ryan.smith.blog

Somehow I never saw Terrence Malick’s “The New World” until last night. Not surprisingly, it’s amazing. I’ve been a huge Malick fan since I saw “The Thin Red Line” when I was fifteen. Released a few months after the intense “Saving Private Ryan”, Malick’s war film was, like most of his films, slow-paced, poetic, and more about environment and atmosphere than about plot. I remember standing up at the end of the film and saying, “Brilliant”. I think I was the only person in our group that enjoyed it at all. That was the moment I became a Terrence Malick fan.

In reference to the films of Andrei Tarkovsky (who makes Malick look like McG), Roger Ebert says, “He uses length and depth to slow us down, to edge us out of the velocity of our lives, to enter a zone of reverie and meditation. When he allows a sequence to continue for what seems like an unreasonable length, we have a choice. We can be bored, or we can use the interlude as an opportunity to consolidate what has gone before, and process it in terms of our own reflections.”

This can also be said of Malick’s films. They are slow, yes, but they are also beautiful. They slow us down and encourage us to observe, to reflect, and to consider. There aren’t many films where I forget about the cinematography when I am watching. In Malick’s films, I do. Not because it’s not breathtaking (it is), but because it feels real. Because it feels like it is actually happening.

The enigmatic director has been in the film business for nearly forty years and has made only four films. They are all wonderful. His new film, “Tree of Life”, is slated for a 2009 release. It’s his shortest turnaround ever. One can only hope that will not be a detriment.