A Study of Terrence Malick's Films

Malick's Fascination for the Criminal in Badlands



Malick expresses a fascination for the mind of the criminal in Badlands. He makes you root for someone that you wouldn’t usually be cheering on. Although Kit is a sociopathic serial killer and has done some really terrible things, you still end up pulling for him and hoping he succeeds in his journey. Kit enjoys his almost celebrity status as he fulfills the character of James Dean, “The Rebel without a Cause”. He is seen in the movie adjusting his hair, checking how he looks, and leaving voice messages to express some pride in his celebrity status. According to Lloyd Michaels "Proud self-introduction is echoed in Kit's "Name's Carruthers. Believe I shoot people now and then."


Even as he is finally caught and arrested the officers almost seem starstruck by the famous Kit. Officers are excited gathering around him accepting anything Kit gives them as a souvenir. Kit even signs his paperwork as if he is giving away his autograph. These people find Kit fascinating. When Kit is talking with an officer, the officer tells him,“You’re quite an individual Kit.” To which Kit replies, “You think they’ll take that into consideration.” He takes pride in the fact that he is an interesting person. Kit explains why he did it in the end saying, “I always wanted to be a criminal, just not this big.”

Shocking Differences between Rich and Poor in Days of Heaven

At the beginning of Days of Heaven, Malick portrays the distinct inequality between the life of a rich man and the lives of the poor workers. Malick shows how demanding the work of Bill, Abby, and Linda normally is. They are running nonstop, picking up wheat without barely anytime to rest. They worked hard from sunrise until sunset, and got paid very little. You also really get a feeling of how loud the machinery is, because there are multiple scenes where you can’t even hear what Bill, Linda, or Abby are even saying. You just see their mouths move and their expressions. This is a very stressful life. You start to see Bill get really sick and tired of living this life and doing this work.

This is in sharp contrast to the life of the farmer, who you see lounging around under an umbrella relaxing. He hit it big so he doesn’t have to do any work. He has time and money to vacation to the beach, go on picnics, and even fly in the circus. You start to see a real hatred from Bill directed towards the farmer, because he is jealous and upset that he is not in his position. Bill has a conversation with the farmer where he recalls how he always thought he would hit it big somehow. He thought he would make a big score growing up, but he realized that he never would. He would never be able to give Abby security from his own wealth. Abby enjoys this security from the farmer, and ends up falling in love with him. It is for this tragic difference in wealth that leads to the story’s tragic ending. Wealth is used as a brick wall for Bill. No matter how bad he wanted it, he was still poor and the farmer was rich. In Bill's eyes, the farmer had something he desired, and he hated him for that.

Sharp Contrast of Evil and Love in The Thin Red Line

After a 20 year hiatus, Terrence Malick returns to film with his World War II masterpiece, The Thin Red Line. The film came out around the same time as Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, which stole a lot of peoples’ attention. Malick’s take on World War II was very different from Spielberg’s film and any war film before. The Thin Red Line contrasted the ideas of evil, darkness, and war to the beauty of nature, love, and brotherhood. This has been a common theme in Malick’s movies, like Days of Heaven, when Linda says “Nobody's perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You just have half-angel and half-devil in you.” This contrast is much more evident in The Thin Red Line as you see the horrors of war.
Malick starts the film showing a beautiful Melanesian island where the character of Witt has gone AWOL. Malick sees this place as his peaceful paradise where man is in harmony with nature. A United States ship finds Witt and he is forced back into the brutal war. Malick shows mass chaos through the ear-blowing bombs, the constant firing of weapons, fear in the face of the soldiers, and the mass deaths of young men. The worst part of these atrocities are that they are all for nothing. Captain Staros says to his men as he is leaving, “The tough thing is not knowing if you are doing any good. That’s the hard part.”
Witt shows an utter disgust for what humans are doing to each other as they storm the Japanese camp and murder hundreds of men. He says in a voiceover, “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.” This voiceover haunts you as you witness the evil take over these men.
Throughout all this violence and chaos, Malick expresses the beauty of love, nature, and brotherhood. In the midst of battle, overcome by fear, Private Bell still sees visions of his wife who he loves very much. He is sensually touching her and kissing her. This is his hope for surviving the war; to get back to his wife. Witt also has visions, but they are of his beautiful paradise island where humans and nature live in harmony. Captain Staros and his men show their loving bond for each other through the movie. “Staros refused a direct order from Tall to lead an attack on a machinegun position of the Japanese. Staros says: “I’ve lived with these men for two and a half years, and I will not order them to their deaths.” (Simon Critchley) When Staros is packing to leave, his men thank him for looking out for them. Staros replies, “You have been like my sons. You are my sons, my dear sons. You’ll live inside me now. I’ll carry you wherever I go.” A voiceover toward the end of the movie says “Love, where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war could put it out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free.” This striking line leaves us with the idea that there is hope for something greater.

