Well, I suppose it’s official: my interest in movies is flagging. I have only gone to the movie theater twice in 2022—first in March to see The Batman, second in June to see Top Gun: Maverick. I enjoyed both films, and, like many from my generation, I will always be wistful for the experience of attending a movie in person—getting popcorn, enjoying the trailers, being wowed by the “big screen,” and, going out for beers or coffee afterwards to discuss the film in question. Still, given the rising costs of movie tickets, you have to be truly enticed to seek out such an experience, and that seems to be my problem. The kinds of movies that I like are rarely in theaters these days, if they’re being made at all. A few nights ago, I checked the local movie listings and only found one movie that I was inclined to watch, Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone. Sorry, for me, it’s a hard pass on Minions: The Rise of Gru and Thor: Love and Thunder (though I may catch the latter at some point, since I’ve read that it seeks to tackle, albeit gauchely, a variety of religious themes).
With this in mind, I’m scratching my cinematic itch by and large with television series—in recent months, The North Water, Stranger Things, Better Call Saul, Dark Winds, and We Own This City. These are all excellent shows, replete with nuanced acting, creative direction (see Better Call Saul especially), and complex writing. Still, I often find myself awaiting new feature-length films from a favorite director. For example, next May Martin Scorsese is scheduled to release Killers of the Flower Moon, which soon will be followed by Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. I’m equally ready for the less ballyhooed, but no less intriguing, The Way of the Wind—the latest feature film from Terrence Malick. Based on the biblical accounts of Jesus Christ, The Way of Wind was shot in the halcyon days of 2019, before COVID-19 began to wreak havoc around the globe. Since that time, Malick has been editing the film at his typically slow pace, no doubt made slower by pandemic-related delays. By late 2021, it appeared that Malick was ready to screen The Way of the Wind. Rumors circulated that it would appear at Cannes in May 2022. Yet, as Cannes neared, the film’s status remained uncertain, and one Hollywood insider suggested that it might remain unreleased for some time yet:
I can report on the way down-low that Mr. Malick is deep in editing of that film—which probably will have another, as-yet-unreported title—and there is no end in sight. To the point that some around him feel it may wind up an unfinished symphony. Definitely not Cannes this year, definitely not anywhere this year.
Malick has, of course, done this sort of thing before. Most famously, it took him twenty years to release a successor to Days of Heaven (1978), but, when he finally did, the outcome was The Thin Red Line, Malick’s most commercially successful film to date. On the other hand, Malick has been known to work quickly, so much so that, from 2015-2017, he released no fewer than three feature-length films. Only one thing, then, is certain: Malick is an auteur that works very much at his own pace, adapting his schedule to the form of the movie in question.
Indeed, it is arguable that the irregularity of Malick’s career has led to irregular results: while critics and commentators have hailed some of his films as among the best in movie history—John Patterson has written that, in Malick’s The New World, “cinema has reached its culmination, its apotheosis”—Malick has sustained neither box-office success nor critical praise. Hence, as he approaches his 80th birthday, Malick has assumed a singular role in Western cinema: he is a polarizing filmmaker, whose reception alternates between adoration and abhorrence. Moreover, these respective camps tend to divide over a number of extra-cinematic issues and questions, insofar as Malick’s palpable attraction to philosophy and spirituality cracks open a veritable fault line with audiences and critics alike. It appears that the more one is open to pondering, say, gnosticism or theodicy, the more one is willing to bear with Malick’s peculiar approach to filmmaking—his fondness for voiceover, his suggestion that the natural world is an essential “character” in any human drama, his dizzying use of jump cuts, flashcuts, Steadicam shots, and other cinematic traits.
Yet, if the dichotomous reception of Malick is understandable, that does not mean that it is fair. In truth, as with any skilled artisan, Malick’s work has to be seen and interpreted in context. Indeed, some Malick films better capture his aesthetic than others, though each stands as a discrete expression of his artistic goals and interests. To draw a comparison, I can be a fan of Bob Dylan and believe that Highway 61 Revisited (1965) is the greatest album in the history of popular music, and yet still concede that Down in the Groove (1988) is a relatively weak contribution to Dylan’s oeuvre—a product of a creative malaise that afflicted many rock icons in the 1980s. Still, one would be silly to dismiss Dylan tout court on account of Down in the Groove. More nuance is needed.
The same is doubtless true with Malick, and, with that in mind, I’m going to offer my own, completely unscientific ranking of the auteur’s best movies. Before I begin, I should note that I’ll be focusing on Malick’s full-length feature films, thereby omitting movies that he contributed to as only a screenwriter (such as Pocket Money in 1972) or works that belong to a different cinematic genre (such as the documentary Voyage of Time in 2016). What’s left, then, are nine films in all, and I will list them in descending order, from worst to first. Of course, it can’t be forgotten that even the “worst” Malick film is worth watching, just as Down in the Groove, for all of its flaws, nevertheless boasts a classic Dylan track in “Death Is Not the End.”
