Movies

Terrence Malick #1: Badlands

Terrence Malick is an American filmmaker who has been making movie since the 70s. He is very peculiar as a filmmaker. His first two movies were instant classics in their time and revolutionized the industry in their own ways. He then disappeared off of the face of the earth for 20 years, before returning and making his arguably most famous work to date, The Thin Red Line. He would then spend the next 20 years occasionally making a movie, some would be hits, others would be duds.

Malick has been talked about a lot in the film community. There have been those that have tried to understand his filmmaking style, those who try to understand his philosophy, and even those who just try to delineate a general course in his history and filmmaking style. There have been those who identified key aspects to his films, a core theme that runs through almost all his movies.

Malick seems preoccupied, almost obsessively, with existentialism. Conflict in his films never arises from character conflict or plot conflict. It is a rather a deep conflict, one with the self, and one’s own place in relation to everything else around it. It would be ridiculous to deny this theme in his movies, but as a fan of his work I think there is one other key aspect of his films which interests me more. Malick is a deeply spiritual person, and all of his films are…