Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

[dda1996a]

In productivity, not thematically. Malick has been awfully productive this past few years. From 1973 until 2005 he released four films, from 2011 until 2017 six films.

[domino harvey]

I don't see Blanchett, guess she got cut

[swo17]

In productivity, not thematically. Malick has been awfully productive this past few years. From 1973 until 2005 he released four films, from 2011 until 2017 six films.

Make it six films in two years and we'd be talking. For now he's merely working at a Woody Allen clip.

[dda1996a]

Fair enough. I was making an exaggerated joke but OK.
I hope Blanchett wasn't cut, she was easily the best thing in Knight of Cups

[knives]

She was in Knight of Cups? Says something that I don't remember.

[dda1996a]

She was the doctor who treat lepers. She was also the only interesting female character in the film (and overall)

[domino harvey]

I object to the assertion that there were characters in that film

[whaleallright]

Depending on your taste, it's either a tribute to Malick/Lubezki's stylistic consistency or their quick establishment of visual clichés, but I recognized their mark w/in two seconds of that trailer.



It seems like their last few films insist on replaying a handful of compositional and characterologial tropes, many of which seem like they've washed ashore from mid-20th-century European art cinema. The choice of peripatetic protagonists who work/exist (often vaguely) in some kind of artistic milieu and have reached a crisis point... noncommunicative lovers staring past one another.... They seem like riffs on the less wordy passages from L'eclisse. They have some of the same flaws of Antonioni's films: a little heavy on the portent (Farber's proverbial "wet towels of significance"). I admit I preferred it when Malick's reference points (cinematic and otherwise) were both more diverse and more diffuse.

I also have to note a striking anachronism in the trailer: Fassbender telling Gosling the real money is in record sales, not live performances. In 1997, or 1977, sure. By no means now. But that sort of thing can be forgiven. Since all his movies from Tree of Life forward have been more-or-less veiled authobiography, we can assume that Malick is making a movie as much about the time when he was a young man as he is about the present. But this could point up the vagueness in Malick's conception of milieu that's marred the last few films.

Of course, it's a trailer. Maybe Song to Song will be a departure.

[dda1996a]

It's less on reusing his tropes, as his films until and including Tree of Life are also very similar. It's just that from To the Wonder his films became like a parody of his style. Haven't watched Antonioni except for Red Dessert, but as much as they are hard to love you get a sense of their ennui and their personal struggle. In TtW and KoC there are no characters, no personal connection to what is onscreen. Beautiful women and locations can only get you so far. And I love everything from Badlands to Tree of Life. Hope this and/or Radegund are at least not 95% pseudo philosophical whispers and twirling dresses.

[whaleallright]

It's less on reusing his tropes, as his films until and including Tree of Life are also very similar.

His stylistic vocabulary (to use a pretentious phrase) really shifts when he starts working with Lubezki and relying on a largely improvised shooting process centering on the use of the Steadicam. There's a move toward an increasingly fragmented decoupage (less and less of a sense of integral "scenes"), a 360º playing space, constant jump cuts, the wide-angle lens, the low-angled shots pointing up at light sources, characters and camera drifting around/past each other, and—least palatable of all, to me—the seemingly entirely improvised, method-y, painfully awkward and unconvincing scenes of emotional effusion/play/forced spontaneity between his actors.

There are certainly lots of things in Thin Red Line that get adapted in later films, but it's New World where you first see most of the compositional devices that have now settled into something mannerist. I have a hard time seeing much visual continuity between the 1970s films and the recent ones, except I guess for the constant interest in the natural world.

As a broad aesthetic aim, Malick's always been trying to present the liminal and the evanescent— but doing so isn't just a matter of trying to "capture the (profilmic) moment," as his current method seems to emphasize, but also a question of careful structure, which the recent films seem to me to lack. The devastating fixed long take, in which Linda and friend wander into the distance, that concludes Days of Heaven gains force from the more rushed shots/scenes that precede it. There is little quite so patient and purposeful in To the Wonder etc. I guess the word that best describes to me what's so present in the first three or four films and so absent in the last few is "poise."

