Days of Heaven - let's hear it, Malick-haters!

The Thin Red Line is great but not as deep as it thinks it is. And ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

Thin red line. hm. i like most of it but its killed by its Cameos. Seeing George Clooney two minutes from the end almost negated the rest of the film for me. Also Travolta is in it too and he's the most horrible actor ever.

(xp: jed is right)

amateurist has argued eloquently elsewhere (and in part me reviving these threads is an attempt to bait him out with any points he may have since developed his argument with) that the sound of the film, the 'through-composed' feel, the contrapunction, a medley of melodies whatever etc is u&k and fascinating.

(there are some pretty choppy moments. some seem perverse, others seem the result of the infamous studio pressures of which malick has complained.)

re. "days of heaven":

the rhythms are very strange. the sound design is strange. the pervasive quiet is very strange.

(i have to say i find the lead actress really unappealing. but the little girl is the strangest and most fascinating of all the film's elements.)

it's interesting to think of this film and "badlands" (and i guess "the thin red line") coming out the revisionist cycle of films that kicked off with "the chase" and "bonnie & clyde" etc. and they *are* revisionist readings of american history, albeit very unorthodox compared to the likes of "soldier blue" or even "heaven's gate."

sam shepard talks in this movie just like terrence malick!! it's weird.

"where ya goin?"

"fuh a walk."

"i was hoping t'ing's'd work out fuh her, shewas a good friend a mine."

(i think these lines pretty well presage david gordon green's approach to dialogue)

go to bed s1ocki

Soft Cell -- classic or dud?

i just got this sinking feeling in my stomach when i realized that malick's next movie is pocahontas starring colin farrell.

i have no fear

Thin Red Line in one act:

CHUKKA CHUKKA CHUKKA

Oh God I'm shot!

CHUKKA CHUKKA CHUKKA

Oh God I'm dying!

CHUKKA CHUKKA CHUKKA

Oh God you're dying! I am sad!

CHUKKA CHUKKA CHUKKA

Oh God war is hell! How enlightening!

CHUKKA CHUKKA CHUKKA

Days Of Heaven is incredible, and the train on the viaduct is one of my favourite shots ever.

why?

i like how the "flashbacks" are ambiguous as to whether they are imaginative speculation, memory, or genuine flashbacks... also the part where witt's mother is dying and the camera tilts upward and the room has no roof

part of that flashback with the mother that always gets me: why do we see that (empty) birdcage again on Guadacanal?

we also hear the grandfather clock on the soundtrack several other times?

xpost

i don't recall b&w either... will have to watch again...

(that's not to discount the cajun hoedown in DOH, or the leo kottke train theme...)

It took me a second to realize you weren't talking about "Total Request Live."

all films should be "all surface"

"what a nice thing to say."

i would watch this again, if i had to, though.

i got tired of it always being in the late afternoon

ha

i never studied movies in college, but i love this one

i just watched this italian documentary about malick called "rosy fingered dawn" (ack) which was made just after the thin red line came out. i suppose it's pretty good but there's a hell of a lot of padding in it since they don't use much of the film footage (so you end up looking at shots of crazy people in new york streets, for some reason) and, obviously, there's no malick in it.

there's a few LOLs as jim caviezel and elias koteas strain for profundity in the interview sections but end up near enough making complete fools of themselves. i still like that koteas dude though. very interesting contributions from haskell wexler, arthur penn and jack fisk. worth seeing if you can get a hold of it.

not long now...

http://www.criterion.com/content/images/full_boxshot/409_box_348x490.jpg

I need a job to get money to buy this. And do other things, but buy this mostly.

to get a job*

my mind, i swear.

want

jim caviezel and elias koteas strain for profundity in the interview sections but end up near enough making complete fools of themselves

"straining for profundity" kind of sums up my feelings about everything malick's done post-badlands. what i'll say for days of heaven is that it's somewhat better than the other two overblown junkers he's deigned to twiddle with since.

jesus, imdb says his next movie is called "tree of life." kill me now.

ha ^

i find myself watching "the thin red line" for the second evening in row, except this time i am drunk

maybe this time i will in fact realise that war is bad mkay

i turned all the lights off so cannot* be distracted by shallow trivia

*certainly untrue

sorry but i think you're being disrepectful to this meditation on the brutality of war -- not a cool move :-)

i am so not feeling this

so far the one thing i liked was some cheeky bit of business travolta did with a cigarette

there is lots to like, i mean what's not to like about the soaring strains of fauré's requiem accompanying some of rousseau's finest canoeing, gambolling, being, or jesus christ himself informing yr boy sean penn that he can see things, that the others have got it all wrong.....

most of the music is by this zimmer geezer though, and it's incredibly gluey and terrible

the landscape is pretty terrific: malick can do landscape, no question*, it's people that are a total mystery to him -- tho the decision to hardly ever use sunlight is amplifying my seasonal affective disorder, which i guess is my disgusting savagery not TM's weirdly stupid decision

i like the bit where the aged melanesian geezer walks unconcernedly through the battlelines, but it's shtick not insight

(bottle of red wine empty, shall i crack open my sister's rose for lols?

