Days of Heaven (1978)

USA, 94 minutes

Director/writer: Terence Malick

Photography: Nestor Almendros, Haskell Wexler

Music: Ennio Morricone, Leo Kottke

Editor: Billy Weber
Cast: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz, Robert J. Wilke, Jackie Shultis, Stuart Margolin

A number of big impressive names are associated with director and writer Terence Malick’s second feature—the last before his hiatus from filmmaking for nearly 20 years—starting with Malick himself, the mysterious master filmmaker who went away (and then came back). Cinematographer Nester Almendros (My Night at Maud’s, Sophie’s Choice) shot the picture, backstopped by Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Ennio Morricone (A Fistful of Dollars, Taxi Driver) provided the soundtrack, supported by Leo Kottke (acoustic guitarist extraordinaire). And there’s a big fancy-pants and utterly gorgeous sepia titles sequence to start it off.

That leaves the pretty faces to Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, and Sam Shepard, who are players with varying degrees of ability. Days of Heaven is no actor’s showcase, though everyone here at least is competent enough and following direction. More the point, as with much of Malick’s work, is the stunning beauty—of nature, mostly, but note that he and Almendros worked carefully to emulate masterpieces of Dutch landscape painters such as Peter Bruegel (the Elder) or Jan van Goyen and others such as Edward Hopper, Johannes Vermeer, and Andrew Wyeth. But not even these museum inspection tours, in this case, are the main point. I think it’s fair to say the strongest and most interesting feature of Days of Heaven is the simmering sordid story, which ultimately feels biblical in its scope. Well done!

The Thin Red Line (1998)

USA, 170 minutes

Director: Terrence Malick

Writers: James Jones, Terrence Malick

Photography: John Toll

Music: Hans Zimmer

Editors: Leslie Jones, Saar Klein, Billy Weber

Cast: Jim Caviezel, Elias Koteas, Ben Chaplin, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, John Savage, Jared Leto, Dash Mihok, Tim Blake Nelson, Adrien Brody, John Travolta, George Clooney, John C. Reilly

In 1998 the director and screenwriter of The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick, had not made a movie in 20 years. To that point, he had made only two feature-length pictures (Badlands in 1973 and Days of Heaven in 1978). But they are well-made and had shown some cult appeal, so it was manifestly not hard for him to cast this World War II picture with all eager stars of the 1990s all up and down the line. At the time Malick was 55, which is pretty amazing all things considered, but what might impress even more about his career is that, in the past 10 years, into his 70s, he has made five more: The Tree of Life, To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song, and A Hidden Life. (Of them, I have only seen The Tree of Life and Song to Song, neither of which I liked.)

So this movie is already kind of a strange project even before you have seen a frame. It's based on a James Jones novel, but there is a lot of Malick in it too. All his familiar filmmaking tics are here: the brooding voiceovers, the attention to the natural world, the stately pace, the tone all but exalted. It affects me in the peculiar way so many of his pictures before 2011 have. I didn't like The Thin Red Line the first time I saw it, but I have liked it more every time since. This has unfortunately not worked as well for me with The Tree of Life, or even the intervening picture from 2005, The New World, part of why I've given up on the rest.

Badlands (1973)

USA, 94 minutes

Director/writer: Terrence Malick

Photography: Tak Fujimoto, Stevan Larner, Brian Probyn

Music: George Aliceson Tipton, Mickey & Sylvia

Editors: Robert Estrin, Billy Weber

Cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Ramon Bieri, Alan Vint, Gary Littlejohn

I haven't kept up much with director and writer Terrence Malick since The Tree of Life, which was way too muddled, Christianist, and overrated for me. He has been at least as productive in the past 10 years as any other stretch of his career: To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015, about a tarot card I understand), Song to Song (2017, sez "play loud" but the music is buried in the mix with everything else), and A Hidden Life (2019). Song to Song is the one I've seen, just a few weeks ago, and had a bad reaction. If you despaired of the Sean Penn sequences in The Tree of Life, that's basically all Song to Song is for over two hours. Also, in the past year or two, I paid a revisit to the 1978 Days of Heaven and came away decidedly unravished. I think in the '70s I might have even called it better than Badlands, but now I am more inclined to compare Days of Heaven unfavorably with Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff.

So I wasn't sure what I was going to get with a return to Malick's auspicious 1973 debut, the kinda-sorta story of Charlie Starkweather and girlfriend Carol Ann Fugate on a 1958 Midwestern killing spree, Bonnie and Clyde style, Gun Crazy style—one of the 20th century's favorite stories (Raymond Pettibon's version by way of Sonic Youth: "I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat, and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road"—I know, a reference to the Moors murders, but same diff). As it turns out, I should not have worried. Badlands is as lean and effective as I remembered it, a smoldering explosive mood piece, with Martin Sheen preening as Kit, a 25-year-old James Dean lookalike lost in the backwoods sticks of South Dakota, and Sissy Spacek as 15-year-old Holly, whose voiceover narration is full of the profound stillness and wisdom of Carson McCullers characters. In its quiet unassuming way, Badlands is close to perfect.

The Tree of Life (2011)

USA, 139 minutes
Director/writer: Terrence Malick
Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki
Music: Alexandre Desplat
Editors: Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber, Mark Yoshikawa
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Fiona Shaw, Tye Sheridan

The Tree of Life is not a very old movie but it has already won an outsize following among critics and other cineastes, whose open-throated clamor for it (encountered everywhere in the second half of 2011) helped enable it to enter at #6 on the list of 21st-century films at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? In fact, the biggest surprise for me about the update to that list which came earlier this year was that The Tree of Life did not push on even higher from there. I still think it could be the one to knock off In the Mood for Love, Mulholland Dr., and/or Yi Yi, which have owned the 1-2-3 since I've been aware of the list.

But that's horserace talk and beside the point, of course. On many levels it's easy to see how contemporary critics could isolate The Tree of Life for high praise: it's written and directed by the redoubtable Terrence Malick, it's quite stunningly beautiful, and it traffics in a kind of gauzy, ineffable spirituality with Christian overlay that really seems to get people where they live, uplifting like a Sunday service.