Terrence Malick Makes Rare Appearance But His New Film is As Self-Indulgent as Ever

>This morning reclusive director Terrence Malick is part of a public panel at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Malick was once a legend for directing the most beautiful film of the 70s, “Days of Heaven,” and for “Badlands.” Malick hasn’t been seen in public or interviewed in YEARS. Decades, really. So this is a big deal down in his hometown of Austin.

>Today he’s promoting his new film, “Song to Song.” It’s the latest of his self indulgent films og the 2000s that has big Hollywood stars doing nothing and speaking little dialogue. I’m sure it looks great. But the reviews overnight were tepid, to say the best of them. Twitter reaction to the two and a half hour vanity project: boring and awful.

>He said at the panel this morning that the first cut of “Song to Song” was eight hours. That says everything.

>As I’ve said before I hope Del Shannon’s family really got paid well for use of “Runaway.” It makes the whole trailer. I doubt the movie has that kind of energy.

Other urls found in this thread:

showbiz411.com/2017/03/11/reclusive-director-terrence-malick-makes-rare-appearance-but-his-new-film-is-as-self-indulgent-as-ever
twitter.com/ErikDavis/status/840589985275342848/video/1
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>Erik Davis from Fandango is posting a lot from the panel. He obviously likes the movie on some level. The adrenaline from seeing Malick in public must be overwhelming. No one has seen him in years. But the reality of the film will be like “To the Wonder,” “Knight of Cups,” “Tree of Life,” and “Voyage.”

>Boring
>Awful

Malick BTFO!

showbiz411.com/2017/03/11/reclusive-director-terrence-malick-makes-rare-appearance-but-his-new-film-is-as-self-indulgent-as-ever

And video of him speaking:
twitter.com/ErikDavis/status/840589985275342848/video/1

From EW:

>In terms of content and meaningfulness, Terrence Malick’s Song to Song is the cinematic equivalent of a Trump press conference. Incoherent, disconnected, self-interrupting, obsessed with pointless minutiae and crammed full of odd, limp stabs at profundity from a closed-off man in his 70s who apparently has no ability to edit or accept constructive criticism. Malick, too, still inspires a passionate minority of hardcore devotees who will defend everything he does, no matter how inept or ludicrous, out of some bizarre sense of base loyalty towards the man who made Days of Heaven 39 years ago. Even for those groupies, this new humiliating wreck of a movie—the reclusive director’s worst ever—presents a test of will.

>Set among the music scene in Austin and filmed five years ago by Malick regular Emmanuel Lubezki, the film at least gives its locale a good name, with sumptuous Steadicam shots of the Texas capital aplenty. Yet still, it’s difficult not to laugh at Malick’s goofy fetish for floor-to-ceiling windows and water shimmering in pools, which has by now devolved to the point of banality. More seriously, his strange recent obsession with casting beautiful movie stars to play brooding, boring white people results in a dream ensemble (Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling, Holly Hunter, Natalie Portman, Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett) utterly wasted in a vacuous non-story about a love quadrangle.

>But the actors cannot be blamed for Malick’s folly. As the film’s central couple, Mara and Gosling do nothing wrong. And watching them, you sympathize with their dilemma: jumping at the opportunity to work with Malick, given his legendary status, but forced to read submoronic voiceover dialogue that would make a Hallmark card writer go postal. Don’t believe how bad it is? Then brace yourself for this. These are actual snippets of real narration from the film:

>“The birds said we’d love each other forever.”

>“I don’t like to see the birds in the sky because I miss you.”

>“They have a beauty in their life that makes me ugly.”

>“Save me from my bad heart.”

>“I want all the pain to be for something.”

>“I never knew I had a soul. The word embarrassed me.”

>“I’m a beast. Still not unhappy about it.”

>“Mercy was a word. I never thought I needed it.”

>“You get used to drifting, waiting. They say follow the light.”

>“I took sex, a gift, and played with it. I played with the flame of life.”

