POTENTIALLY LIFE CHANGING : "THE TREE OF LIFE"

Right boys and girls, I gave you a bit of a break, but now I have to review this. I must. But, as I said, take heart, it’s the last Terrance Malik you’ll hear of for a while. Besides, chances are you have tried out a few of his films and you are now as excited about these films as I am. Well, I can dream… I mean, yes, I do realise that Terrance Malik is not by any definition of the word the easiest director to indulge in. But if you take the time to get used to his style and his work, the films will end up taking you to places you never even imagined going. I read a review of the film saying that Malik is the proof that cinema can aspire to art. I feel I have to agree… Now, I have had a few friends and relations that have watched this film. I have eagerly asked them what it is about. They have had great difficulty explaining. “You should watch it. It’s about a family and… Oh it’s complicated.” This intrigues me rather than putting me off so I went ahead and watched it anyway. The thing is, I tend to agree. It is rather hard to explain what this one is about. But let me give it a shot anyway. The film is basically about struggling to find answers in the modern world. It is about religion, God, ethics. But not in a stuffy and philosophical way. We follow the lives of a family in Texas, in the 1950s, thought the flashbacks of the family’s eldest son (Sean Penn). The mother is gentle and kind, the father (Brad Pitt), though not a bad man, is a very strict and very difficult to live with. His approach to life is very, very different from his wife’s and their two drastically different approaches to life struggle to this day in their adult son who is feeling lost and trying to find answers in the modern world. Now, I respect any opinions you may have on Malik’s style. You might find it pretentious or a little heavy. But first of all, I mean, you simply HAVE to concede the fact that his cinematography and imagery are nothing short of stunning. There are entire sequences where you can just randomly stop the film at some point and any frame you land on could be considered a work of art. Plus, given the subject matter of the film, it would be very difficult to undertake the discussion in a very concrete way without somehow looking… False. Corny. You know what I mean. This is the trouble with this kind of thing though; when emotions are so deeply involved drawing an accurate picture of them is so hard… Malik succeeds in this, drawing beautiful pictures that are completely alive, full of pieces of actual real life. I even saw some instances, small but stunning in their realism, that reminded me of my own childhood. I told my mother about these and asked her what she thought; I have to say she was both surprised and impressed. So, be ready to find be surprised. To find something in the film you never expected to see with your two eyes. And don’t rush as you watch it. Just go with the flow, let the emotion slowly build up and take you over. It is not so much a film but an experience. An experience that has the potential to be mind - blowing.

MY WEEKLY DOSE OF MALIK: "THE THIN RED LINE"

I hesitated, for like 5 minutes before I decided to put this one in this week. I do get it, it’s beginning to look a tad ridiculous. There’s almost a “weekly Terrance Malik” now in the blog. I know, I know… Well the good thing is, there is just one more to go – and you can revel in the fact that I haven’t actually found the film yet – and then that’s it until Mr. Malik makes another film. For, as some of you know, the great director goes for quality over quantity. Thus, once I get my grubby paws on Tree of Life, that will, for all intents and purposes be all for a while. As you may or may not know Mr Malik has directed a total of 5 films to date, his sixth film, the internet informs us, is finished and due to be released end of 2012 – beginning of 2013 (insert howl of anguish – how will I wait that long?). The fact that, with a total of five films, he has been nominated, among other things, for 3 Oscars ® should tell us something though… Anyhoo, moving on to specifics – although I’m pretty sure Mr. Malik is in no way averse to a little meandering here and there – but seriously. Let’s get back to the Thin Red Line. “What was the film about?” is rarely as complicated a question as when we are talking about a Malik film. The Thin Red Line is no exception to this. Set in the Pacific during WWII, we follow a company of American Soldiers making their way through the jungle. Through them we explore not only the horrors of war but the various different facets of war, the tragedies, the difficulties and all the sides of war we probably never really considered in depth. We ponder what makes men fight, the place of love for your fellow man on the battlefield, all the different things that motivate men to fight, make decisions and sometimes, in this case, die. We wonder if another world, another kind of life where everything is simpler, more peaceful and beautiful is possible. Or maybe all that is just a fanciful dream that cannot survive in what we call the real world. I get why people may criticise the film. It is deeply poetic and philosophical; you might say this has no place on the battlefield, or maybe that this is not a realistic depiction of battle. As the film progresses, and by the way Malik by no means shies away from gory deaths and realities of the battlefield, the film is interspersed with Malik’s hallmark breath-taking photography that presents a truly beautiful background to the inner ponderings of various characters. It is very true, it is not a “typical” depiction of a battlefield, but I don’t think it’s any less realistic. It is just that, through sheer cinematic genius, Malik has found and magnified facets and snapshots others would have overlooked. Yes, war is truly horrific, and like I said the film portrays that, but this horror also leads to deeper thought. Platoon famously asked the question “WHY?”, Malik, I feel, attempts to answer. Or maybe just to set out a train of thought for the viewer to follow. And besides, personally never having been on the battlefield I could not swear to the fact that the men on the ground do not stop for more philosophical thoughts brought on by the very out of the ordinary circumstances they are living in, if only for a couple of moments… This multiple Oscar® nominee (seven to be precise)is hard to watch on many levels, not least because it is three hours long, but I felt I truly learnt something from it. You’ll know what I mean once you watch it…

A CLASSIC TALE, AN ORIGINAL TAKE : "DAYS OF HEAVEN"

