Terrence Malick

Started by dufresne, April 17, 2003, 01:42:23 AM

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Sleepless

From Empire March 2004, on True Romance (voted 80th in the 100 greatest movies of all time feature): "Hans Zimmer's Main Theme is nearly a note-for-note replica of Carl Orff's signature music for Badlands."
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

foray

i love Thin Red Line.

foray
touch me i'm sick

modage

Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Pubrick

under the paving stones.

SoNowThen

I love it and hug it and kiss it.



But I make love to Badlands and Days Of Heaven.
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

Sleepless

Okay, so I've finally watched Days of Heaven, so I've seen all of Malick's films... that's right, all 3 of them. Saw Badlands first, years ago on TV, I think I must have been quite young when I first saw it, but I knew at the time it was a great film -- one of those that you remember for years, but you're not sure what it was, but you want to see it again, then one day someone says "Remember Badlands?" and you go THAT WAS THE FILM!! Likewise saw Thin Red Line on TV first, then bought the DVD the next day. Hopefully one day I'll get round to getting Badlands and DoH on DVD, but at the moment I'm catching up on some Lynch, Kubrick and Spike Lee. So much money spent on movies... ah, well  :-D I don't know if anyone else was put off DoH by the fact Richard Gere was in it? Finally getting round to watching Primal Fear was difficult too because of Gere, but Malick and Ed Norton, respectively, made the movies worth it. Okay, so i realise I'm starting to ramble now.... did anyone else notice any similarities between DoH and Terence Davies' Neon Bible? Also, the main theme from DoH is that based on anything else? Cos I've heard it somewhere before and it's absolutely awesome.
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

NEON MERCURY

.......i wasnn't put off by richard gere in days of Heaven......i hav enothing againstr that guy..he's cool......but the thin red line is his masterpeice.......so far....and also its the best phucking war film yet......and most likely won't be sclipsed.....

modage

Quote from: NEON MERCURYand also its the best phucking war film yet......and most likely won't be sclipsed.....
why why why?  what was so good about it?  a lot of narration, characters with very little going on?  war scenes that werent shot very interestingly? i mean, it wasnt terrible, but i dont see how it is one of the best war films.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

NEON MERCURY

Quote from: themodernage02
Quote from: NEON MERCURYand also its the best phucking war film yet......and most likely won't be sclipsed.....
why why why?  what was so good about it?  a lot of narration, characters with very little going on?  war scenes that werent shot very interestingly? i mean, it wasnt terrible, but i dont see how it is one of the best war films.

the reason why i liked it so much is:

1.) the cast...even though some poeple are onnnly there for seconds(i.e. clooney and nick stahl, leto, miranda otto)......its fabulous....the big leads like chavizel, ben chaplain(who hasn't been a great film since), pennnn, cusack(who i normally don't like) nnolte,elias koteas etc, etc, ....this is the best cast ever in in ffilm with so manny starts annnd solid actors paying homage to work with mallick...and they all rise to the occasioon....this is one of the best acted ffilms ever.......when watchoing all of these badass actors you kinnd of root for them and ennjoy it better.....(think oceans 11 etc, )....

2.)the narrationn/voive overs......i love that psychological sh*t in this film....you donnn't get that usually in war films....like private ryan which is POW, BAM, WHIZ, ZAP, kind of film....certain voice overs are awesome in this film..like when the character shot s the enemy soldier with the pistol, i loved his VO when he thinks "i just killed someone, worst then rape.....and no one can touch me for it"...its stuff like that which gives me chills......and another scene when the soldiers take over the enemy camp and it shows a closeup of a half buried face in the grounnnd with the dust and dirst all over the enemy face and his  voice over begins saying, "were you righteous, kind??? nnote that i was too".....all of the characters' thoughts were innteresting to hear and very meaningful....

