Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film
Steven Rybin
Language: English
Pages: 236
ISBN: 073918010X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film explores how the experience of viewing Terrence Malick's films enables imaginative acts of philosophical interpretation. Useful for both professional philosophers interested in film and scholars of cinema intrigued by philosophy, this book shows the ways Malick's films cast philosophy in new cinematic light.
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dialogical interplay between hermeneutical meaning and filmic sense. WORLD AND WORLDING, EARTH AND STRIVING Just as Vivian Sobchack’s theory of cinema is informed by the tradition of existential phenomenology, one may infer related philosophical concerns underpinning Malick’s approach to creating cinematic characters and film worlds. A teacher of philosophy and student of Stanley Cavell prior to his entrance into the cinema, Malick also produced a translation of philosophical and, in retrospect,
elements, and more, together, might also be the “place” to look, which is to say, no place at all, but rather the time of the “viewing” per se.5 Mullarkey gradually moves from purportedly “objective” sites of inferring character (including the face, the body, the gestures, and the environment as designed and filmed by the filmmakers) to a whole set of contingent factors not “in” the object at all, including the subjectivity of the viewer. It is true enough that his shift from an objective film
xvi. 22. James Morrison and Thomas Schur, The Films of Terrence Malick (Westport, CT and London, UK: Praeger, 2003), 20. 23. Michaels, Terrence Malick, 29. 24. Michaels, Terrence Malick, 28. 25. Christian Keathley defines the Bazinian moment of revelation in the following way: “The automatically produced image becomes a means of revelation about the world, and the cinema is an instrument facilitating such encounters, for it allows us to locate what it transfers.” See Christian Keathley,
articulated through the voice. As I show in the next section, one of the extraordinary aspects of Days of Heaven is not that Malick “reveals” what these worlds consist of (for example, through explication of character psychology); instead, he discloses the other worlds imagined in this film precisely through his reticence as a director, through his respect for the privacy of his characters. As Thomas Wall has pointed out, after all, Malick, prior to his fifth film, The Tree of Life, had never
about nothing anymore.” Welsh responds, somewhat uncharacteristically, given his repeatedly stated belief to Witt about his lack of care for others: “Sounds like bliss. I don’t have that feeling yet.” In their third and final conversation, Witt, too, testifies to something he has seen in Welsh, repeating again that he sees a “spark” in him and asking why the latter “makes himself out to be a rock” when in fact he does care for others. As the two characters have their final conversation, they walk