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A 4K Terrence Malick Trio from The Criterion Collection

Photo courtesy Fox Searchlight/Plan B

With so few public appearances save for a sit-down at South by Southwest and an infamous run-in with TMZ, Terrence Malick, and by extension his films and process, can sometimes feel like a mystery. Fortunately, The Criterion Collection, can help solve budding cinephiles’ questions about the legendary director with 4K UHD releases of the three films he made following his 20-year hiatus from filmmaking. 

While being a key figure of New Hollywood through his works Badlands and Days of Heaven (also both available on Criterion), Malick used The Thin Red Line, The New World and The Tree of Life to capture man’s spiritual and metaphysical relationship with nature. Depending on whether you see his films as transcendent and profound or pretentious and bloated, Malick’s movies are singularly of his vision. Similar to David Lynch, no one will mistake a Terrence Malick film. 

What makes these three films unique is how Malick continued to tinker with them, especially in the cases of The New World and The Tree of Life. The Criterion editions of the three Malick works reflect this, as The New World has three separate DVD cuts of the film and The Tree of Life has two. Plus, all of the additional behind-the-scenes footage and the number of critics, scholars and filmmakers who are all affected by Malick’s films reflect a triumphant career that continues to move forward with the mysterious project about Jesus Christ called The Way of the Wind. With a new biography coming out about him, there’s no better time to examine a part of the great mystery of Terrence Malick. 

The Thin Red Line

DVD cover of The Thin Red Line.
Courtesy of Criterion

If there were any concerns that Terrence Malick would lose his filmmaking touch or fastball, so to speak, The Thin Red Line dashes away with that from the very beginning when Private Witt (Jim Cazaviel) is swimming and living with the Melanesian natives. As for the rest of the film, the characters’ inner monologues and how they can feel so conflicted and unsure about the battle they are a part of heighten the connection to nature and the soul. Even on a granular level, every soldier has some form of a soul and Malick is clearly interested in these inner conflicts instead of the actual Battle of Mount Austen. 

But when the real-life battle is depicted, Malick gives it the grace and horror it deserves. He cuts away from the battle and portrays horrifying wounds with shots of flowers and birds being wounded. The Thin Red Line serves as a great counter to Steven Spielberg’s vision of violence and realism in Saving Private Ryan, which came out the same year. 

While there is only one DVD as part of their spine No. 356, this Criterion edition packs plenty of material that feels true to the spirit of the film and of Malick as a filmmaker. 

Special Features

New audio commentary from production designer Jack Fisk, cinematographer John Toll, producer Grant Hill: The combined audio commentary between these three key figures on the production doesn’t have the same flair as, say, Paul Thomas Anderson’s commentary on Boogie Nights or Ben Affleck’s commentary on Armageddon. But for The Thin Red Line, a film about transcendence and man’s relation to nature, the low key nature of the voices feels appropriate. Still, there are incredibly compelling anecdotes like how shooting the alligator at the beginning of the film came at great risk to the crew or how they had to make various locations in Queensland, Australia look the exact same. 

Outtakes: There is some unused footage from the film including Caviezel’s and John C. Reilly’s drunk acting, Private First Class Bead killing a Japanese solider, and the appearance of Mickey Rourke in his only deleted scene as a sniper. Rourke’s performance as the sniper feels damaged and truly reflective of the PTSD these men are already feeling. 

George Clooney starring in The Thin Red Line.
George Clooney receives some more spotlight in the extra features of Criterion’s The Thin Red Line 4k DVD.

World War II newsreels/Melanesian chants: The Thin Red Line offers the unique opportunity to show what Americans watched while they were at the cinema during the Second World War. The newsreels record specific fights from the Solomon Islands and the Guadalcanal campaign while also serving as a propagandistic contrast to what soldiers were actually feeling and experiencing. 

The Melanesian chants also ground the film as part of the land it’s depicting, with the local songs being recorded on Guadalcanal in November 1997. The Melanesian Brotherhood choir performs with an angelic quality that can be a nice refrain from the religious and classical music hymns in other Malick movies. Not that those are a bad thing, of course. 

Interviews with cast and crew: With a great mixture of actors on the rise and seasoned professionals, the various interviews from stars like Jim Caviezel, Tom Jane, Elias Koteas and Sean Penn highlight the diversity of perspectives in a Malick movie. Penn, smoking throughout the interview, loved to talk about the experience even as he mentioned how it wouldn’t be a lot of money and how a star presence like his may not be enough to convince financiers. 

The more interesting interview is with casting director Dianne Crittenden. Along with Crittenden explaining who they were looking for for The Thin Red Line, you get to see archival footage of the actors auditioning. This doesn’t just include the actors that made it into the movie, but also acting legends like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who tried out for a part. Possibly the most ironic aspect of the interview is when Crittenden describes casting Adrien Brody, who infamously realized he was mostly cut from the film after its premiere. 

Additional interviews include Hans Zimmer on the score, the editing team, and the daughter of James Jones, the man behind the original source material. 

