Terrence malick

Born in Waco (Texas), on November 30, 1943, Terrence Malick is the son of a man of Syrian-Lebanese origin, who worked for a Texas oil company. Dedicated to his studies since he was a child, he studied philosophy at the prestigious Harvard University, where he graduated summa cum laude, and later began a doctoral thesis at Oxford on Martin Heidegger, although he did not finish it. He worked as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the same time that he worked as a freelance journalist for well-known magazines such as The New Yorker.

When he became interested in cinema as a vehicle for transmitting his vision of the world, he studied for a Master’s degree from the American Film Institute, and shot the short Lanton Mills , very little known even by the most fervent followers of the author. It is said that Malick himself has withdrawn it from circulation, because he was not one hundred percent happy, and for this reason, he withdrew from the short film forever.

He started out as a film professional as a screenwriter. Although he is not credited, he did lend a hand to script “doctor” Robert Towne with the script for Drive, He Said , directed by Jack Nicholson . He wrote the obscure comedy Deadhead Miles , starring Alan Arkin , and Stuart Rosenberg ‘s The Undesirables , starring Paul Newman and Lee Marvin .

He soon secured tight but sufficient financing for his debut as a feature filmmaker, Badlands , inspired by true events that occurred in 1958. Martin Sheen plays a murderer obsessed with showing his resemblance to James Dean who goes on a desperate run with his young girlfriend ( Sissy Spacek ). The story of this amoral couple, reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde , was precisely dedicated to the director of this film, Arthur Penn .

Malick only shows the amoral activities of the protagonists without judging them through powerful images. He was already a master at using music, in this case by Carl Off, to underline the poetry of his shots. He remains in the viewer’s retina for more than a moment: the flames of the protagonist’s house, the night dance, etc.

It had very little commercial impact, but it obviously caught the attention of critics and moviegoers. It took him five years to film his next work, Days of Heaven , from 1978. The theme is related to that of his debut film, as it stars another fugitive ( Richard Gere ), this time from the 20th century, who after killing his boss, he runs away with his girlfriend Abby ( Brooke Adams ) and her sister Linda ( Linda Manz ). He finds a job working for a wealthy farmer ( Sam Shepard ) who falls in love with Linda. Absolutely round, it is less narrative and more lyrical than its predecessor, and also highlights the unparalleled use of the score, this time by Ennio Morricone. For the dreamlike images of him, the Spanish Nestor Almendros won the Oscar for best photography.

And then? It is not known what went through the head of Malick, who gave up his fledgling career in Hollywood. He turned down directing The Elephant Man , which David Lynch later filmed with great success . He begins shooting images for the cryptic film known as the “Q” project, about the origins of life on Earth, but eventually abandons it. He decided to leave the United States and settled in France where he married Michele Morette in 1985. Thirteen years later he divorced and joined Alexandra Ecky Wallace. In two decades he has not even shown interest in carrying out any film project, and legend has it that he earned his living teaching literature classes.

When everyone considered him retired, Malick reappears to launch The Thin Red Line , based on a book by James Jones , which narrated the battle of Guadalcanal, during World War II. By then Malick’s legend had grown so much that he was trusted by some of the biggest Hollywood stars, such as Sean Penn , John Cusack , Woody Harrelson , John Travolta , James Caviezel, George Clooney , who shot many sequences, although most of them stayed on the editing table, or Adrien Brody , who in the final editing went from being one of the protagonists to an episodic supporting role.

Malick meditates on war and the human condition, and focuses on the interior of the protagonists and their different behaviors in extreme situations. He obtained the Golden Bear in Berlin and 7 Oscar nominations, although he ultimately did not win any.

2005 ‘s slow -paced The New World pits life in the Native American wilderness against Western civilization, through Captain John Smith ‘s love story with Pocahontas. Although his vision of the arrival in the new world of the English escapes clichés, and is shot with the visual power of all his films, it is possibly the least round of his filmography.

It took Malick six years to release his next film, the well-rounded The Tree of Life , his most ambitious and personal work. It is impossible to summarize the richness of a film that basically narrates the childhood of Jack O’Brien, who loses one of his brothers, his relationship with his parents, and the repercussions that his childhood has on his adult life, when he is divorcing his his wife. This time the character of Sean Penn was almost left out of the film (the actor played Jack as an adult and was very angry when he saw the final cut of the film), because he had shot many narrative sequences, which apparently hindered the passage to the poetic parts centered on Jessica Chastain (the mother), Brad Pitt (the father) and the children.

So suggestive that the interpretations can be varied, it is clear that it deals with topics as transcendental as the sense of pain (the protagonists talk directly with God about the tragedy that has shaken the family), the transience of life (everything has an end and even the dinosaurs, which appear in the film, became extinct) and above all the relationship of the central character with his father, a kind man who can be rude and terrible at times with the aim of making his offspring stronger, in clear parallelism with God, that if he makes man suffer it has to be with an objective, for his own good. He was going to compete in Cannes in 2010, but Malick kept thinking about the production and preferred to wait to enter the next edition where he won the Palme d’Or, the highest award.

One of the factors that has fueled Malick’s legend the most is his obsession with not being seen. He seems to live cloistered, he does not appear in the making of his films, he asks by contract not to appear in photos or videos and refuses to participate in the promotion of his films. He doesn’t even collect his awards at festivals (the Palme d’Or in Cannes for The Tree of Life , possibly the most prestigious Seventh Art award in the world, was collected on his behalf by Bill Pohlad, the film’s producer).

Terrence Malick is so secretive that moviegoers know about him almost only because he plays a brief role in his first feature film, where he is the guy in the hat who knocks on the door of the luxurious house that the protagonists (Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek) have occupied. .

Mindful of his advanced age, Malick seems to have picked up the pace of his work of late. She has shot a film, still untitled at the time of writing this text, with Rachel Weisz , Rachel McAdams , again Jessica Chastain and the Spanish Javier Bardem , although almost everything is unknown, except that it is a love story. And he has started pre-production on Voyage of Time , ‘an exploration of the birth and death of the universe’, with Brad Pitt and Emma Thompson as narrators.