In Contention

Tag: Days of Heaven

  • Matt Zoller Seitz’s video essays on Terrence Malick cinema

    Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” adds 16 theaters and eight new cities as it expands a little farther this weekend. If you happen to be near enough to catch it, don’t forget to keep the discussion going in our reactions thread. You can find out when the film will make its way to you at Fox Searchlight’s official site.

    As a build-up to the film’s release, the Museum of the Moving Image’s Matt Zoller Seitz has been working through another series of video essays, this one focused on Malick’s filmography. He’s wrapped things up this week with a two-part dissection of 2005’s “The New World,” Seitz’s favorite of the director’s efforts.

    “The net result is a profoundly warm, embracing film that celebrates life itself in all its wonder and terror,” he says of Malick’s fourth feature, “a portrait of a few distinct lives on a planet, and in a universe, that has no beginning and no end.” He could as easily be talking about any of the director’s films, not least of all his latest.

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  • THE LISTS: Top 10 performances in Terrence Malick films

    If you can believe it, it’s been since Halloween that we kicked the dust off this feature at In Contention. We made it all the way through the Oscar season without feeling compelled to go there. Odd. So, with Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” opening in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, before expanding to other cities throughout June, it seemed a good time to dig back in and cook up a collective that might drive a little more interest in the discussion.

    The easiest thing I could think of was a list of the best performances from Malick films, and as I sat down to revisit all five of the director’s works last week, it became clear it was as good a choice as any. There is, after all, plenty to choose from.

    Malick films contain a wide-ranging array of performances, all of them proving to be singular feathers in the caps of many actors. Indeed, when an actor stars in a Malick film, he or she is met with direction unique to any other experience, and it can yield great, unexpected work. Naturalism and a sense of authenticity are hallmarks of these portrayals, as Malick likes to scrape away the dishonesty of “performance” and get to something truer, with all the imperfection that comes with it.

    For my money, the following 10 represent the best of the lot. Let’s dive in…

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  • Thoughts on Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’

    I decided to sleep on Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” After a full day of jury duty, a few moments for dinner and then a trip to West Hollywood for the 7:30 screening — which let out near 10pm — it seemed foolish to jump right in to such a dense piece of work. I shutter at the thought of instant Tweet reactions from Cannes (and the one blogger who surely had little more than one-upmanship in mind when he decided to fill his brain with the film twice in Los Angeles yesterday).

    But I guess the unfortunate fact is, this is a film met with more inflated cinephile anticipation than any in recent memory. So clamoring to express thoughts on it is to be expected. Much of this is owed to Malick’s self-imposed aura of awe, retreating from the press experience in the wake of a tough “Days of Heaven” production over 30 years ago. It is seclusion as understandable as it is not. (I recall a frustrated New Line publicist in 2005: “Even Kubrick did phoners!”)

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  • Turning up the Malick

    Monday brings the Cannes reveal of the most anticipated movie of the festival, and for many, of the year: Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” Screenings will also be held throughout the day in LA (and, I assume, New York as well).

    We’ll know then whether the film measures up to perhaps the most inflated sense of expectation this side of — hell, I don’t know what film has held this sort of insular captivated pre-release awe, yet remained a bit of an unknown amongst general moviegoers.

    In the meantime, the atmosphere on both coasts is that of the second coming, as a Malick film is clearly an event. He’s a filmmaker entering his fourth decade of work but only has five (highly influential) films to show for himself. Tonight, The Elemental Cinema of Terrence Malick kicks off here in LA at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with a screening of 1973’s “Badlands.” Actors Sissy Spacek and Jim Caviezel, production designer Jack Fisk and costume designer Jacquline West will be on hand at their respective screenings to add to the aura of Malick in Q&As.

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  • CANNES CHECK: ‘The Tree of Life’

    The director: Terrence Malick (USA)

    The talent: Do you need reminding by this point? The Competition’s most high-profile film stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Jessica Chastain; the name I’m most pleased to see in the supporting cast, meanwhile, is Irish stalwart Fiona Shaw.

    The technical crew is, obviously, first-class: DP Emmanuel Lubezki, Oscar-nominated for his work on Malick’s “The New World,” returns, as does the director’s career-long production designer Jack Fisk. Also returning from Malick’s last feature: editors Hank Corwin and Mark Yoshikawa (along with three others, including “City of God”‘s Daniel Rezende) and Oscar-nominated costume designer Jacqueline West. New to Team Malick is the industry’s current favorite composer, Alexandre Desplat.

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