INTERPRETATIONS

Terrence Malick’s films

American director, scriptwriter and producer Terrence Malick was born on November 30th, 1943, in Texas. He obtained a degree in philosophy at Harvard University, and later on worked as journalist and lectured at the prestigious MIT University. At the beginning of the 1970’s, he made his first attempt at script-writing, and soon after directed his first feature film Badlands (1973). A provocative drama about under aged murderers soon became a cult film, while Malick affirmed his respectable auteurship with Days of Heaven (1978), a poetic love drama with pastoral ambiance. After a mysterious nine year break, he returned to directing with The Thin Red Line (1998), an epic story about the battle for Guadalcanal based on the novel by James Jones. Malick’s opus is recognizable by his particular creative practices. Choice of themes is conditioned with his fatalistic approach, a viewpoint that does not address the characters as free individuals, but rather beings with unchangeable fate imposed by superhuman force. Malick likes to use episodic narration and frequently displays an inclination towards the narrator, while his films are dominated by impressive visual and sound stylistic procedures. Thus, he creates scenes of surreal ambiance, poetic narration and extensively devised metaphors. Malic is consistent in merging impressive visuality with unbearable inner sickness, striving to achieve artistic impression of the almost inexistent borderline between beauty and incomprehensible horror. Finally, nature plays an important role in his works. Frequent shots of flora and fauna coherently merge with the story and human destinies, creating a complex organic whole. Fusing of human stories with nature stresses their archetypal connection, and to the impossibility of people living outside of often incomprehensible laws of nature, and faithfully confirms fatalistic dimension of director’s views. Owing to his talent, uncompromising character and consistence in application of the above-mentioned constituents, Malik created one of the strongest and most impressive opuses in contemporary world cinema.

Elvis Lenić