If Terrence Malick‘s Song to Song (Broad Green, 3.10) turns out to be a critical bust, will his string have finally run out? In the view of the Guardian‘s Danny Leigh, quite possibly. “Of course, there are diehards to whom [Malick] remains sacred,” he writes. “For a certain kind of movie star too, he is still the one director for whom they will risk the raw indignity of being dropped from the finished film.”
But truth be told, The Tree of Life (’11) is the last film in which Malick got away with his darting, flakey-mystical, twirling-barefoot-maiden Emmanuel Lubezki bullshit. The critical deaths of To The Wonder and Knight of Cups within the last four and a half years have taken their toll on Malick’s rep. “The catcalls have increased,” Leigh writes, “[and] the graph of public opinion has become a ski-slope.”
3.9 comment from HE reader “JR”: “What has Malick done since his hiatus? Gone into the same well of voice-over, nature porn, floating camera, natural light, running water, whispering, twirling camera bullshit, no script…hoping Emmanuel Lubezki‘s gorgeous cinematography would save him from not having a story. He doesn’t have anything else. He’s 70 so he’s not going to change or try NEW things, he sure as hell isn’t going to get better because he’s set in his ways, so he’s going to rehash his old tricks, being abhorrently inferior to his past greatness, trotting along on the endless road of self-parody.”
“All Hail Bert Schneider,” posted on 12.13.11: “Bert Schneider was the last producer to semi-successfully micro-manage Terrence Malick and keep him from his own self-indulgent tendencies, and [in so doing] persuaded Malick to keep Days of Heaven down to a managable 94 minutes. After Heaven, Malick never made a lean, well-honed movie again. When he returned to filmmaking in the ’90s it was all pretty photography and leaves and alligators and voice-over and scrapping dialogue and expansive running times. Mister, we could use a man like Bert Schneider again.”
“Laggers,” posted on 4.15.14: “The flakiest, most whimsical director in the history of commercial cinema.”
“Be Honest,” posted on 9.9.16. “God rest his gentle soul but Malick is finished. He’s airy-fairy’ed himself into oblivion.”
“What’s My Interest In Seeing Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time? No More Than Slight,” posted on 5.3.16: “Malick is more or less over now — To The Wonder and Knight of Cups have all but seen to that. Song to Song, which I’m very reluctant to see, is probably superfluous at this stage. Nobody much cares. I certainly don’t. His brand has certainly waned across the board.”