9. Song to Song (2017)
Originally titled Lawless, later dubbed Weightless, and finally baptized Song to Song, this movie serves as an exploration of how aesthetic pleasure (whether of an artistic or sexual variety) can uproot one from ethical commitment. Song to Song’s loosely constructed story centers on a cadre of musicians in Austin, Texas. In distinct yet overlapping ways, these artists crave love and success, but they also come to realize that these ends are often mutually exclusive. Though inspired at times, Song to Song resembles its predecessor Knight of Cups on both a thematic and a visual level. Alas, what was interesting the first time around grows tedious, if not barren, on the second. In good Kierkegaardian fashion, Song to Song concludes with a beautiful ode to the repetition of love, but a stronger plot would have made for a more powerful dénouement.
8. Knight of Cups (2015)
In the wake of The Tree of Life (2011), Malick doubled down on his new “expressionist” aesthetic, whereby film becomes more like a phenomenology of feeling and mood rather than a vehicle for clearly defined narratives. In To the Wonder (2012) Malick applies this cinematic method to marriage, but Knight of Cups focuses on spiritual despair and loneliness. The movie centers on Rick (Christian Bale), a screenwriter based in Los Angeles, who has achieved vocational and financial success. Hollywood moguls wine-and-dine him, and he finds himself in the bed of a myriad of beautiful women. Yet, no matter how much “fun” Rick has, limitations and shortcomings surround him—a bitter father, a brother verging on mental breakdown, a failed marriage. As if in denial, Rick dashes between clubs, parties, and photoshoots, losing any sense of who he really is and of what he really wants. Nothing summarizes Rick’s predicament better than the words of one of his smooth-talking Hollywood suitors: “Let me tell you about you.” Malick’s intent, it seems, is to take us “inside” Rick’s melancholy, which, finally, is owing to (and not in spite of) his affluence and status. Knight of Cups is not always easy viewing, precisely because Malick is pushing at the borders of what the cinematic medium can achieve.
7. To the Wonder (2012)
Malick began work on To the Wonder prior to the release of The Tree of Life. This is significant, because it shows that his commitment to a new cinematic aesthetic did not issue from The Tree of Life’s success. On the contrary, it was a deeply personal resolution—a point that manifests itself within the films as such. If The Tree of Life was meant recollect Malick’s childhood, To the Wonder stands as an imaginative representation of his young adulthood, particularly his marriage to a French woman and their turbulent lives together in rural Oklahoma. As with The Tree of Life, Malick casts his own story in the broadest possible terms—a mode of detachment that, at times, alienates the viewer. For instance, To the Wonder’s ostensible protagonist—an American environmental engineer named Neil (played with silent awkwardness by Ben Affleck)—rarely speaks in the film. We are, it seems, expected to intuit his feelings and motivations. This technique has spotty results, but the wistful beauty of Malick’s vision and the simplicity of his core narrative is moving more often than not. After all, who cannot identify with vicissitudes of romance? Moreover, through a side story about a Catholic priest (Javier Bardem), Malick extends this notion to the relationship between man and God, ascending to a sublime register in the process.
6. Badlands (1973)
Badlands is an iconic film, so much so that, in late 1981, it inspired Bruce Springsteen to record a stripped-down album named Nebraska. On the album’s eponymous title track, Springsteen assumes the perspective of a nihilistic murderer, who, when pressed to explain his crimes, concludes that there “is just a meanness in the world.” On the surface, this portrait of pitiless, hard-bitten character would seem to correspond with Badlands—a movie about a teenage killer named Kit (Martin Sheen, in his breakout role) who goes on the lam with his girlfriend Holly (Sissy Spacek). Yet, Springsteen’s song actually hews closer to Malick’s source material, the true-crime killing spree by rebel-without-a-cause Charles Starkweather in January 1958. The real-life Starkweather brutally murdered ten people in less than weeks and, following his arrest, was ultimately executed by the state of Nebraska in 1959. Yet, in a sign of things to come, Malick does not adapt the Starkweather story in straightforward fashion. Instead, he treats Kit as a likable yet downcast figure, who feels estranged from the “American Dream” and, out of desperation, resorts to crime. At times, Badlands is simply stunning: Kit and Holly’s jaunt across the Great Plains is the perfect vehicle for Malick’s eye for natural beauty, and the film’s use of classical music (especially the work of German composer Carl Orff) is unforgettable. At the same time, however, Badlands adopts something of an outré tone: Malick never lets the viewer identify with Kit and Holly, and for a film about a serial killer, it is ultimately an aloof, even icy experience.
