Top 5 World War II Films of All-Time

IN CELEBRATION OF THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF V-E DAY, HERE’S THE DEFINITIVE LIST OF BEST WORLD WAR II FILMS OF ALL TIME.

Some of the greatest films ever made have been about World War II, so narrowing it down to a top five wasn’t exactly storming the beaches at Normandy, but it also wasn’t easy.

75 years ago the Allies officially defeated the Axis menace in Europe. To honor those who sacrificed and made that momentous victory possible, I have decided to do something ridiculously less heroic…rank the top five World War II films of all time.

Without further ado…here is the list.

5. Europa, Europa (1990) – Based on the autobiography of Solomon Perel, the story follows the travails of a German Jewish boy who in trying to escape the Holocaust goes from being a hunted Jew to a Soviet orphan to a German war hero to a Nazi Youth. Perel runs from Germany to Poland to the Soviet Union then back to Germany, but no matter where he goes the war relentlessly follows.

A magnetic lead performance from Marco Hofschneider and skilled direction by Agnieszka Holland make Europa, Europa a must see for World War II cinephiles.

4. Downfall (2004) – Set in Hitler’s bunker during the final days of the Third Reich, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film focuses on the Fuhrer’s struggle to maintain his delusions of grandeur as the cold hand of reality closes around his neck.

The glorious Bruno Ganz gives a transcendent performance as Hitler descending into the grasp of a mesmerizing madness.

Downfall masterfully reveals Hitler’s bunker to be the maze of his mind, and a prison to those who fully bought into his cult of personality.

3. Dunkirk (2017) – In Christopher Nolan’s perspective jumping cinematic odyssey, we are taught the hard but important lessons that survival is not heroic, but rather instinctual, and that it is in defeat, and not victory, where character is revealed.

Dunkirk is a visual feast of a film, exquisitely shot by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and magnificently directed Nolan, that boasts a stellar cast and terrifically effective sound design, sound editing and soundtrack. 

Dunkirk succeeded not only as a pulsating World War II masterpiece, but upon its release in 2017, also as a deft metaphor for Brexit.

2. Das Boot (1981) – A taut and at times terrifying, psychological thriller set on a German U-boat, U-96, as it wages war in the Atlantic.

Like a sea serpent , Wolfgang Peterson’s film dramatically wraps itself around you and then slowly constricts, leaving you gasping for air.

Das Boot is as viscerally imposing a war film as has ever been made as Peterson’s directing mastery makes U-96 feel like a claustrophobic, underwater tomb.

1.The Thin Red Line (1998) – After a 20-year hiatus, iconic director Terence Malick returned to cinema with this staggeringly profound and insightful meditation on war.

Unlike Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, which came out that same year and was a highly popular, flag-waving hagiography to the Greatest Generation that focused on the physical toll of war, Malick’s masterpiece concerns itself not with physical carnage, but the emotional, psychological and spiritual cost of war.

The Thin Red Line isn’t so much about fighting a war as it is about how living with war ravages your soul. This is exemplified by the most heroic act in the movie being when a soldier risks his life to administer morphine to a wounded comrade just so he could die more quickly.

The Thin Red Line is unconventional in its storytelling approach, and refuses to conform to the strictures of Hollywood myth making, preferring instead to force audiences to confront their own complicity in the evil insidiousness of war.

In the movie, Private Edward Train eloquently gives voice to the film’s philosophical perspective with the following monologue on the inherent evil of war.

“This great evil, where's it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might've known? Does our ruin benefit the earth, does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?”

The Thin Red Line is the best World War II film ever made because it is the most poignantly human World War II movie ever made. 

As you may have noticed, my list leans more toward modern cinema, the reason being that the art and technology of filmmaking have advanced enormously over the last 75 years.

I also favor more serious fare over populist entertainment, so terrific movies like The Dirty Dozen or Inglorious Basterds, fail to make the cut.

Classics like Casablanca and From Here to Eternity were left on the cutting room floor because they are more set in WWII than about WWII.