“This Side of Paradise” piece: Critic and author David Sterritt boldly declares in this 2010 essay that The Thin Red Line isn’t just a masterpiece, it’s “a Malick masterpiece.” Sterritt identifies the key talking points of Malick, including transcendence and the thoughts of the everyman soldiers in these situations. He also goes about trying to deduce why Malick wanted to tackle this story and how he did it. Even from 2010, the year before the release of The Tree of Life, this essay feels like an interesting artifact in the Malick discourse. 

James Jones article: Jones wrote the source material for Malick’s 1998 film, also titled “The Thin Red Line,” but went on to analyze Hollywood war films of the 1960s, which he found didn’t portray his experience as a combat soldier. Even the war films he identifies as more “realistic” — Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory and Robert Aldrich’s Attack — are far-fetched and ridiculous to him. Jones also pinpoints how the individual modern man cannot comprehend the complexity of society today. This inquiry from Jones is exactly one of the overarching themes of Malick’s work: the individual against the powerful forces (usually of nature and god) that make up the universe. Reading this, you can completely start to understand why Malick was a perfect artist to adapt Jones’ work. 

The New World

DVD cover for The New World
Courtesy of Criterion

Malick’s follow up to The Thin Red Line continues his streak of creating more of a tone poem than an actual film. In a retelling of the Pocahontas story, Malick portrays the horrific and slow death of the Powhatan tribe once John Smith (Colin Farrell) and his fellow colonizers come ashore in Virginia. You go from hearing the Native Americans be called “the naturals” to “savages” in short order. Even when Smith returns from the Powhatan tribe, he finds how his fellow colonizers find the easiest ways to get into petty and greedy squabbles that do nothing to build a better world. 

But Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) doesn’t just become a victim, nor does Smith and settler and tobacco farmer John Rolfe (Christian Bale) get painted with a broad brush. Every character tries to examine their relationship to nature, their goals and their fellow humans. Smith’s dream of living off rugged individualism and self-reliance feels within reach when he becomes part of the Powhatan community. This comes before the brutal and violent realization that the English will never make this dream possible. 

The Extended Cut of the film, which adds about 40 minutes of footage, includes even more of the classic Malick voiceover, an extra sequence featuring the music of Richard Wagner and Intertitles. The latter of these additions happened eight times and each of the titles is either informative of the time period and setting or takes on a more poetic tone.  

No matter which version you watch, The New World remains a staggering achievement for Malick’s career, even as there are so many other works in his filmography that could claim this status. The photography of these colonial worlds creates some of the most striking and poignantly beautiful shots in the history of the medium. Additionally, the sounds of connecting with Mother Nature feel comforting compared to the harsh and brutish noises of England once Pocahontas accompanies Rolfe back to see his home country. All of this creates one of the finest films of the 2000s and a rewarding experience to view with the various cuts. 

For this 4K DVD of their spine No. 358, Criterion offers newer insights into the film, especially through the Making of documentary, which you should watch only for the wonderful footage of Colin Farrell learning how to steer a canoe. 

John Smith looks behind him
Colin Farrell as John Smith. Courtesy of Criterion

Special Features

The making of The New World documentary: On this edition, there are added interviews with the two stars of the film — Farrell and Kilcher — along with fellow cast members such as Christian Bale, the late Christopher Plummer and Ben Mendelsohn. Legendary crew members like production designer Jack Fisk, the man behind the sets of There Will Be Blood, and fellow crew members note the specific challenge and excitement of working with Malick. Since the director shot to the position of the sun in order to create a form of backlight, the cast and crew had to prepare to create three dimensional sets to be shot at any time. Plummer put it succinctly:  “(The camera) is gonna follow me to the toilet.” 

The documentary crew also interviews various Native American tribe leaders, including Chief Stephen R. Adkins of the Chickahominy Indian Tribe. Adkins, when he first heard the name of the film, countered, “Hey, what’s new about it?” But as Adkins comes to set and talks with Malick, we start to understand how the whole film plays as a referendum of that title. Through it all, Malick remains a ghost to the crew — a specter that repeatedly gets mentioned but never shown.

Separate interviews with actors, editors and crew: Spread out through the First Cut and Theatrical Cut discs, we get to hear perspectives on various compositional elements of The New World, including actors Colin Farrell and Q’orianka Kilcher and editors Hank Corwin, Saar Klein, and Mark Yoshikawa. There’s a similar production program featuring interviews from Fisk, costume designer Jacqueline West and producer Sarah Green. 

“Dwelling in Malick’s New World” essay by Tom Gunning: University of Chicago film history and theory professor Tom Gunning identifies The New World as part of a larger trend for Malick in his essay that is featured in the Criterion’s booklet. Gunning’s essay is apt at showing how Malick’s editing style and images conjure a distinct message and only get heightened in his 2005 film. For any cinephile, or those who are passionate about film’s compositional elements, it’s a riveting read. 

