Terrence Malick
6 titles · american lyrical
A teenage girl narrates her own abduction as though describing a holiday, in Badlands, and the flatness of her voice against what is happening sets the method for everything after. Voiceover runs under the images asking unanswerable questions while the camera drifts through wheat, water and light. Days of Heaven was shot almost entirely at dusk. By The Tree of Life the plot has thinned to a Texas boyhood and the film has expanded to include the formation of the planet.
Signature
- Whispered, questioning voiceover detached from the scene it plays over.
- Magic-hour cinematography and a roaming, unmotivated camera.
- Nature filmed as an indifferent witness.
- Narrative dissolved into fragments and association.
fit
Lineage
Earlier films these works draw on, and the films they went on to shape — each link checked to name a film that actually came first.