*esp.grass

ives' unanswered question duing the burning of the japanese camp (iirc) was pretty great too

doesn't malick sort of disrupt the people/landscape binary in favour of a deliberate (yes somewhat gloopy) panentheism, it's like an inversion of janco's arid scenarism in favour of a sort of lyrical fugue on the state of nature/state of grace, so you see people moving/acting/being in a landscape but don't parse them as individuals, they merely behave in accordance with some sort of obscure godly purpose

state of nature/state of grace <-- why are these the same thing? i think you're right that TM believes they are (and so do his narrators) but his actors don't (obviously, their profession depends on theor believing the opposite), but the disparity goes unaddressed

in practical terms this means that the energy massively sags as soon as anyone opens their mouths, and the topline actors are woefully misused and out-of=place (this is the real issue with the "cameo" controversy)

and zimmer's music isn't written by even an obscure god

they're not supposed to be the same thing, malick wishes that

jim caviezel = grace, trying to escape nature
crocodiles = straight nature, not even trying to be graceful

naturally it isn't entirely persuasive, but i like the thin red line a lot.....

he should have the entire movie with crocodiles, they are awesome and he understands them better than actors

afaik he just made a movie with, if not wall to crocodiles, then at least a lot of crocodilles, or a lot of their ancient predecessors

he also included sean penn though, whose relatively warm blood and faster metabolism somehow fails to lend him any greater motility than his reptilian counterparts

why oh why did he not direct jurassic park

http://www.badhaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2160_JurassicPark1.jpg

Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?

YES

man, really coming to think malick and george lucas are hands down ILE faves. i've seen nobody discussed more.

THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON

all malick voiceovers actually spoken by yoda

some people say the thin red line is scifi but it's obviously a western

really glad i didn't actually study heidegger under this guy as a student

if he'd done his job i'd be 100000000000 x more insufferable

spooky he just said "the new world"

has anyone ever made a joke in a malick script? it doesn't seem like a mode he'd like "get"

(ps i know why his wife left him) (not malick, i mean jesusboy)

the whisky has arrived in my brane

ok i promised myself i would watch this whole film a second time in full COME WHAT MAY but d00ds saw iii is on film4

there's a really subtle trypohobia subtext to TTRL that a sober me would be able to tease out (except a sober me wd not care)

*trypophobia

predator -- with a feel for the light and the leaves... stupid, i shd have got there quicker

why the FUCK is mark s discussing TTRL in a "DoH is full of gas" thread?

i was drunkblogging! it seemed rude to pollute a serious proper grown-up discussion with MY intoxicated gas

there are plenty of funny lines in DoH & Badlands although perhaps not "jokes", as such. Amateurist linked to a malick scripted comedy on one of these threads a while back.

yeah, he wrote Deadhead Miles which is actually a pretty fucking funny, weird little movie. i liked it a lot. it's streaming on Netflix. Badlands is kind of a black comedy imo. tons of funny stuff in it.

plenty of great performances in his films too! "doesn't understand actors" is straight wrong.

OK, I will look Deadhead Miles out. Badlands is indeed pretty funny, though I don't recall the characters joking with each other, which is what I meant (and I have lots of other problems with it). Haven't seen DoH for an age; will withhold comment till I've re-seen it. I would expect there to be good performances, he hires good actors and some of them know how to do their job whoever's directing them! One day when not drunk I will try and flesh out my "people are a mystery to him/understands crocodiles better than actors" thesis -- I am really trying to sound out what it is in his work that leaves me so unable to connect with it. Esp.when people I have time for think he's amazing.

I remember Ebert's review for TTRL when it came out, and his major complaint iirc was that the actors were making a different movie. From a lot of what I've read, this sounds about right. Gere talks about how beautiful and dense the DoH script was, and that they'd film these long scenes of dialogue, but when he saw the final cut he would reduce it to one line and just move on. See also Adrien Brody apparently being the star of TTRL and then, when he saw the premiere, found he was barely in it at all. Also see James Horner's comments re: The New World, where he complains how Malick handled the cutting of the love story and preventing it from becoming a "new Titanic".

and Penn who said the script for the Tree of Life was the best he'd ever read and the end result was just something entirely different.

Also see James Horner's comments re: The New World, where he complains how Malick handled the cutting of the love story and preventing it from becoming a "new Titanic".

this was pretty lol in its cluelessness.

The "actors making a different movie" thing about TTRL is pretty perceptive because it captures one thing I love about it. There's definitely the sense that a larger, more traditionally dramatic, story is going on that we only get passing glimpses at.

^^^ yeah, i think you're on to it there.

really wish we could see Malick's original scripts.

i like deadhead miles more than two lane blacktop. though i probably prefer five easy pieces to deadhead miles. as far as existential road whatever movies go. actually harry & tonto might be the winner overall.

and if i'm completely honest i probably prefer rafferty & the gold dust twins to deadhead miles as far as existential alan arkin road whatever movies go.

watched this for the first time last night. so, so amazing, visually. loved the strange pace, the voiceover, brooke adams. and this:

when the airplane lands outside the house it is thrilling like no other superFX i can think of; what a freedom that airplane represents!

yes, most definitely this.

yeah, it's still my favorite malick film, just ahead of badlands

his most overrated. needs a fan cut with music and intertitles, no dialogue.

watched this, badlands, ttrl and ToL in a run last year and loved them all p much unconditionally while agreeing with p much all criticisms, don't think i've ever felt quite so ilxy

"The Tree of Life" is my favourite film of the last 5 years. "The New World" is worth watching too.

If you can overcome your Farrell hate TNW is a decent movie.

I didnt get through it but it was def malick fatigue at that stage I'll prob revisit now I'm done with college again

OK, this one is great. Saw it for the first time tonight in a big theater. Everything I disliked about Malick in all of his other films (the only ones I haven't seen are The New World and To the Wonder) cohered and worked wonderfully here: the sparseness, the golden hour obsession, nature and its scope, & finally characters I cared about. Really, really great film. Glad my friend insisted I check it out.

RIP Linda Manz

https://extratv.com/2020/08/14/days-of-heaven-star-linda-manz-dead-at-58/

Interview with Brooke Adams
https://thefilmstage.com/brooke-adams-on-the-enduring-beauty-of-days-of-heaven-and-terrence-malicks-method/