>Say no more. But if only banality, weird movie-star worship, and time-wasting were Malick’s worst offenses. In the final analysis, what’s most disturbing about Song to Song is that this once-great artist appears to have lost any interest whatsoever in the lives of regular people. That also ties into his lack of depth or finesse on the topic of chemistry or sex. Given the presence of both Blanchett and Mara in the film (mercifully, they don’t share scenes, and this film was shot before Carol), it is particularly creepy that Malick gives Mara’s character a girlfriend, only to eventually send her back into the sinewy arms of her ex-boyfriend (Gosling), where her true love can be restored. Retrograde much, Terry?

>Indeed, though the movie is too dull and silly to get worked up over, you’ll find yourself searching in the margins of each shot for something or someone tangible to grasp onto. The cameos by famous musicians in the film are tedious (and lingering on Iggy Pop’s leathery chest is a gag that felt old 20 years ago) but Malick does discover one shard of grace in the casting of Patti Smith as herself. She’s only onscreen for about two minutes, but when she’s there, with that extraordinarily real, unglamorous face and those eyes that have seen so much, you briefly feel in the presence of wisdom. It’s amazing, quite frankly, that Malick didn’t leave her on the cutting room floor. D

B T F O
T
F
O

I can't understand this guy. On the one hand Tree of Life was to me a life changing film that is almost too hard to put into words, but then i watch Knight of Cups and Badlands and I'm thinking this fucking guy is a pretentious asshole who should be complete nobody.

>DUDE TRUMP LMAO

Personally, I'll never understand those that prefer Badlands and Days of Heaven to everything that came after.
They're both vastly inferior, and you're right--Badlands comes off as incredibly pretentious and the voiceover doesn't work at all.

How do you call Malick self-indulgent?

Of course he's self-indulgent. All of his movies involve wandering voice overs. He cuts from one landscape shot to another. Tree of Life has a sequence that shows the history of the universe.

What a useless thing to say about Malick. It's so cheap and allows any two-bit movie reviewer the ability to lazily dismiss his work without trying to understand it. Self-indulgence is sort of his schtick and whether you enjoy the films or not you have to appreciate the fact that the guy is trying to get you into his characters' heads so that he can play with their ideas.

And I say that as someone who mostly finds all his movies, except Badlands, annoying

>he's not catering to femnazis, libs, whatever! he's a bad guy!

>Trump
>white people

The fact they used the word vacuous unironically while writing this dreck is embarrassing.

i swear these fucks piss me off to no end

A film critique in 2017, huh?

Let me guess: too many white people and muh Trump. And I assume it was all written on twitter.

Can the sun just die out already?

yeah im getting the feeling the movie cant be THAT bad after reading this fags review. seems like he's projecting a lot (dude Trump and white people suck right hahaha) and doesnt fully understand Malick as a director

try to the wonder?
with his works you have to absolutely sit down and immerse yourself in film

> a closed-off man in his 70s who apparently has no ability to edit or accept constructive criticism
Why is it a bad thing that he doesn't change his style based on what the perception of him is? I see that as a strength.

No, Knight of Cups and Badlands are just horrible turds. Absolute pieces of cinematic dogshit.

Waiting for his Nazi movie desu

I get the feeling he's making too many movies too often now though.

Eh, I enjoyed Knight of Cups thoroughly.

>I get the feeling he's making too many movies too often now though.
m8, he shot Tree of Life, To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Voyage of Time, and Song to Song in the span of about two-three years.
And that was during the first Obama administration.

He's at the age where he can drop dead at any moment he should create as much as possible for as long as possible.

>be meme director
>only way to make yourself relevant is by playing the "lol I am reclusive and mysterious!!!" card

I want to see anyone defend this dialogue.

...

how long til he remakes badlands and days of heaven with lubezki shooting it through a fisheye

>barely known 2deep4u director with no real great movies who manages to have big names star in your movies all the time and able to film part of your movie in an A-list celebrity party


this only happens if you are a pedophile or aid and abed in pedophilia.

>barely known 2deep4u director
back to idiot

This

bump

>pleb who obviously doesn't like Malick reviews his movie

Hey, Badlands is a good film.

Austin is just awful

every single fucking time a malick movie comes out people say the same shit about how they are floaty nonsense with grass and voiceovers. he's been making these types of movies for 25 years, why is anyone surprised? you either like it or hate it.