Why Do Terrence Malick's Movies Look Like That?

this video is sponsored by expressvpn [Music] let me show you something from a behind the scenes clip from terence malik's film knight of cubs a road scholar and academic philosopher turned filmmaker malik made two critically acclaimed films in the 1970s before he disappeared unannounced from hollywood for 20 years okay what you're seeing here is very rare here we see terrence malik working on set since he's returned from his absence he's forbidden his face from being used in any publicity for his films and he's never spoken publicly unless he isn't being recorded you can tell the person filming the behind the scenes knows they've made a mistake because as soon as malik comes into the frame they quickly pan over to hide him again this means we don't have malik himself as a direct source for why his style developed in a certain way and looks the way it does but we can still learn a lot by examining what those who have worked with him have said and by drawing conclusions from the relationship we see between his style and the thematic content of his work the tree of life malek's most renowned film juxtaposes an intimate story of family life in the 1950s against a sequence that showcases the creation of the universe on a cosmic scale what malek seems interested in is not just telling the story of individual characters but situating these characters within a much broader context perhaps it is the same desire to situate characters within a broader context that led malik to use wider lenses with deeper focus later in his career a development that played a big role in shaping his specific look with these wide lenses even when the camera approaches a character for a close-up they are always part of their environment almost inseparable from the natural world that surrounds them there's a certain kind of shot that is iconically terence malik it's probably one of these kinds of shots that springs to mind when i mention his name these shots like the films they are inside of tend to provoke strong reactions for some people they're a suggestion towards something profound the inclusion of something grander a kind of visual poetry symbolizing things that lay beyond the frame for others they're a baffling distraction an irrelevant frustrating diversion from what the films are supposed to be doing telling a story this polarization between the people for whom this kind of thing resonates and the people who find it aggravating exists all around terence malik not just in response to his finished films but among those who have worked with him in response to how he works some like long time collaborator and cinematographer emanuel lebeske find the way malik works profound he said working with terry has changed my life i'm a different parent i'm a different husband and i'm a different friend i see nature in a different way since i started working with terry others like james horner the composer for the new world or adrian brody who was initially cast as the lead for the thin red line and then cut out of the film expressed frustration and exasperation at his methods but whether you love it or hate it malek's style is undeniably unique this unique style is something that malek's critics tend to disregard as extraneous and arbitrary made up of choices that prioritize the pursuit of visual beauty at the expense of character and story but far from being arbitrary i think it's a unique style that developed organically alongside a unique approach not just a filmmaking but what a film can be even if you're not a fan of malik's work he's a filmmaker who's been incredibly influential as i talked about in a recent video he's been a major influence on best director oscar winner chloe zhao for her work on nomad land and many other directors have been influenced significantly by his work i think it's an interesting exercise to try to understand not just what this style is that's been so influential but why it was developed in the way that it was his films are all very very connected with each other and they're very recognizably his work but it's very tough to put your finger on why that is or what you're seeing in that the technique is not immediately obvious to try to break down the technical elements that make up the style let's start with these iconic mallet shots while malik's whole style isn't defined by these shots breaking down these moments that feel stereotypically malik is a good place to start there are several easily identifiable elements we can find here we see the use of natural light the use of wide-angle lenses and the deep focus that i mentioned at the beginning but there's also a fairly unusual positioning of the camera or movement of the camera it's generally lower to the ground than we expect to find in a film and is often closer to the subject than we expect for this kind of wide-angle lens the camera often looks upward in a way that's not often encountered in narrative film and the way the camera moves is also significant to the construction of these shots the camera movement is often very unmotivated and subjective the movement isn't clearly motivated by the movement of objects in the frame but the movement doesn't seem to be marking a specific emotional beat for the characters in the way a crash zoom often would instead the camera seems to have a life of its own and interests of its own natalie portman talking about her work on knight of cups described lubesky and his steadicam operator york whitmer who would go on to be malik's cinematographer for a hidden life as actors in the film they are a part of the scene with you you're dancing with them constantly and you're acting with them personally we can even see in the behind the scenes footage from song to song that at one point they just