5. Days of Heaven (1978)
If Badlands announced Malick as one of Hollywood’s most promising young directors, Days of Heaven cemented his reputation. It has been called “the most beautiful film ever made,” and not without reason. Days of Heaven garnered an Academy Award for Spanish cinematographer Néstor Almendros, along with three additional Oscar nominations, including one for legendary composer Ennio Morricone. Malick’s direction and writing are equally assured: he manages to take a common plot device—a love triangle—and to imbue it with metaphysical significance. Indeed, as Malick suggests, the corruption of human love finds expression in the fallenness of creation. The film even takes its title from the Hebrew Bible:
And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates: That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth. For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him. (Deuteronomy 11:20-22, emphasis added)
But what would happen if these commandments were to be broken? What would be the outcome if, instead of walking in the ways of the LORD, one were to betray the neighbor for one’s own gain? Days of Heaven answers these questions with the greatest plague sequence this side of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999). It is, in fact, a scene that simultaneously indicates the film’s genius as well as its limitation. For Malick is seemingly content to let Days of Heaven operate on the level of allegory—a cinematic “icon” of scriptural wisdom.
4. The Tree of Life (2011)
The Tree of Life lies at the very fulcrum of Malick’s career: he made four feature films before it and has released four after it. In retrospect, this symmetry seems fitting. For however one assesses The Tree of Life as such, it is clear that the film marks a point of transition in Malick’s career. Prior to The Tree of Life, Malick was arguably Hollywood’s greatest living filmmaker: he had made four films, and all four were widely considered masterpieces. Sure, he wasn’t as popular as Steven Spielberg or as venerated as Martin Scorsese, but, to that point, he was something they weren’t—perfect. Since The Tree of Life, however, Malick has been viewed differently. Many critics continue to grant his importance, and doubtless he remains an “interesting” auteur. But there has also been mounting criticism that he lacks the range of a Spielberg or a Scorsese, that he has a handful of well-worn cinematic concerns (some might say “fetishes”) that occasionally find the right narrative vehicle but just as often flounder amid thin scripts and excessive jump cuts. Whether or not this charge is fair remains an open question. What is clear is that the The Tree of Life inaugurated this change in perception. The reasons why are manifold. For one thing, Malick took his love of “natural light” to the next level, inserting an extended sequence of the birth of the cosmos into his film. Some hailed this as a stroke of genius—an audio-visual expression of Malick’s metaphysical interests in God and creation. Others found the scene gratuitous, distracting, and boring. Similar debates pivoted around other aspects of The Tree of Life—its paucity of dialogue, its mystical symbolism, its allusive script. Wasn’t this supposed to be a Brad Pitt movie?! Still, it can’t be denied that The Tree of Life is exhilarating filmmaking. In contrast to the reserve of, say, Badlands, The Tree of Life is a “full send” in every possible way. Indeed, as is now well known, the film is largely autobiographical, intricately exploring the death of Malick’s younger brother decades before. In later films, Malick would attempt to revisit other moments of his life, but only The Tree of Life does so with indelible potency. Everyone should watch it at least once.
3. The New World (2005)
I saw The New World upon its wide release in early 2006, and I liked it. But I like it even more now. I think my growing appreciation is owing to a variety of factors. Part of it has to do with expectations. Coming on the heels of The Thin Red Line—Malick’s lone box-office hit—The New World was billed as a grand historical epic. Of course, I knew it would be quirkier and more philosophical than, say, Braveheart (1995), but I was not prepared for how radically Malick would rework the story of Pocahontas. Multiple viewings were needed. Indeed, since that time, I have assigned The New World in my “Theology and Film” course at Villanova, and I have come to see it as an exemplar of what Paul Schrader once deemed “transcendental style.” In 1972, before his collaborations with Martin Scorsese, Schrader published a short book called Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. According to Schrader, film is a medium capable of giving expression to the transcendent. Here he is not making the banal point that films can be vehicles for religious subject matter (Ben-Hur, Il vangelo secondo Matteo, etc.). Rather, he is suggesting that a particular cinematic approach is uniquely capable of eliciting an awareness of that which exceeds our normal sense experience, of disclosing the oft-overlooked presence of the sacred. For Schrader, a handful of auteurs have exhibited and refined this transcendental style, typically contrasting the rich inner life of a protagonist with the profane concerns of the external world. Thus a crisis emerges, which, according to Schrader, does not end in triumph but, rather, in stasis—a “a frozen view of life which does not resolve the disparity but transcends it.” That is to say, the director’s depiction of stasis shows the ongoing tension between the spiritual and the physical, which the protagonist (and perhaps the viewer) must learn to suffer in expectant tranquility. If Schrader were to update this text, I believe he would have to add Malick’s name to the title and include at least a discussion of The New World. To be sure, Malick’s Pocahontas is more than a historical figure. She epitomizes the spiritual potential of each human being, who, though buffeted by uncontrollable cultural forces, is nevertheless capable of being reconciled with the eternal.
