The best at what he does

Rating: 8/10 (27 May 2006)

Terrence Malick is one of those directors that has created a genre of film-making, and he is best at it. Many indie filmmakers today attempt to imitate his style, but are unsuccessful (I am thinking in particular of David Gordon Green and "Undertow", a film produced by Malick). He is a master of visual poetry. Nearly every person that liked this film mentions the astonishing visuals, and they are perfectly justified. This film is lovely. I don't think that each scene is as tightly constructed as in a Hitchcock film. For Malick the Gestalt is more important that the individual scene. This film is very impressionistic. I cannot note any specific scene that stood out to me. The compilation of scenes is what gives the film substance. Malick is a very naturalistic filmmaker. He is more interested in how his characters interact with nature and how nature interacts with the characters. The narrative is not the main objective, that is why the narrative is highly corrugated. One of the aspects of the film I liked the best was the voice over narration. That is something that has stuck me about all of his films. It is not tightly connected to the narrative. It is on another level, and yet it has everything to do with the narrative. Sometimes it seems superfluous and pretentious, but most of the time it is very provocative. You have to think about it since it is perpendicular to the narrative. This is not Malick's best film. That honor goes to "Badlands", his first. But this film is very good.