Movies like Schindler’s List weren’t considered because I somewhat irrationally consider them to be “Holocaust films” rather than “WWII films” – which may be a distinction without a difference – but it is a distinction I make.

The Bridge on the River Kwai, A Bridge Too Far, The Enemy at the Gates, Stalingrad (1993), Patton, and The Great Escape, all just missed the cut and had to settle for honorable mention even though I love them.

In regards to my definitive list I will quote Nick Nolte’s bombastic Lt. Col. Tall from The Thin Red Line, “It's never necessary to tell me that you think I'm right. We'll just... assume it.”

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

1917 Dazzles the Eye but Fails to Stir the Soul

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 32 seconds

Sam Mendes’ visually stunning new war film may generate Oscar hype, but it is ultimately an underwhelming and totally forgettable cinematic venture.

With the media telling me that the world, or certain parts of it, is once again potentially on the verge of war, I did the brave and noble thing and ventured out to my local movie theatre to see Oscar winning director Sam Mendes’ new World War I film, 1917.

My hope was that 1917, a recent winner of the Golden Globe for Best Picture and Best Director, would be a powerful film that would remind audiences, particularly the more belligerent American ones, of the spiritual, emotional and physical toll of war and the inherent inhumanity, futility and barbarity of waging one. Sadly, 1917 is not up to the task.

The film, which boasts a solid cast that stars George MacKay with supporting turns from Dean Charles-Chapman, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Colin Firth, is the story of two British soldiers in World War I sent on a dangerous mission to save hundreds of their countrymen from an impending German ambush.

 1917 has all the makings of a great movie as it tells a compelling war story, is beautifully shot and proficiently acted, the problem though is that those ingredients never coalesce into a cohesive cinematic meal that satisfies and viewers are left still feeling hungry after the closing credits roll.

The best thing about 1917 is the exquisite cinematography, as it is beautifully shot by one of the great cinematographers in film history, Roger Deakins, a 14 time Oscar nominee. The film has generated a lot of buzz because it is shot and edited so that it appears as if the entire movie were filmed in one long take. That ‘one long take’ approach could be thought a gimmick in lesser hands, but Deakins uses it to expertly draw the viewer into the narrative and escort them through the film’s journey. Deakins’ ability to use camera movement, framing, light and shadow to propel the story is sublime and visually gorgeous to behold.

No, the problem with 1917 is certainly not the look of the film, but rather the feel of it. As impressive as the movie is visually, it never resonates emotionally and ends up being a rather hollow cinematic experience. The blame for that failure lay squarely at the feet of writer/director Sam Mendes.

Mendes’ shallow script has fundamental structural and dramatic flaws, such as plot points that hit too soon or too late, that keep viewers at arms length from the two main characters, Lance Corporal William Schofield (MacKay) and Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Charles-Chapman). Due to the script’s failures, viewers never really have too much invested in Schofield and Blake as they are whisked along on their perilous odyssey. This emotional detachment reduces the twists and turns of the story into mere storytelling devices without emotional power, and thus the movie often feels reduced to a roller coaster ride or a video game, which can be exciting but predictable and never dramatically profound.

I have long found Mendes to be a middling talent, and a brief perusal of his filmography is a study in underachievement and wasted opportunities. American Beauty (1999) won Mendes his Best Directing Oscar but is a movie that has not stood the test of time and is, in fact, like its star Kevin Spacey, quite embarrassing in retrospect. Other Mendes films, like Road to Perdition (2002), Jarhead (2005) and Revolutionary Road (2008) had fantastic casts and interesting stories but, like 1917, never coalesced into cinematic greatness.

Another issue plaguing 1917 is that as a war movie it will inevitably be measured against other notable films in that genre, and it does not fare well in comparison. For instance, it is not as technically superior, particularly in terms of the sound, or as artistically ambitious as Christopher Nolan’s time and perspective bending WWII tour de force Dunkirk (2017). It lacks the emotional resonance and spiritual profundity of Terrence Malick’s thoughtful The Thin Red Line (1998), and has nowhere near the psychological and political insights of a masterpiece like Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957). It also fails to convey the sheer madness and depravity of war like Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1978), Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) and Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987).

