I want to keep your name.
I saw this film on campus last night. It is the second film in the Cinematheque series: ROGER EBERT: THE GREAT MOVIES, OVERLOOKED FILMS & GUILTY PLEASURES. The first film was The Third Man.
This is a strange movie. It’s in this film series because Terrence Malick’s work has held a prominent place in Ebert’s writing on film and his review of To the Wonder was the last piece of film criticism that he filed with the Chicago Sun-Times on April 6th, 2013. This selection also makes sense because our university tries to bring films that are more difficult to see to the big screen.
I enjoyed this film. The camera work is beautiful and the music is perfect. It feels a little bit like an experiment. It’s an experiment in non-narrative filmmaking. I was going to say story-telling in that last sentence, but I don’t think that really captures what is happening. It seems like Malick is more concerned about the viewer’s engagement with the images and the sound than with the story itself. It reminds me of phenomenological research. The research question would be something like What is the essence of the experience of falling in and out of love? The ASC has a good interview with Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, the cinematographer on Malick’s last three films. In the interview he talks about the crispness they strive for in their shots. He says that Malick doesn’t want the focus to train the viewer’s eye on one thing in the frame. The audience can decide for themselves how they want to engage. Ebert describes it as a film “that would rather evoke than supply.”
My only major hang-up with this film is the casting. It’s not that I don’t think the players did a fine job. I just think they look too much like Calvin Klein models. I wish they would have cast more normal looking people in these roles. For some reason, Olga Kurylenko and Ben Affleck just don’t fit in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Do beautifully sad love affairs not also happen to people with pockmarked faces and flabby arms?
On the whole, this film is a success. I would be interested to see a film shot in a similar way but playing with different feelings and experiences. It’s almost a cliche’ for this to be about love. I want to see this experiment replicated but with themes like urban living, addiction or sports.
Gut reaction: 3.5/5
One film I liked more: The Bridges of Madison County
One film I liked less: Before Sunrise