2. A Hidden Life (2019)
After both Knight of Cups and Song to Song failed to garner critical acclaim, there were rumblings that Malick was beginning to lose his fastball. Some wondered if his cinematic habits and traits were growing stale, perhaps even self-parodic. This criticism wasn’t altogether fair. A more charitable reading would have acknowledged that, starting with The Tree of Life, Malick had not really been making stand-alone films. Rather, he was developing a multipart opus that, not unlike Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog, sought to link together various existential questions and themes in cinematic form. Still, no matter how much one tried to account for Malick’s output in the 2010s, it appeared that his career was winding down. He could still be an interesting director, but it seemed highly unlikely that he would ever release anything as beautiful as The New World or as groundbreaking as The Tree of Life. Then, in December 2019, not long before news of COVID-19 began to reach Western shores, Malick released A Hidden Life. This film bore many of the cinematic tendencies that had marked Malick’s recent work, but it was rooted in historical events and persons. A Hidden Life tells the story of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) and his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner). When World War II breaks out, government officials demand that Franz (along with all Austrian men) pledge his allegiance to the Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler. Yet, as a devout Catholic, Franz refuses to take such an oath, and he soon finds himself mocked by his fellow villagers and ultimately persecuted by the Third Reich. It is, to be sure, an inherently dramatic plot, which is enriched by Malick’s rare ability to evoke care and emotion. Even more remarkably, however, Malick realizes that Franz’s story is not just one of personal Christlikeness; rather, it is an expression of a profound caritas between husband and wife. Indeed, Fani is called to stand by Franz amid unspeakably trying circumstances, and she never fails in her courage or in her faith. In the end, A Hidden Life’s running time might have been trimmed by twenty minutes, but it is the most touching movie that Malick has ever made and, in turn, a testimony to his abiding skills as a filmmaker.
1. The Thin Red Line (1998)
Is The Thin Red Line Malick’s “best” movie? Well, I suppose it depends on what is meant by “best.” It’s not as aesthetically striking as Days of Heaven, nor is it as cinematically creative as The Tree of Life. It cannot boast a strong protagonist like The New World, nor is it as poignant as A Hidden Life. Still, if one were to ask me to recommend just one Malick film, I would choose The Thin Red Line. That’s partly because it’s a World War II movie and, as such, features a plot that people can latch onto. Sure, Malick makes abundant use of his all-star cast, bouncing from A-list actors such as Sean Penn and George Clooney to (then) newcomers such as Jim Caviezel and Jared Leto. Regardless, the audience is never left trying to ascertain the plot, which centers on the U.S. Army’s attempt to capture an airfield from Japanese troops on the remote South Pacific island of Guadalcanal—a dramatization of a real-life battle that, in fact, has long been celebrated in print and on screen. This familiarity is inviting, and yet, true to form, Malick refuses to acquiesce to generic conventions. The Thin Red Line turns war into a site for metaphysical reflection, and, as it turns out, this approach makes perfect sense. They say that “there are no atheists in foxholes,” but it seems that Malick would complicate this proverb. For him, it’s not that there are no atheists; it’s that there is no indifference. For in battle people are confronted—no, oppressed—by what Malick’s muse Martin Heidegger would famously dub “the question of the meaning of Being.” The Thin Red Line highlights this question with brilliant performances by Penn and Nick Nolte, gorgeous shots of the natural world, and a lengthy battle scene that rivals any in Steven Spielberg’s more marketable Saving Private Ryan (1998). Even if Malick has made better films, The Thin Red Line remains unique in its ability to synthesize the auteur’s intellectual and cinematic interests—and it frequently does so in gripping fashion.
I loved the quotation from George Eliot’s “Middle March” at the end of A Hidden Life. A beautiful film.
Based on your review and recommendation here, I'm really intrigued to watch "A Hidden Life." From the description it reminds of something akin in spirit perhaps to Ingmar Bergman, but with more tenderness. Of these I've actually only seen "The Tree of Life" in theater (wasn't this a Brad Pitt movie?!?) and I was somewhat amused at the time about the birth of the celestial heavens shots, but if I'd had your guidance then I'd would have been more appreciative haha ....