Terrence Malick is back. Back from the present. Back from the twirling. Back from his battle with the boundlessness of digital technology, a neutral force that nevertheless has the power to seduce certain filmmakers away from their convictions. Malick has always been the cinema’s most devout searcher, his faith and uncertainty going hand-in-hand. But the work he’s made over the last few years hasn’t been searching so much as lost. 2011’s “The Tree of Life” found the auteur pivoting away from the past for the first time in his storied career, and that semi-autobiographical masterpiece came to serve as the auteur’s bridge from historical frescos to contemporary sketches – from profound awe to puzzled wonder.

If “Badlands” and “Days of…

What I’m about to tell you is true. 

My background is Austrian. My father moved here in 1980 for a new and better life in Canada with his brother and mother, where 4 years later he had me, and 20 years later he told me a story about our family history after I asked because at school we were talking about WW2, and how all of my friends had a relative that fought in it. Ignorant and oblivious, I assumed my grandfather either did not participate in the war, or fought against Hitler’s Nazi army. What I learned next shook me. 

In 1939, at the height of the Nazi regime, you couldn’t escape Nazi favouritism from any corner of Europe,…

Rotten Tomatoes: 80%
Metacritic Metascore: 78
IMDB: 7.5
Viewing Platform: Redbox

89/100

Release Date: 31 August 2019
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios
Worldwide Gross: $4.6M
Filming Locations: Berlin, Germany
Filming Locations: St. Radegund, Austria

2019 Ranked
Redbox Ranked 

Franz Jägerstätter: "Does a man have the right to let himself be put to death for the truth? Could it possibly please God? He wants us to have peace, happiness. Not to bring suffering on ourselves."

SYNOPSIS: The Austrian Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector, refuses to fight for the Nazis in World War II.
- Source: IMDb 

Based on true events, A Hidden Life is Malick's most direct exploration of faith since To the Wonder, and perhaps his most fully realized work yet.…

Speculation has abounded about Terrence Malick's latest, that it might be something "more conventional". It is, and it isn't. Here's how it is: it has its clearest dramatic structure since BADLANDS, possibly even more clear. An Austrian couple during the outbreak of WWII gradually discover that the man will be required to make an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. He believes, because of his Christian morality, he cannot do so. This dilemma drives the entire film, and the relationship of the couple throughout this test is its backbone.

Here's how it isn't: Malick has deeply internalised all the techniques he has used in his previous films to make an incredibly assured yet highly idiosyncratic film. It's "Malickian", and yes,…

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Terrence Malick's grandiosity in his historical narratives often lend themselves to his most thrilling successes. I think of the biblical locust fire in Days of Heaven, our characters distorted into shadows of physicality, the horses looking on in fear. I'm reminded of The Thin Red Line, as a silent field is suddenly, perpetually bombed for roughly thirty seconds before the grass resumes its earthly quiet. I ponder the enigma of Q'orianka Kilcher's performance as Pocahontas in The New World, with her culture pillaged, redressed, and conformed. Malick's tendency to expand his focus to christianity, and the continuance of god's grace, finds parallel in narratives of nature's evolution, the mannerisms of people, and the pain in life's struggle. It's why…

The legend goes that, after watching Silence, Terrence Malick wrote a letter to Martin Scorsese asking “What does Christ require of us?” As a question prompted by the film, it was a good one, well-merited and existentially urgent. What does Christ require of us? Must we confess Him only in our hearts, or also in our words? What great deeds must we do to be worthy of Him? For someone like Malick, like myself, like countless others who take matters of faith very seriously, there can be few questions of greater concern. 

Another legend tells of a mason and carpenter who, as he labored in construction of a great cathedral, hid tiny, intricate carvings in the spaces between the stones and…

This is almost certainly my least favorite Malick, but it's not necessarily uninteresting - interesting for the ways it's revealing towards the fundamentals of Malick's worldview, the same way I find say, many of Eastwood's films fascinating. But whereas those Eastwood films show a part of a country that most of his other countrymen find embarrassing, Malick here hones in on specifics and as a result much of the ambiguity that made his work tolerable (at least for me) dissipates into a kind of extended prayer. I'm reminded of when this movie was first announced, and Malick noted that this was the first time he was working with a full script in years, which made me think of Kiarostami and…