On the surface, 1917 is somewhat evasive in its political, moral and ethical perspective, and avoids dirtying its hands in the complexity of war. Mendes shows his true bourgeois colors though by choosing to focus the narrative exclusively on the nobility and heroism of the soldiers who fight the war and never even hinting at the malignancy of those in the officer and ruling class who cynically wage it. In Mendes’ hands, World War I is a morally sterile and ethically antiseptic venture that was little more than a stage to showcase the better angels of British soldier’s nature.

Mendes sticks to this painstakingly straight forward and uncomplicated approach in 1917 because he wants the audience, particularly the older, Anglophile viewers who vote for the Academy Awards, to mindlessly gobble up his middle-brow Oscar bait and not get bogged down with too many difficult questions he is ill-equipped to ask, never mind answer.

Sadly, in the hands of the artistically obtuse Sam Mendes, 1917 is incapable of being the great and profound war film the world needs right now, the type that challenges audiences and changes hearts and minds. At its best, 1917 is a stunning piece of technical virtuosity reduced to a mildly entertaining, but ultimately forgettable, film.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

1917: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. this is a good but not great film that never rises to meet its ambitions. If you are a cinephile who loves the great cinematography of Roger Deakins, then see this movie in the theatre, everyone else can wait for it to arrive on Netflix or cable and see it for free.

1917, written and directed by Sam Mendes, is the story of two British soldiers sent on a dangerous and desperate mission to deliver a message warning of an ambush in World War I. The film stars George MacKay and Dean Charles-Chapman, with supporting turns from Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Colin Firth.

1917 is a cinematically ambitious and athletic film that has all the trappings of a great war movie, and yet, I found the film to be a bit of a hollow, soulless experience. The movie is shot and edited in a way so as to give audiences the impression that it is all done in one long take. This ‘single take’ is an interesting approach, and it does help to draw viewers in and push the pace of the film, but that said, it also feels a little bit like a gimmick (especially since they didn’t really shoot it in one take) most notably because the film lacks specificity and detail in script and character development.

For this reason 1917 reminded me somewhat of Saving Private Ryan, which is much remembered for its very athletic opening D-Day sequence. Beyond that sequence, Saving Private Ryan was a rather pedestrian rehashing of every patriotic war movie trope that had come before it. Similarly, 1917 is very cinematically athletic in its execution with its illusion of one long continuous take, but it is also just as conventional in its narrative structure and theme as Saving Private Ryan.

In 1917, just as in Saving Private Ryan, the protagonists must go from point A to point B through enemy lines on a mission to save someone. That journey, in both films, certainly has its moments, but never breaks any new cinematic or storytelling ground.

The film is also thematically and politically the same as Saving Private Ryan, as it refuses to embrace any skepticism or cynicism in regards to the futility and inhumanity of such a heinous war, and only ends up taking a rather limp-wristed, neo-liberal stance rooted in misplaced patriotism and ham-fisted heroism.

As beautifully as 1917 is shot, and the cinematography of Roger Deakins is unquestioningly exquisite, the film is devoid of emotional resonance. It all feels more like a detached exercise than a drama, as the film fails to generate the requisite emotion needed to propel it to great cinematic heights. Characters are certainly put in peril in 1917 but it all comes across as rather empty and soulless.

I also thought of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which is a war movie unlike any other war movie made, while I watched 1917. In Dunkirk, Nolan messes with time and perspective and puts on such a technical tour de force that his film overwhelms viewers. With 1917, while the ‘one long camera take’ does add to the drama and compel the viewer along the journey, the rest of the filmmaking feels a bit underwhelming…especially in comparison to Dunkirk. For instance, Dunkirk’s music, courtesy of Hans Zimmer, is a ticking time bomb throughout the film, heightening the sense of peril and existential dread. In 1917, Thomas Newman’s music is more conventional and swells used to indicate when viewers should feel emotions the film hasn’t yet earned. In addition, the sound desing and editing in Dunkirk is vastly superior to that of 1917.