Mixing History with Myth

Terrence Malick, In his 2006 film The New World, mixes history with myth in the tale of Pocahontas. In the film, you see the director and cinematographer work very hard to make many aspects historically correct such as the look, lifestyle, and culture of the natives and English settlers. However, Malick decided to show us the mythical tale in which there was a painful love triangle between Pocahontas, John Rolfe, and John Smith. The director obviously knows this story is historically false but decided to leave it in. Why?
I believe he left in the myth because it portrayed the same themes he has expressed throughout all his movies. It showed us the tough decision of love vs. security which you have seen in Badlands and in Days of Heaven. In The New World, Pocahontas was lied to by Smith’s men saying that he was dead. She is overcome with grief. Later John Rolfe comes to Jamestown and falls deeply in love with Pocahontas. They get married and have a child, but then she hears news that Smith is not dead. This reawakens so many feelings, and she is torn between the two men. She has to choose between a man who didn’t know his destiny and the man who she was married to and had a child with. Like all of Malick’s films, security won.
He also expressed his philosophy that true happiness is when humans live in harmony with nature. Smith tells Pocahontas at the end, “I thought it was a dream, what we knew in the forest. It’s the only truth.” He is overcome with remorse in the fact that he chose a path of “glory” instead of staying with her and living a life full of love and happiness. Although it is a myth, something about the story caught his eye. If Malick simply followed history it wouldn’t be much more than a documentary. His reoccurring themes could not be present if he chose a historical path.

Making the Big Bang Beautiful

Malick’s latest masterpiece, The Tree of Life deals with the idea of loss and the simple question of “Why?” We experience both the beginning of creation and the eventual destruction of the earth in this film. Through the use of voiceover, placement of symbolic elements, camera movements, and creativity, Malick and the cinematographer, Lubezki give The Tree of Life a very unique feel and a lasting impact on the audience.

Tree of Life has very little dialogue but uses voiceover to express the thoughts of the characters, which is a theme that has been presented in every Malick film. When people are conversing, a lot of times it doesn’t even show them talking or moving their mouth. Instead the camera moves to other shots. It is almost as if it is a voiceover also. There is also many times where the camera is filmed as if you were looking through the eyes of a certain character. This is the case when the baby is crawling up the stairs, when Mrs. O’Brien is looking down at her son, and when someone is reaching out from the bottom of a grave. I feel that this is a very powerful shot, because you see exactly what he or she sees.

There are also many long close up shots of characters’ faces. This is really interesting because the character can show you exactly what they are thinking or feeling without saying a word. You see this method used perfectly when you witness Jack’s jealousy of his brother and his father playing music together. Malick also gives us his trademark views of an up-angled shot of the sun shining through the trees. This has been present in all of his motion pictures and gives us the feeling that something is watching over us.

In the scenes of the universe and prehistoric earth, Malick and his co-workers used their creativity rather than using computer generated visuals to complete this project. Dan Glass said, “We worked with chemicals, paint, fluorescent dyes, smoke, liquids, CO2, flares, spin dishes, fluid dynamics, lighting and high speed photography to see how effective they might be. It was a free-wheeling opportunity to explore, something that I have found extraordinarily hard to get in the movie business. Terry didn’t have any preconceived ideas of what something should look like. We did things like pour milk through a funnel into a narrow trough and shoot it with a high-speed camera and folded lens, lighting it carefully and using a frame rate that would give the right kind of flow characteristics to look cosmic, galactic, huge and epic.” These scenes were extraordinary and contributed greatly to the film’s overall beauty. The cinematography in this film really gave this film its lasting effect.