Terrance Malik seems to be more of a contentious issue than I ever thought he would be. I have had conversations at length with friends and neighbors about him, opinion seems to be quite divided. Funny I never noticed, or rather, as I had not seen anything by him, I guess the discussion did touch me at some point but I kinda didn’t notice – if that makes sense. Anyway. Opinion is divided between reckoning he’s a genius and thinking he is stuck up in the sense that he makes films literally no one can understand and what, some people ask, is the point of that? Now, I do tend to agree with people who say films should be understood. I mean what is the point of having a film so elite that no one but you knows what the heck you’re talking about? But what I don’t agree with is the idea that Terrance Malik’s films enter this category. I have now watched three out of his total output – which, I grant you, isn’t as much as some people’s – but trust me when I say Mr. Malik has gone for quality rather than quantity. I mean, if New World was good, Days of Heaven is something else altogether. And story wise, hand on heart; it is NOT hard to understand. His style might not appeal to everyone, but that is a different matter altogether. Days of Heaven takes place in the days of the Great Depression in America. Bill (played by a very young Richard Gere) is wondering round the mid-west with his girlfriend and his sister. Only they don’t want people to talk you see, so he just tells everyone his girlfriend is his sister to. Which suits them fine generally until, on one particular farm, the young, handsome owner falls in love with the girlfriend. Now Bill doesn’t think this is such a bad plan as plans go. He has reason to believe that the young owner of the farm is ill and will die within a year. In fact, this might be the making of their entire little family. The marriage happens and time goes by… But not only does the farmer not die, but other feelings start to take hold that will shake all three of them and their little family to their foundations. As you can see, the topic is pretty much universal. Two men, one woman, betrayal, all that jazz. But Malik’s style of filming takes this very classic story and turns it into something quite extraordinary. Visually speaking, we have a masterpiece here. We have said of other films that we could stop it at a random moment and we had a good chance the frame we got could be a masterpiece, yeah? Well this film takes that sensation to a whole new level. The way the story is told is stunning and poetic, the shots, the music – note especially the opening credits, I loved that way of giving feeling and exposition! I guess what one has to be careful about is the whole risk of getting caught on stylistic details and not recognizing a universal story. For me, it was completely the other way round. The story is a known one (well, when I say known that isn’t to say that Malik doesn’t give it a rather smart twist of its own) but since the story is both known and relatively simple, it gives us ample space to sit back and enjoy the visual masterpiece unfurling before our eyes. Definitely watch this film. The emotion, the visuals… Malik takes a classic love story and turns it into something quite extraordinary. Not to be missed.

MY FAVORITE LOVE FILM EVER : "THE NEW WORLD"

Films like this made me start this blog up. No kidding. No caricaturizing. I mean it. Watching films like this, and then wanting to shout it from the rooftops, wanting to stop random people in the street and tell them how good the film is. I didn’t get the fuss about Terrance Malik before. Well to be fair I only watched Badlands. It was impressive but nowhere near on a scale with this… This leviathan. It is all about brilliant filmmaking marrying a brilliant story here. I would have said the filmmaking has a slightly larger part but on reflection this isn’t true. Because this brilliant true story needs to be told in its original form, because we do know it quite well but rarely do we know the whole, true thing. We are talking, ladies and gents, about the true story of Pochahontas. Now, one side note. Some of you may be a little surprised at this point. Yes, Pochahontas (played by the beautiful Q'oranika Kilcher) was a real person, as was Captain Smith (played here by Colin Farrel). As was their love affair. The settlers arrived on American shores at their wits end in the early 17th century. There was sickness, mutiny and very little hope as to the establishment of the colony. Captain John Smith was a career soldier and quite high ranking it is true, but he was by no means “the boss” he is made out to be in the cartoons and the like, or so it seems. He is however instrumental in the survival of that first little colony and in the dealings with the “naturals” as they seem to be called back then. And in the course of these dealings (I refuse to give too much away) the love affair between Pochahontas, the native American princess and Captain Smith blossoms. And it is beautiful, the discovery of true love, the forest, nature, communicating without words. But what then? What later? I will leave it to you to discover that. Trust me, it is nothing like the cartoon. I have to point something out. Some of you will not like the end. No, not one little bit. But I loved it. That ending made this categorically one of my favorite films ever, and I mean ever. I cried buckets. Buckets. All I will say is I strongly believe that John Rolfe (played by Christian Bale - no, I haven’t mentioned him above, watch the film and find out) deserved what he got. He suffered and fought for that happiness, that resolution. It would be a heart-rending shame if the story had ended in any other way. The very, very end is sad of course but neither here nor there. So there. Another thing I didn’t quite get before watching this film is “poetic” filming. Poems are poems and films are films and forcing the two together does not sound like the wisest of ideas to me. Err, wrong. Very wrong. The images Malik’s camera captures, the narration that is superimposed… The originality of the work of the film from beginning to end… Words cannot describe it. Having various images on screen with an external narrator in the background may not sound like the most riveting way to go about describing emotions. “Oh” , you might say, “he did that because he couldn’t have it in the film”. Wrong. He did it because he could do that kind of thing very, very well. I can think of no better way of portraying the inner thoughts of the characters. The text they narrate is pure literature. Yes, apparently the two go very well together. I am now in the small band that cannot wait for Malik’s next film. As you may know, he goes for quality rather than quantity. But hey, obviously it is worth the wait. In the meanwhile, I shall go and root out the rest of his films. I will keep you posted, naturally.