life are essential to the final half hour. He comes alive, breaking out of his shell as he grows visibly more at ease with his life. Even when that relationship crumbles, his momentary lapse into senseless wandering takes him to church where I assume he has some type of revelation from what the pastor is telling him. He then make amends with his dad and brother. I have to go back to a shot waaaaay earlier where we're driving through nighttime, downtown LA with a clear focus on billboards and signs in the background. We see "The Time is Now", "Sunset plaza", "Delivering happiness", and "Find Your Beach" among loads of perfume/modelling billboards. This is right before he ends up at modelling chick's s---t. The final ten minutes or so start with Rick and his new girl wandering around a beach, leading into the final "Freedom" card. They retreat away from the city together, her basking in the wonder of the world the same way he does. She has a kid. Rick's narration asks us at least once "how do I begin?". The final narration is just saying begin. He's found it. Naysayers definitely have no clue. If you throw out the pretentious/shallow/pointless criticisms, you're either missing the point, don't care, or can't deal with his brand of filmmaking in the first place. I saw it three times in the first three days it was online. 11 in now and I'm still unpacking it, just scratching the surface. For a movie that's apparently so shallow, I'm astounded at how dense it is. Not only is it probably my favorite film of all time, I have no doubt that it's one of the greatest.
Mar 22, 2017 @Pinhead Def agree with the Penn comparison, I always felt like this was an extension of his arc, especially the scenes with his father and brother are directly connected to ToL or rather Malick's life period. Also, I don't mean to say the film lacks emotion, rather the character we're dealing with here is so closed off emotionally from the world that while I can feel things at points, especially the Cate Blanchett segment, we are never fully allowed to penetrate through to his vulnerable self, which I felt is drastically different from most Malick characters who are so easy to identify with as they are so open and emotionally driven. I think after my third watch I have a pretty vivid understanding of what he's going for here, in my mind, the entirety of the film is seen through Rick's perception as he wanders through the desert and reminisces of these moments in his life, everything we see is an object of his perception. Characters we see are not real human beings rather images of human beings as he saw them, broken fragments of a broken life. He's coming to terms with everything he's gone through and looking for redemption, for a second chance, for freedom. The film is super fascinating, much more so than I initially thought, certainly one of his masterpieces; but to my personal taste I've always preferred his more purely emotional driven explorations of love which is why Song to Song strikes such a chord with me. But I love how diverse he's been in his storytelling this decade alone, with each film having a significantly different approach, literally pouring his thoughts and emotions out into each film, creating this 4 film spanning masterpiece of the different points in his life: childhood, finding love then losing it, losing himself, pondering of his place in the universe, etc. There's never been another instance in the history of the art form, from what I know, where a filmmaker so bravely and relentlessly expressed their naked self to this degree, these are prob the most personal films were ever going to get, and hopefully one day they'll be looked upon as such instead of being blindly dismissed as they have been.
Mar 22, 2017 Yessssss, love it. That "delivered under the similitude of a dream" quote too real. No way they won't be. As audiovisual cinema continues to evolve at the rate it is has been, we're gonna look back at this post-hiatus stretch as pillars for what helped inspire an entire generation of filmmakers. I sometimes forget that The Tree of Life is barely six years old at this point. We in another golden age.