hand the camera over to ryan gosling and let him do some shooting but it's not just the visual elements of a shot like this that make it stand out it's how these shots are positioned and used inside the films that makes them unique if used within a larger scene they often push the scene away from linear continuity breaking from the narrative of what's happening immediately around the characters that these shots break away from the story being told isn't just something that appears in the final film it's a reality of the way they're shot jack fisk the production designer for many of malik's films says sometimes we'll be shooting something in a film and an interesting bird will fly by and he'll start crawling on a tree and directing the cameras toward that bird one of the best sources we have for understanding how this style developed technically is emmanuel lebeske or chivo someone who's arguably been responsible for a significant portion of the look we now think of as terrance malik malek's style was evolving during his first three films and we can see many elements of his contemporary style in these early films as i mentioned in my video essay about badlands but the first time we see what feels like his contemporary style fully formed is in the new world which is where malik and chivo's collaboration began in the lead-up to working on the new world chivo and malik established a dogma for shooting a technical set of rules that guided how they would film things these guidelines centered around the use of natural light having as clear and high resolution and image as possible and using fluid handheld or steadicam movement most of the time in a way these elements are as much about what the image isn't as what it is malek's contemporary work is as much defined by the kinds of shots you will never see in them as it is by the ones you do why these rules though why this dogma is this just what chivo and malik thought would make the prettiest images i don't think so here's chivo illustrating the motivation behind the choice to use backlight we chose backlight not because it is pretty but because it helps with the evenness of the light terry shoots out of sequence a close-up in october might be used on a scene later in december or somewhere else by shooting backlight keeping softer light on the face of the actors and keeping the sky white we were able to serve the story and keep the continuity basically chivo is recognizing that malik is assembling scenes from moments captured days or even months apart and backlighting the characters looks good but it also allows for a greater sense of continuity between these shots i think many of the choices of technique are like this for example the choice of steadicam or handheld cinematography this certainly produces a specific aesthetic but it also enables malik and his actors to film in a unique way developing this approach involved an increasing focus on improvisation with the use of natural light and the freedom of the camera the actors were given freedom to walk and move wherever they liked what started out as throwing out the script to use occasional improvisation on thin red line in the new world eventually led to improvising entire films like the knight of cups i would posit that this visual style developed mostly in an attempt to allow an increasing amount of freedom something i point to in my essay about nomad land and its style this freedom would allow the filming to adapt to the way malik wanted to work instead of having to halt everything to film a bird flying overhead which would then need to be inserted into the scene later in editing the camera could now easily shift its attention on the fly to incorporate the bird into the shot itself as his films progressed malik became less and less interested in constructing and imposing narratives often working with the technique called torpedoing where he'd have several characters improvise a scene and on some takes would send in another character unannounced to disrupt the scene and force new kinds of improvisation christian bale talks about falling asleep on the set of the new world and being awoken on camera and told to walk into the next room and start talking to somebody instead of writing scripts and then shooting them malik is using techniques like this to collect a large number of moments that he and his team of editors then use to shape into a finished film this video focuses on why terence malek's films look a certain way but i must mention editing in the development of this look the increasing level of freedom used in shooting these films was matched by an increasing level of freedom of association in the edit there would be no point in capturing these drifting fleeting improvisational moments if you weren't also developing a style of editing that allowed them to be used in the film and this is what malek did at first incorporating improvisational moments and nature into the narrative as transitional pieces or parts of montages but then shifting to making these moments the primary building blocks of his films with the new world where we see the first fully fledged example of his cinematography we also see the adoption of a more impressionistic and non-continuity style of editing while editing isn't an element of cinematography it definitely affects how we feel a film looks to some degree and i think the editing plays as much a role in malik's distinct style as the cinematography does it seemed no trouble could reach our valley we lift above the clouds [Music] but to say that malik's style arose out of an increasing search for freedom and fluidity and production leaves another question unanswered why is this freedom important to malik's filmmaking and what is this freedom in service of malik in his films seems interested not