[Luke M]

I think the trailer for this one had more dialogue than all of Knight of Cups. It looks like there's some semblance of a story. So I'm a little excited.

[dda1996a]

There is something to be had from the spontaneity of his recent way of shooting, but the larger problem is that he covers all his footage in a voice over. Disorganized scenes with only voice over just don't up to a whole. His voice overs in his earlier films were potent and unique because they commented on what was happening, but in hindsight or from a removed experience, thus adding a new perspective to the story. A young girl trying to make sense of what is happening around her infused Badlands and Days of Heaven with naivety to offset the portent reality.
Tree of Life worked to use his more recent, autobiographical films, because it focused on an older man looking back on his memories and trying to make sense of his past.
But yeah this trailer had actual conversations, and perhaps rock concerts can spark what was missing. But then again I though Malick going Hollywood and strip clubs had potential.

[John Shade]

Interesting that this film already has this much talk and it hasn't come out (granted it's been hyped for years and a lot of that is just funny, whispery jokes).

I liked Knight of Cups and even slightly defended it here, but I will admit that this trailer looks like that movie's b-sides. Perhaps not. Maybe the rock topic/concerts can spark something. I think Malick has been at his best when he can use his specific style and imagery and apply it to an almost universal or mythic story. This worked especially well in New World, which I tend to think of as his greatest film. He aimed for that kind of universality (and epic grandiosity) in Tree of Life, but for whatever reason, or at least for me, that film seems somewhat muddled. Still I think there were moments in his most recent films that are worth going back to, and I think I'm in the minority opinion of preferring his return films over his '70s films. All of this being said, I do think it would be interesting to see him film a slightly more narrative film.

[domino harvey]

The Tree of Life thread had like 30 pages before it came out, this is nothing!

[Andrew_VB]

ill definitely check this movie out, but i think people post-trailer who are optimistic need to temper expectations a bit. the distribution company definitely will make a trailer that highlights as much "story" as they can. given that this was shot (to the best of my knowledge) over the same time period as knight of cups, i'm expecting a similar sort of style/film.

[Dead or Deader]

[domino harvey]

Richard Brody says Blanchett did make the cut and plays a "wealthy socialite." Patti Smith is also apparently one of the cast members

[Mooney]

Can't tell precisely but is he speaking with Werner Herzog in that picture?

[flyonthewall2983]

Yes, Mark Romanek took the picture. Malick looks a lot like James Taylor.

[John Shade]

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I remember reading that he listened to Green Day's "Dookie" while editing the Thin Red Line.

[oh yeah]

I've always enjoyed that Green Day anecdote. They are (or, rather, used to be) a good band, but I just find the idea of Terrence fucking Malick editing The Thin Red Line to a bratty, upbeat pop-punk soundtrack pretty amusing.

On another note, what if Malick's infamous practice of cutting actors (or musical artists) out of his finished films wasn't simply a by-product of his unique approach to filmmaking/editing, or his perfectionist bent and rapidly-changing conception of the film at hand? What if, instead, Malick is on a 20-year, very deliberate quest to just piss off as many A-listers and big names as possible? Like the art-house filmmaker equivalent of Punk'd, except there's no cameras recording the reaction and it's not really humorous. Think abouuuut it...

[Ribs]

Christian Bale did not make the cut

This is an aside from this film but I'm surprised to see that Malick is apparently doing a Q&A at the Smithsonian next week for Voyage of Time. Has he just suddenly eased up on his whole mysterious outsider thing or something?

[domino harvey]

Perhaps the Edge of Seventeen taught him to loosen up

[John Shade]

Perhaps the Edge of Seventeen taught him to loosen up

Wait, what does that mean?

[domino harvey]

See here