From 1973, when he presented in his film debut “Badlands” and five years later “Happy Days”, his long silence, until it was broken 20 years later, in 1998, with the masterpiece “Thin Red Line”, Terrence Malick is a special case of a director. An inspired and obsessively perfectionist creator, outside the established, far from the film system, following faithfully, with reverent devotion, his own codes of values.

He is such a special case of a director, that there were times when he made cinephiles wonder if he was alive or dead or, in any case, if he had left the cinema, due to his long absence from the sets, due to his proverbial abstinence from interviews or photo shoots , secular or cinematic events, which made Stanley Kubrick, the famous hermit of the cinema, appear as a publicist!

In fact, the American director puts as a condition in the contracts he signs, that no photos of him from the filming or of his personal moments are released, that he does not have the obligation to give interviews for the promotion of his films, remaining unknown even to journalists. Truly, an unexplored personality…

Terrence Malick is not just a genius director, but an intense personality, a restless idealist, clearly influenced by existentialist philosophers, such as Kierkegaard or Heidegger, possibly other people of the spirit, but where to find him to ask him. Thus, only his work remains, which has occupied many intellectuals, but has conquered even the most demanding ones in the field, with the greatness of his images.

Really, who is Malick, the 80-year-old (born November 30, 1943) from Texas, who with only ten films in total to date, has gained thousands of fans around the world and made his own school in cinema?

A worker at Harvard

Terrence Malick was born in Waco, Texas to Emil, of Lebanese and Mesopotamian descent, while his mother, Irene, was of Irish descent. He grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, then moved to Austin, Texas. In his youth he worked hard in oil wells and other hard manual jobs, but he would manage to study philosophy under Stanley Cavell at Harvard, graduating with honors in 1965. He did his MA at Oxford, on a scholarship, but then from a strong disagreement with his professors, he will give up and return to the USA, to teach philosophy at MIT, while at the same time writing as a journalist and traveling to revolutionary Cuba.

A rebel with a cause

Malick became acquainted with cinema when he received a master’s degree from the Drama School of the American Film Institute, while he entered the field professionally when, in the early 70s, he collaborated on the script of the remarkable western “Two Untamed Lions”, directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman and Lee Marvin. Next year he will shoot, in his own script, the dramatic adventure “Badlands”, despite the enormous difficulties he had with the financing of the film.

The story, based on a 1950s detective story, involves a young scavenger (Martin Sheen) who is mentored by “Rebel Without a Cause”, James Dean, and a mentally challenged fourteen-year-old (Sissy Spacek) who embark on a crime spree. , reminiscent of “Bonnie and Clyde”. The film would garner rave reviews, but Malick, almost disdainful of the good name he had made, would once again walk away from the cinema.

Thus, it will be 5 years before he re-enters the studio, where he will shoot the romantic drama “Happy Days” with Richard Gere and Sam Shepard, Linda Muntz and Brooke Adams. A story of a love triangle in the early 20th century, which was successful despite his famous fights with Gere.

A break… 20 years

Soon after, Malick began working for Paramount on a script dealing with the origin of life on Earth, but would again fall out with the producers, leaving the project to flee to Paris. He will stay out of the cinema for 20 years. Many will consider his career to have ended prematurely, but they will be solemnly disproved as he makes a triumphant return in 1998 with the anti-war drama The Thin Red Line, which received seven Oscar nominations and won the Golden Bear at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival.

A host of stars fought to get into the cast, from Nick Nolte, George Clooney and Sean Penn, to Mickey Rourke and Adrien Brody, while Martin Sheen, Mickey Rourke and Gary Oldman were cut in the final cut! A wonderful film about the hell of the war in the Pacific, but ultimately starring the “idyllic” nature of Guadalcanal…

Pocahontas and experimentation

Without surprising anyone anymore, after seven years, he will present the “Unknown World”, based on the well-known story of Pocahontas, but his perfectionism and his obsession with editing, will result in the release of three versions, of different duration, leaving mixed impressions. It will be followed by the poetic “Tree of Life”, with Brad Pitt, Jessica Justin and Sean Penn, which will win the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2011. Malick, again ignoring the success, will open his cycle of experimentation, with films such as ‘The Wonder’, ‘Knight of Cups’,

“Song to Song”, which some loved but even more began to doubt the “isolationism” of the “creator”.

Peaceful life

Until 2019’s brilliant anti-militarist drama A Secret Life comes along, an allegorical film based on a true story, to which it lends idealistic and Christian dimensions. It is the story of an Austrian farmer, who lives a peaceful life and refuses to enlist in the Nazi army during World War II, despite the torture he will undergo. A hero who, despite the compromise solutions proposed to him, will remain faithful to his denial and imprisonment saying that he feels freer even in a miserable cell.

Rules are meant to be broken

The Terrence Malick phenomenon, beyond his idealisms, which are undeniably passed on to the big screen, is one of the greatest living masters of the image. With shots of unique inspiration and aesthetics, which make stars compare to nature, he will manage to write his own cinematic chapter. In his case, perhaps the testimony of director of photography Emmanuel Lubeski, who said that “Malik does not make cinema by the existing rules, helps. He creates his own. And then, in the shoot, he breaks them too.”

A few minutes are enough

Malik had episodic relationships with the actors. A case in point is Adrien Brody, who walked off the set of The Thin Red Line thinking he was the main character, only to discover that the trees and grass had more screen time than his five minutes, which the director left, after the final edit. And yet, the actors were winning a lot from Malick. Sheen will turn in a performance even better than Apocalypse Now in Badlands, Gere in Happy Days will become a star actor, and Brody, in his five minutes, will give the performance of his life.

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His latest work, A Hidden Life, closes with a reminder: “The people whose lives are ‘hidden’ from the great History, who rest in unvisited graves, are the ones who, to a great extent, accumulate for on behalf of all of us the good in this world”. Obviously, it is also the legacy of the eccentric Terrence Malick, beyond of course the greatness of his cinematic art.