Reflections on the works of director Terrence Malick

Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World


Surreal. Meditative. Poetic. Tragic. Natural. Illuminated. Human. Theological. Philosophical. Transcendent. Unconventional. Watching one of director’s Terrence Malick’s films is like wandering through a dream at times both good and bad. His style is unique. Rather than giving audiences with yet another typically mundane narrative, Malick’s approach is to provide a meditative space for a viewer to hear, experience and feel a distinct world. It is our world, the real world filtered through poetry—poetry of image, character, music, and sound. All of his films are loosely historical, bearing the distinct marks of Malick’s imagination and interpretation. There is something historical in every one of his films, something distinct to a certain culture, geography, or era, but we’re not presented the flat facts. These stories are myths or parables. As any good myth does, rather than covering or diminishing clear perceptions of reality, what is true and real is engaged, enlivened, and illuminated.

The most unfortunate part about what I’m about to write is that so few people have experienced watching these films, and fewer still appreciate them. Some wonder how I could possibly count these (unbearable) movies among my favorites, and I wonder how those people fail to appreciate—even if only in a detached way—art of such depth, beauty, mystery and honest reflection. Maybe Malick’s work lacks popular appeal because of its comfort with mystery, with the undefined, the unspoken, the things that are not wrapped up into a neat package. Though I’ve watched each movie a dozen times or more, I still don’t “get” everything. Rather than diminishing my appreciation for the work, the mystery makes each viewing valuable and new. For many moviegoers, I think the overriding concern is for a palatable resolution of the story, the ultimate happiness of the protagonists, and the destruction of evil (people). Malick gives us ambiguity on many levels, with open ends and frayed edges, and seems content in doing so. Mystery leaves questions open, calls a person to probe deeper, to remain fascinated with something. Ultimately, isn’t that what the mystery in meditation is all about? Not figuring something out or encapsulating a person or idea in an easy-to-swallow capsule to consume and forget, as though the object of our meditation had been “understood”. Not making love, truth, beauty, God, and people into propositions—proposals to accept or reject. Malick isn’t comfortable to close the book on God, love, or truth within the imaginative realm of these stories nor, presumably, in the real world.

As a Christ-follower intensely concerned with the things of God, I see other values in Malick’s work as well. Constant attention is given to creation, the natural world: animals, insects, trees, rivers, landscapes, mountains, beaches, and people—these are all sanctified, touched by the hand of God. Malick loves to show us people who live simply, who lack pretension, bitterness and greed, as the native people of The New World or the Melanesian islanders of The Thin Red Line. However, his vision of earth also rightly acknowledges the ugliness within creation, the result of human sin. In The Thin Red Line, Malick provides the clearest allusion to sin’s effect on the whole of creation. Paraphrasing Augustine’s Confessions, the narrator asks, “This great evil… where’s it come from? How’d it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doing this? Who’s killing us? Robbing us of life and light; mocking us with the sight of what we might have known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow and the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you too? Have you passed through this night?”

The narrator asks this question in the midst of a chaotic village battle between American and Japanese soldiers on the island of Guadalcanal. In the scene, one side can hardly be distinguished from the other. It’s a scene of humanity caught up in a vast whirlpool of its own destruction. When the narrator asks the question, “Who’s killing us?” the intended recipient of the question is left unclear, and I think intentionally so. Are we the audience being asked? Is he inquiring after God? By framing the question in this way, we participate in asking the question ourselves, directing it in several directions at once. This is the irresistible beauty and tragedy of Malick’s work.

That's it for this woefully inadequate reflection. I intend to write some more on the specifics of the individual films at a later time, but I hope this will suffice as a brief summary or overview for now. The most important thing to do now is watch these movies!