The Thin Red Line is my favourite movie of all time and I have always thought of it’s director, Terrance Malick as a genius. As far as the art of cinema goes, as far as art goes in fact, I’ve never been much for narrative but have always preferred work that’s impressionistic and personal, mysteriously evoking things from the unknown wells within us. I don’t need a “story.” Malick for me, was what cinema should be. His movies were rarely linear stories but beautiful, lush and attentive moments strung together like lights in some mystical parade. His work, for me, was the distillation of a visual experience into a deeply poetic one, and whenever I left one of his films I was rendered speechless, as if I had just received a religious communication.
And so, I was incredibly excited to see his most recent film, The Tree of Life, which was awarded the Palme D’Or at Cannes. I had paid little heed to the critical reception, which is what I normally do, and strode bravely into the theatre. My friend Chris cried like a baby! I’m sensitive, I was going to cry, too! Oh Mallick, let your holy non-sequiturs wash over me! It was going to be great. For me, it was the most anticipated film of the year, of several years, actually, and I was going to fucking love it on levels that were beyond belief. Malick was made for me and I for him.
I went and saw it the other night and in spite of my wildly receptive disposition, and all the contrivances and indulgence I subjected myself to in order to have them fulfilled, I was entirely disappointed.
It was a bad movie.
Disengaged, I found myself looking at my watch, becoming increasingly distracted by the Levis product placement ads and wondering if Malick was actually making a very long and arty ad for the jeans. It’s as if somebody was actually satirizing Malick’s work, and it was embarrassing to participate in. I won’t go on a critical digression, but I will say i that at some point while watching the use of “space” and “architecture” in the film and realizing that somebody was going to do a thesis on just that topic, I, too, almost began to weep.
Most of the critical work I’ve read since seeing the film has been fawning.
The movie plays out like a film student’s experimental hoohaw, and although it’s distressingly evident that in this movie The Emperor Has No Clothes, very few critics are willing to admit this, heaping praise where little is deserved. It was as if Malick, indifferent ( and he has earned this right) to audience, had given himself over to his inner under grad and that every critic followed suit. Fearful of looking pedestrian and unlettered in the face of their peers, they mistook a “difficult” film for a “good” one, proclaiming virtue when faced with pretence and cliche.
Malick’s films are typically so personal and idiosyncratic that in spite of their visual grandeur, they are probably not experiences to be shared at the theatre with an audience, and are likely best watched at home, thoughtfully but in elliptical snatches, the way you might look at a bunch of your old polaroids, poring over each untranslatable and digressive image alone, free of all context but your own.