As is evident by my review so far, the biggest issue facing 1917 is that it is impossible to see a war film and not compare it to other war films. 1917 is not a bad movie, it just isn’t anywhere near the caliber of film as say Dunkirk, The Thin Red Line or Kubrick’s World War I masterpiece Paths of Glory. Director Sam Mendes has very big shoes to fill in tackling the war film genre, and the unfortunate truth is that his cinematic feet are much too small.

I did like the cast of 1917, and thought the film’s lead George MacKay did excellent work. MacKay has a sort of everyman appeal to him and he embraced the rigors of the movie with aplomb. MacKay carries the weight of the film upon him and endures the slings and arrows of his mission with enough charisma to keep viewers engaged.

The rest of the cast have small roles and tackle them with the usual British professionalism that we’ve come to know and love. Mark Strong is particularly British with his stiff upper lip and all that, and Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch do Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch type of things in small roles.

The cinematography of Roger Deakins is stellar. Deakins camera flows through the movie and feels like a string pulling viewers along. Deakins is one of the great cinematographers of all time and his framing and use of light in 1917, particularly the orange glow of fire during the night time scenes, is sublime.

As previously stated, and much to my chagrin, I found the sound and the music of 1917 to be lacking as they never rose to the level of Deakins photography. The soundtrack in particular felt very forced and lacking in coherence and originality.

Sam Mendes is a celebrated director but he has always seemed like a second rate talent to me. Mendes won a Best Director Oscar for his work in American Beauty back in 1999, but that film and his work on it, have not stood the test of time in the least. Watching Ameican Beauty now is a cringe-worthy experience as the performances, most notably Best Actor winner Kevin Spacey, are so “theatrical” as to be embarrassing, and Mendes’ direction is equally geared toward the overly expressive. Since American Beauty, Mendes has churned out a series of films that always felt like they should be great but just never were. These ambitious but seriously flawed films, such as Jarhead, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road and Away We Go, all suffered under Mendes’ lack of vision, style, specificity and detail. Mendes also made two Bond movies, Skyfall and Spectre, which are certainly fine in terms of Bond films, but are not exactly cinematic masterpieces.

I think the bottom line regarding Sam Mendes is that he is a theatre director at heart and he has never fully been able to shake off the stink of the stage. Mendes does not have the vision of an auteur or strong cinematic instincts and his film’s have suffered greatly because of it. I think 1917 is another example of Mendes simply being a bit out of his natural element.

If you want to see a really great and profound World War I film I highly recommend you check out Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) starring Kirk Douglas, in maybe his greatest role, or check out Lewis Milestone’s 1930 epic, All Quiet on the Western Front. Both films not only do a better job of being emotionally resonant and cinematically engaging than 1917, they also have the artistic courage to make a dramatic statement about the inherent madness of war.

In conclusion, I liked 1917 well enough but did not love it. The film is compelling for what it is but never rises to be anything more than a good war film, not a great one. If you want to be mildly entertained and enjoy Roger Deakins gorgeous cinematography, then I recommend you see 1917 in the theatres, but if you are lukewarm on the subject matter and aren’t a big cinephile, then you should wait until 1917 is on Netflix or cable and see it for free.

©2020

A Hidden Life is the Story of a Farmer Who Resisted Hitler - NOT a Metaphor for Anti-Trump #Resistance

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 47 seconds

A Hidden Life by iconic filmmaker Terence Malick celebrates an Austrian farmer’s Christian principled opposition to Hitler, and any attempts to draw a parallel between the movie and anti-Trump resistance are myopic at best.