3.) the cinematography THIS IS WITHOUT QUESTION THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FILM EVER SHOT...each frame is jaw dropping

4.) the director.....mallick ennough said.....

other nnotes:
* the scens and flasbacks w/ ben chaplainnn's character and his wife(otto) ...are so moving and surreal....(remember the swing while otto stares at us).......SPOILER............................and then when he ffinds out that  she leaves him..........damnnn....that is rough sh*t ..in all my thearte experiences i have never heard a collective sigh as when this happened........

*annother scene that speaks volumnnns is the scene in the rain where it has the guy sitting on the stump w/o hois shirt on going crazy and rocking back and forth scratching himself...damn its powerful.........there are so many scenes like this ........i'm fforgetting

* i liked this movie evemn more that it was blatanntly robbed for the best pic oscar......shakespeare in love ....... :roll: ...damn that tryanny righ there.........

......its just a beautiful , well acted, poetic, trannscendent film......it's a small scale version of 21 grams  ,2001, and gerry in  way.......

am i the onnl;y one here who thinks this film is purely a masterpeice.....?

Pubrick

Quote from: NEON MERCURYi loved his VO when he thinks "i just killed someone, worst then rape.....and no one can touch me for it"...its stuff like that which gives me chills......and another scene when the soldiers take over the enemy camp and it shows a closeup of a half buried face in the grounnnd with the dust and dirst all over the enemy face and his  voice over begins saying, "were you righteous, kind??? nnote that i was too".....all of the characters' thoughts were innteresting to hear and very meaningful....

......its just a beautiful , well acted, poetic, trannscendent film......it's a small scale version of 21 grams  ,2001, and gerry in  way.......

am i the onnl;y one here who thinks this film is purely a masterpeice.....?
no NEON, ur not. the voice overs were indeed the best part and made the film different even from Apocalypse Now in that it followed not just one mind into madness, but many into and out of it. mallick made a rare intimate look at the relationship between a rational mind, physical action, and the collective human/earth soul which we are a part of and destroy .. i never get this chills thing everyone speaks of, i just freak out. to explain, here's an interesting discussion on Thin Red Line from ur own Sean Penn thread.. mod try to read this..

Quote from: Pbudgie.. it must be a guy thing.

like most great movies i know, it's all about the last 20mins.. in this case the sean penn final moments about "never leaving this room" or whatever, and the dude looking back at the island and asking his soul to let him be inside it.

another great highlight is all the lines up to and including "Have you passed through this night?". and the whole nature-law thing through the movie. this was the first and only time where i was overwhelmed by the immediacy of impending mortality, and i freaked out. jim caviezel is ekzellent also, in his embodiment of christ-consciousness. and it's great how malick shifted the focus of the story to him instead of Fife (adrien brody).

Quote from: budgieYou know, I think you're right: it might be a (certain type of) guy thing. It is quintessentially Male Romantic, and that's what bugged me, tho normally I go for that (dunno, maybe I've changed). The nature-law thing, as you call it, is just such a tired philosophy to me. I can see its appeal, tho, and the use of the setting did stir me. I also realise that we're looking through the eyes of various white western idealists, and normally too that would appeal, because in some ways it was a critique of that romanticism. But I didn't find anything to challenge it ultimately, it felt reaffirmed. That is a problem for me, but only because I want to strip it away and expose it I guess. But OK, at 19 years old I loved those ideals (so maybe it isn't only a guy thing, even if it's at the root of the culture). Maybe I wasn't listening attentively enough to this movie, I can't be sure.

The tone didn't help with that though. The self-conscious poeticism and the naff narration. I had trouble not seeing through it all, like I had trouble not seeing through the mannered performances, the types and yes, the religiosity. I think this was because it had no relief (except in Penn, and maybe I'd have liked it more with more emphasis laid on his relationship with Caviezel). I just kept thinking 'oh, lighten up', and it made me laugh.

Thanks, that's enlightening. I did like the first scenes in the grass too, by the way. I think this all has a bearing on your like/my disregard for Kubrick also. The same aestheticization of pain and, as you say, mortality. We're just feeling it in different styles.


