The original title for director Terrence Malick’s most recent film SONG TO SONG was WEIGHTLESS, based on a quote by writer Virginia Woolf: ”How can I proceed now, I said, without a self, weightless and visionless, through a world weightless, without illusion?”
In a rare public appearance at the SXSW Film Festival in March, Malick explained the intention behind the film: “I think you want to make it feel like they’re just bits and pieces of [the characters’] lives. [As Woolf asks,] can you live in this world just moment to moment, song to song, kiss to kiss [and] try to create these different moods for yourself and go through the world ‘without a self,’ … and living one desire to the next? And where does that lead, what happens to you in that sort of [spontaneous life]?”
Malick attempted to capture these themes with an unusual approach to filming. His guerilla shooting method kept the actors constantly moving and improvising. Actor Michael Fassbender told Moviemaker magazine, “When we were heading to the set location, we’d stop on route, or film in the car on route. It’s a very alive way of working. It’s about time, being able to see what’s happening, and feel the rhythm of the scene, and pick up key moments, gestures, objects, whatever it may be in the scene. [Malick is] a master of that.”
— Diana Martinez, Film Streams Education Director
