Terrence malick: his best films

Long grass, classical music and a voiceover about God: you know where you are with Terrence Malick. He makes gorgeous, if easy to parody, existentialist movies about man’s brutality to

nature. It is no surprise he once lectured in philosophy. His films have been a slow adaptation of his pantheistic beliefs that also happen to star glittering celebrities, from Richard Gere

to Ryan Gosling, with big names also famously cut in edits. Next? A film about Jesus, with Mark Rylance playing Satan. The most Malick story of all came on the set of _The Thin Red Line_.

There was a complicated shot involving hundreds of actors, Second World War-era planes and a lot of fatigue. Despite that, Malick ripped up the schedule to film instead a passing bird.

Infuriating? Probably. Poignant? Absolutely. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in Badlands (1973) WARNER BROS/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK GET TO KNOW HIM DAYS OF HEAVEN; BADLANDS You will not get to

know Malick through interviews — he does not do them — but luckily few directors reveal themselves as much in their work. Both of these early films show his core concerns about the ability

of humans to ruin what they have. _Badland_s, with its haunting Carl Orff theme, is about a young life (Sissy Spacek) led astray by an older one (Martin Sheen) on a murderous spree. In _Days

of Heaven_ Richard Gere leaves the city for the fields, only to find the same problems. Colin Farrell and Q’orianka Kilcher in The New World (2005) NEW LINE/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK GO

FURTHER THE TREE OF LIFE; THE NEW WORLD Malick won the Palme d’Or for the operatic _The Tree of Life_, a distillation of themes hinted at before, even including the creation of the universe

and some dinosaurs. _Jurassic Park_, though, this is not. It is the beginning of the maverick’s moodpiece era, where plot was put aside for Brad Pitt’s 1950s parenting and Jessica Chastain

holding a butterfly. Its predecessor, though, _The New World_, was quite different: a historical drama, of sorts, about Pocahontas, showing the effects of modern life being brought to

somewhere more innocent. Woody Harrelson in The Thin Red Line (1998) IMAGENET A PERSONAL FAVOURITE THE THIN RED LINE Malick’s best-known and greatest film was the first to be released after

a two-decade absence. _Saving Private Ryan_ came out in the same year, but both Second World War epics belong in the canon. This is a meditative look at war through the eyes of Jim

Caviezel’s religious private — and Sean Penn’s less divine sergeant — that still finds time for bullets alongside the Bible. Witness the terrific storming of a hilly stronghold. Star-studded

and heartbreaking, with a great Hans Zimmer score. Advertisement Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams in To the Wonder (2012) MARY CYBULSKI UNDERRATED TO THE WONDER One bare hand touches another.

A good-looking couple frolic in a curtain. Fingers run through long grass. There are a lot of strings. A narration goes: “My hope. How I loved you.” _To the Wonder_ is Malick to the max

and, in fairness, he is a director some prefer diluted. Or, at least, less repetitive. But there is a rawness to this love-triangle story, starring Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Olga

Kurylenko, that sets it a degree up from minor work. Christian Bale and Isabel Lucas in Knight of Cups (2015) MELINDA SUE GORDON/DOGWOOD/WAYPOINT/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK ONE TO MISS KNIGHT OF

CUPS This slot could be filled by either _Song to Song_ or_ Knight of Cups_ — a run of two films that made fans miss the years Malick did nothing. He is, of course, incapable of an ugly

shot, but that does not mean you want to see what he is shooting. _Knight of Cups_ is about a Hollywood screenwriter, Christian Bale, and the cast is quite something — Cate Blanchett,

Natalie Portman — but Malick’s themes tend to run deeper than Hollywood, and he fails to crack a surface here. Valerie Pachner and August Diehl in A Hidden Life (2019) FOX SEARCHLIGHT

PICTURES/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK GO IN DEEP A HIDDEN LIFE Malick made five films in the 2010s — extraordinary, given that he made none between 1978 and 1998. _A Hidden Life_ arrived at the

end of that patch and is by a distance the most intellectually satisfying. Having a plot helps. So do the lush Alps, shot in all seasons. This is a quietly distressing look at a

conscientious objector under Hitler’s rule, who has to look to his faith and his wife to prove his decision not to fight is the correct one, when thousands are dying.