As for sweaty men... well, see, this is the same thing. Looking at naked sweaty men indiscriminately has no effect whatever. It's all about the context. If the style and philosophy is all wrong, I remain unmoved. Maybe that's just a girl thing. Or a budgie thing.
she said naff.

it was an intelligent discussion about the merits of the meaning and idea of the story that didn't resort to infantile anti-art sentiments.
under the paving stones.

SoNowThen

When I'm in the mood for pure visual beauty, I put on the scene between Penn & Caviezel in the abandoned house, with the little empty birdcage. Sometimes I just turn the sound off, and watch the camera float around the actors.

I'm not even sure I'd call this a war movie. It's something else.

But Mod, how can you say it's not shot interestingly? What didn't you like about it???
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

molly

Those voice overs do make you feel chills, or freaked out, because they are so slow and dreamy, words are dropping slowly and with each word the character is dragging you inside his traumatized psyche. Like those voices come out of your head.  It's heavy to watch this film, and that might be the reason why some people "feel nothing" for self-defence. You find out about their most secret feelings, you see they are not bad people, and there is the feeling throughout the whole film that even though they have big guns, they are helpless, sitting ducks. Not only them, the guys on the other side too. Bad/mediocre writer/director would make a movie with heros, and pathetic goodbyes, and conversations between two friends "i'm scared shit, i only pretend to be brave...", but Mallick shows it without being litteral in dialogs, voiceovers, looks with twitch... He had great actors, but he knew what he wants to say, and actors told the story. It's a film about meaninless of the war, because nobody in his right mind would have anything against those people, and probably people on the other side  are like them. So, you have fine people fighting against each other, and guys that started all that were somewhere sitting on safe.
Some people in all that madness lost theirselves and became cruel, vindictive, killing machines, and there is no end - there are no guilty for murder in war, so if wrong people were killed, people on the other side don't seek for guilty ones, they kill first one who comes - constant injustice that seeks for revenge. There will be no time in future without wars, ever.

modage

well i am not going to give a movie more credit than it deserves just because it was made by a good director.  you dont get to know ANY of the characters beyond their cookie-cutout purpose.  none of them have any arc, there is no story.  its 2 hours of them trying to get up a hill.  every actor in that movie is wasted to a cameo, or 2D character.  having narration come from so many characters was a distracting technique, and instead of learning more about more characters it only allowed for us to know little about all characters.  none of the narration did anything for me.  the lines didnt move me, didnt seem profound, and werent anything that couldnt have been used more sparsely and still gotten those points across.  the flashbacks to the girl at home only to have her leave him, was such a manipulative device that i'm sure they would've gotten hell from this board had they been in Saving Private Ryan.  as far as not being shot interestingly, as far as a war movie goes, it didnt seem to be anything that hadn't been done before.  i was bored.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

SoNowThen

How was that manipulative? That guy's island was his love for his wife. That's what he thought about to try and stay sane. We were seeing his thoughts, more dreamy-like than pure flashbacks. And it was dealt with wonderfully in the end, with him taking that shocking blow and just sorta deflating, but still trying to find a reason to carry on. If that woulda been in Saving Private Ryan, 'Berg woulda had him freak out or something, probably balling in front of the others -- that woulda been manipulative.

This movie's more like the mental war we fight with life and love and nature and death everyday, rather than a straight up battle film. If you went in expecting a traditional war movie, of course you were gonna be disappointed, just like Badlands wasn't a pure lovers-on-the-run movie, and Days wasn't a straight up Depression era story.
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

modage

well, see thats not even it.  i didnt expect a pure war film, and i dont have a problem with a psychological experience type of movie.  but like i said, i didnt care or get to know anything about any of the characters.  the rambling didnt go anywhere.  it had no emotional impact on me, and so i think the film failed to be what it wanted to be.  i just dont think some floaty camerawork and 'deep' thoughts for 3 hours = a good movie.  there just has to be more.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.