An interview with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki: In the Making Of documentary, a gaffer talked about how Lubezki needed to get used to moving the lighting equipment away from the actors. Instead, they would find the direction where the natural light is coming and use that to light a scene. Lubezki’s engaging interview details how the cinematographer met Malick and decided not to use heavy grip equipment and lighting equipment even as it came initially as a challenge to him. 

Additional material: At the end of the booklet, there are a variety of research materials, including production notes and paintings that inspired the look, feel, and costumes for the film.

The Tree of Life 

DVD cover of The Tree of Life
Courtesy of Criterion

A film that in many ways is the pinnacle of the Terrence Malick project, The Tree of Life represents the themes and style that Malick has worked toward understanding his entire career. If there were any movie from Malick’s filmography that encapsulates his body of work, it would be The Tree of Life. It remains unbound by conventional editing and cinematography and asks bold questions about the universe’s origin while being partially an autobiographical story. 

Like how Malick shows nature at war with itself in The New World, his 2011 film portrays how the great astrophysical, microscopic and natural forces of our universe are simultaneously sublime and horrifying. This battle extends to the O’Brien family, where Jack (adult: Sean Penn, child: Hunter McCracken) struggles to balance the forces of his mother (Jessica Chastain), who represents grace, and his father (Brad Pitt), who represents nature. 

The Tree of Life is not only a stylistic pinnacle for Malick but is also a critical one as well since the film won the Palme d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Picture. But what makes a Criterion release so vital is that Malick didn’t stop at just releasing his film. He kept tinkering, with an extended version that added 50 minutes of footage and expanded on the themes of the film as part of the spine No. 942. I personally enjoyed the extended version even more than the original theatrical cut (even though that is technically the director’s cut) because it asks more devoted questions about whether Jack’s parents actually represent grace and nature. 

It feels fitting that The Tree of Life may be an unfinished work because our understanding of the universe always changes.  

Shadows of kids walking down a street
Courtesy of Criterion

Special Features

Exploring The Tree of Life documentary: With Malick having nearly 40 years of filmmaking experience by the time of The Tree of Life, he garnered plenty of admirers. Exploring The Tree of Life features legendary directors like Christopher Nolan and David Fincher waxing poetic about when they first encountered Malick. Along with interviews about the making of the film from the cast and crew including composer Alexandre Desplat, Fincher examines why people would want to work with Malick. Nolan, meanwhile, vaguely mentions how Malick was an influence on him. It may not be the most insightful connection between great filmmakers like Fincher, Nolan and Malick, but it’s still interesting to see the behind-the-scenes interviews. 

Interviews with Jessica Chastain, visual effects supervisor Dan Glass and critic Alex Ross: In the lead-up to her casting on The Tree of Life, Chastain, a relative newcomer at the time, described a spiritual awakening she was going through. These specific tidbits make the interview watchable, while Glass provides information like how he worked on the film for five years and an examination of the meaning of life. In the interview with Ross, a music critic, describes Malick’s knowledgeable background in using music in film. From using Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” at the beginning of The New World to John Tavener’s “Funeral Canticle” at the start of The Tree of Life, Ross details the history of these pieces of classical music and how they enrich Malick’s films. All of these various readings on the film from differing perspectives point to the wide-reaching nature of not just the production but The Tree of Life itself. 

Benjamin B and Matt Zoller Seitz video essays: Critics Benjamin B and Matt Zoller Seitz both tackled one compositional element when it came to The Tree of Life. Benjamin B, mostly focusing on the cinematography and style of the film, depicts a dogma that the filmmakers used, which depicted freedom from the script and continuity. He describes the cinematography and style as “natural cubism,” where the cinematographer and editors go by naturalism and cubism, respectively. Zoller Seitz, as part of his work with the Museum of the Moving Image, provides a two-part video essay on his own personal interpretation of The Tree of Life, detailing how much of the film is filtered through Jack O’Brien’s consciousness, which seems very unpolished. The interpretations of Malick’s film again point to how it can affect people and touch differing aspects of humanity. 

Kent Jones essay: Much like the film, The Tree of Life Criterion booklet features more images of the natural, cosmic and microscopic world than actual words. That said, critic and filmmaker Kent Jones describes his own experience of watching the film and identifying the difficulty of comparing Malick to any other artist, author or filmmaker because of how distinct he is. It’s a tinge of personality and hard analysis, which can feel so invigorating. 

Roger Ebert piece: The most popular and famous film critic of all time, who was less than two years away from passing away at the time of writing this piece, felt the need to once again reflect on the idea of infinity and god after seeing The Tree of Life at Cannes. He also finds his own version of prayer through good deeds or loving a fellow human being. It’s a remarkable piece of writing and reflection and reminds us of what made him such a memorable critic and film lover. It makes perfect sense that a film about the biggest and grandest ideas of filmmaking and the universe can be articulated so beautifully by one of the grandest translators of cinema: Roger Ebert.

Written by Henry O'Brien

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