just in putting on screen something that exists already in his imagination but in starting with questions and setting out in search of an answer through the production of these films [Music] frequently in interviews with those who have worked with him people mention searching for moments of truth john c reilly who appears in thin red line called malik not a filmmaker but a truth seeker [Music] we have food [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] for most of these later projects malik and his crew would shoot an immense amount of footage crew members would often remark that they had enough material from one film to create several different films through these images and moments combined together with non-continuity editing i think malik's attempting to put on screen emotions feelings and ideas that are difficult to convey through traditional narrative structure and dialogue malik's more recent films largely employ non-continuity editing while continuity editing the style of editing that dominates most of the films and tv you watch has a long history non-continuity editing has a lesser known but still extensive past early soviet directors like sergei eisenstein who was working in the 1920s were big proponents of non-continuity editing eisenstein believed that by removing the obvious spatial and temporal connection between one shot and the next the filmmaker could force the audience to try to understand the connection themselves it's these connections and associations between two seemingly unrelated images that create the potential to communicate deeper symbolic philosophical or emotional meanings through cinema that's why cinema like malik's is often described as poetic rather than using a conventional narrative focusing on plot characters exposition and dialogue like a novel would malik's films use imagery a kind of visual and thematic rhyming to evoke some essence or feeling like a poem would there's a lot of people who don't like malik's work i think one reason why is because watching this kind of movie like reading a poem forces you to participate imaginatively in a way that some people find it hard to do or don't want to do but another reason is that i think often things that are more poetic like songs can be more personal in terms of who they connect with appreciation of all art is subjective but to enjoy malek's work you have to be interested in the sort of abstract emotional ideas he's presenting and the unusual approach he's taking to presenting them but for those who do connect to his work when they do it seems to have profound impact i for one think malik's most interesting and engaging work comes from when he applies his searching improvisational approach to the boundaries afforded by an existing story a hidden life which tells the true story of franz jaegerstadter an austrian farmer who fought a quiet and personal battle against nazi germany not only assembles an authentic representation of the world he lived in it but gives us a glimpse into the interior struggle he and his community must have gone through his search for answers in the story and malik's search for answers align the result is one of the most profound and engaging films i've ever seen and a personal favorite of mine i think malik's untraditional style is largely born out of his untraditional approach to film in general he was willing to walk away from a successful career and film for 20 years after a growing frustration with hollywood and when he came back to filmmaking he did it on his terms he was willing to not play by the rules because he was willing to not play at all and he refuses to speak for his work or offer explanations because both his approach and his work aren't ultimately about offering answers but about the process of questioning so why do terence malek's films look like that this video isn't a concrete answer it's a document of my search for the answer to that question and thank you for joining me in that search my sponsor for this episode is expressvpn thank you to them for making this video possible there's a movie i really wanted to see that's not out yet in the us johann johansson's last and first men it's only available in singapore and a few other countries currently and i was able to use expressvpn to route my traffic through singapore and be able to legally rent the movie in that country where it's available when you use the internet you're always on some kind of network which is the internet service provider or your cell phone carrier which means your browsing history is exposed to your isp who technically can give that data over to the government or sell it to other companies a vpn protects your traffic inside a virtual private network so that your internet service providers can't have access to your data using a vpn can increase your privacy on the internet but it can also be just really useful and helpful in some situations have you ever encountered a youtube video that is blocked in your country well if you use expressvpn you can route your traffic through a server in another country and get access to those videos sometimes expressvpn is super simple to use both on your computer and your phone find out how you can get three months for free by clicking the link in the description that's expressvpn.com thomasflight go to expressvpn.com thomasflight find out how you can get three months for free when you sign up for [Music] expressvpn you

Channel: Thomas Flight

Views: 511,158

Keywords: Video Essay, Thomas Flight, Malick, Terrence Malick, Malick Style, Terrence Malick Style, Tree of Life, To The Wonder, A Hidden Life, A Hidden Life Review, Emmanuel Lubezki, Cinematography, Editing, Thin Red Line, Song To Song, Knight of Cups

Id: waA3RXy13aA

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021