Days of Malick

Terrence Malick's latest looks incredible. Knowing my recalcitrant habits, I've issued orders that I be escorted to the theater at swordpoint for this one if more subtle persuasions prove futile. However excited I am about a future happening, when the moment arrives I almost invariably try to skip out. The necessity of strongarming myself into actions I know I'll enjoy is wearying.

The New World, his previous film, is an achievement so profound I mostly refuse to discuss it lest someone's stray negative comment tarnish my good opinion of them. I know exactly three people I'm positive would love it as much and in the same was as I do, and I'm married to one of them.

Like the time we wandered through an exhibition of DaVinci's drawings at the Louvre seeing it in the theater was an overwhelming, sublime, essentially indescribable experience. See it yourself is about the only meaningful commentary I can muster, although the reduction in scale from big screen to teevee makes me nervous. I've owned the dvd for years without viewing it, serving a more totemic than practical purpose.

My disinclination to examine the underpinnings of this wonder doesn't prevent others more critically talented from successfully venturing into the mystic.

Particularly,

At its most avant-garde, it's a work created virtually without scenes, a prolonged montage analogous to the function of poetry, where impressions are generated in a fleeting manner and ultimately add up to something larger than the sum of the parts. Working in this manner allows Malick to whip up unlikely juxtapositions of images that wouldn’t fit into a traditional dramatic structure, the kind of formula Malick could easily embrace with his material but which he decidedly avoids.

Considering Malick as a poet seems by far the best approach to his work.
Happily the trailer strongly implies Tree of Life explores this same impressionistic terrain.