Last Winter Term I was introduced to the Director Terrence Malick. I decided that for my final project in American Cinema I was going to watch all of his films, and write my analysis and observations about each.
Badlands
Through out the film Badlands directed by Terrence Malick, there is a sense that main characters Holly and Kit are mentally absent from reality through out their romanticized escape from society and morality. Holly and Kit leave true reality to go into their own form of reality; in which actions do not seem to have consequences, and one stays in a childlike state of mind forever.
Holly in particular shows an innocence that should not be possible after such traumatic experiences.Although she seems to long for an identity, her lack of emotion to events, such as witnessing the untimely death of her father show that she, although seemingly more stable and aware than Kit, is in fact not.
One part of the movie specifically alludes to the coming of age stories of Huck Fin, and Tom Sawyer. In this part of the film, Holly and Kit have just escaped from society after Kit shot her father, and are living in the wild. The house in which they live seems to closely resemble a tree house, and their activities include building contraptions to “protect the fort”.
It is discomforting that a teenage girl would run away with her fathers killer with out a significant emotional reaction; unnatural. This sense of uneasiness came easily to myself, and I expect many other viewers of this film.The most significant contributing factor to this instability is the childlike reactions, and seemingly innocent, calm and unaware responses that both main characters have to all six deaths that they inflict throughout the film.
Days of Heaven
Days of Heaven there is a similar sense of innocence that engulf the beginning and middle of the film, just as there is in Badland. In Days of Heaven, Malick tells the story of a young couple and his younger sister, and a farmer. The movie is of a scheme in which the heroine marries the supposedly sick farmer in order to gain his inheritance when he soon will pass. Jealously prevails though and her boyfriend kills the farmer seemingly by accident, but during the heat of a fight nonetheless.
I would envision then, based on this plot, the mood of the movie to not be carefree and worry free, but it is.There is a sense of ease that all of the characters get on the farm, and until the last moments of the movie, do the characters really seem to understand what the consequences of their scheme truly are. These characters seem to easily move about during the day and perform fun and exciting tasks, such as watching a circus together as a family, while all the while knowing that what they are doing to this seeming sickly farmer is unjust.
I could compare the Badlands’ forest scene, to be similar to Days of Heaven farm scenes. The characters both mill about all day just doing what ever they want because they in fact have nothing that they need to do. This gives the impression of a child. Children spend most of the day doing what they want to do and playing with what they want to play with. Most children to not have many responsibilities, just like the characters in both of these movies seem to have hardly any responsibilities either.
The Thin Red Line
Upon watching Thin Red Line, I became aware of how much more dialogue is in this movie than the other Terrence Malick films that I had seen thus far. But does more dialogue actually mean that is it stronger? I would say, that for this movie not only was more dialogue needed to convey the plot and emotions of the characters. Also perhaps, had Thin Red Line had less dialogue, it would have been hard to differentiate between the soldiers.
Being a solider is to be part of a unit fighting for a seemingly common cause or set of goals.Had the audience not been able to hear the many characters perspectives and points of view, then the audience would never have been able to visually realize what each soldier was fighting for and for whom each soldier cared deeply about.
Although it is true, some of the soldiers in this movie are your typical soldiers, I believe it was important to see for example the points of view on Witt and Welsh in order to compare the humanity in each of these men. To see that both Witt and Welsh are fighting for different reasons towards the same goal is an important step in not only learning about this moving but learning about perhaps what it is actually like to be a soldier, not glorifying war.
Malick shows men at their weakest moments when they can be the strongest. He shows a man pulling the teeth from a Japanese soldier to keep as a memento, only later to show the soldier disgusted with what he did and what he had become in that particular battle. Had this film had less dialogue, I believe I would not care for each individual soldier like I had come to over the course of the movie. I only would have cared that they won in the end because I would have seen them as a unit and not individuals. Dialogue is what enabled me to make this distinction.
The New World
Innocence seems to be a common theme throughout Terrence Malick’s films. In Badlands, and Days of Heaven there is a portion of the movie where the characters seem to be, for lack of a better term, in their own fantasy.They are in their own reality. For example, in Badlands the two runaways find themselves in an enchanting forest, living in a tree house and idly spending the days. In Days of Heaven the main characters find themselves similarly bored and in love at the farmers farm during the off-season of harvesting.
I argue, that The New World, has that same essence of fantasy and absence from reality, hence creating childlike innocence, during the scenes where John Smith lives with Pocahontas in her village. He is stripped of his responsibilities and in turn finds himself playing like a child through out the days. Some examples of this are when John Smith is mimicking the villagers and joking around with the native men.They are all laughing, and this scene is along side scenes of Pocahontas and John Smith spending the days flirting, swimming, and exploring the wilderness together.
The Tree of Life
The beginning of the film starts with the mother describing two ways to go through life, the way of nature and the way of grace. It is apparent in this film that the mother goes through life in the way of grace, while the father is the opposite and goes through life in the way of nature. While both parents are equally influential in Jack’s life, it is interesting to see how Jack strives to be with grace like his mother, although he in fact much more like his father. This film seems to show Jacks struggle with acceptance over who he is as an innocent child, and who he is becoming in his early teenage years.
While young Jack is on his emotional journey, trying to find himself, he is taking his frustrations and anger out on his youngest brother. The end of the film shows one of the most pivotal points of the film. This is the collection of scenes where Jack’s father apologizes for being so strict and harsh on his son. One of these scenes is also where Jack gains acceptance for his actions from his younger brother. It seems that his youngest brother shows understanding for how Jack had been treating him.
Although each of the relationships in the film are complicated in themselves, they work together to form a close knit, and I would say, typical family in the 1950’s.
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