The new film is the true story of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic farmer in Austria who is conscripted into the German army during World War II and must choose between his conscience and pledging allegiance to Hitler and the Third Reich.

Jagerstatter’s conscientious objections to Nazism come with dire legal consequences that put his life in peril and leave his mother, wife, and three young daughters pariahs in their small village community.

The movie, which stars a who’s who of European actors, including August Diehl, Bruno Ganz, Michael Nyqvist, Franz Rogowski and Mathias Shoenaerts, may be difficult for non-cinephiles to absorb as Malick, who has made such classics as Badlands, The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life, has a storytelling style that is more meditative and impressionistic than general audiences may be conditioned to accept. That said, the film is as dramatically profound and insightful as anything I have seen all year.

Although A Hidden Life was in development before Trump ever became president, some out here in Hollywood have interpreted the film as a metaphor for the moral imperative to resist Trump. I think that interpretation is myopic at best, and believe that the movie is unintentionally a scathing indictment of the moral vacuity and hypocrisy at the heart of the anti-Trump resistance.

The main point that I took away from the film is that moral authority is essential if opposition to evil is to endure. Franz Jagerstatter had an abundance of moral authority because his loyalty was not to country, village, leader, party, policy or even church, but to Truth.

The opposition to Trump, which calls itself the #Resistance, loathes Trump because he is a boor and a bully, its opposition to him is based solely on personality and political party rather than on the moral principle to which Jagerstatter adhered. This lack of a commitment to Truth and principle is what exposes the #Resistance as being completely vapid and devoid of moral standing.

For instance, the #Resistance are rightfully furious over Trump’s immigration policies, and like to wail about “babies in cages” to prove their point, but that outrage rings entirely hollow since they never spoke up in opposition when Obama put “babies in cages” and deported so many immigrants that he was known as the “Deporter-in-Chief”.

Equally disingenuous is the #Resistance outrage over Trump’s supposed war on the free press. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers during his two terms than every other president combined and yet none of these resistors said a word in opposition back then.

Even more damning is the #Resistance deification of morally and ethically dubious intelligence agency apparatchiks. John Brennan, Michael Hayden and James Clapper are all criminals and moral abominations for being integral parts of America’s heinous torture, rendition, surveillance and drone war programs, and yet the #Resistance now hail them as patriots and heroes.

The FBI has long infiltrated civil rights, anti-war and environmental groups in order to destroy them, but that hasn’t stopped the #Resistance from celebrating the FBI’s “professionalism” and genuflecting before loathsome establishment creatures like FBI alums Robert Mueller and James Comey, out of pure anti-Trump animus.

Political darlings of the #Resistance, such as Democrats Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, call Trump a traitor but then pass expansive military and intelligence bills that further empower the executive branch and the Washington war machine.

The #Resistance has further proven their hypocrisy by embracing the establishment talking points to a shocking degree. These allegedly liberal anti-Trumpers are shameless anti-progressive shills for empire who cheer the prosecution and persecution of truth-tellers such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and decry the failure of Trump to go to war in Syria and Iran and to be more belligerent towards Russia.

Franz Jagerstatter lived a quiet, seemingly inconsequential, “hidden life”, until he was forced by his conscience to oppose the Nazis and carry the cross of Truth from his Eden in the Austrian Alps to his Golgotha in Berlin. Pope Benedict XVI beatified Franz Jagerstater in 2007 for his unwavering commitment to Christian moral principles in the face of a formidable evil that was aided in by a complicit Catholic Church. In contrast, the fraudulent #Resistance in America only play at opposition to evil, as is proven by their craven sychophancy toward the depraved neo-liberal, imperial establishment and its military-intelligence industrial complex.

The neo-liberal, imperial establishment in America is a malignant, brutish and bloodthirsty beast that has killed and exploited millions of innocent people from Asia to the Middle East to Latin America and everywhere in between over the last 70 years and the self-righteous and self-aggrandizing anti-Trump #Resistance poseurs will never have the moral authority of a great man like Franz Jagerstatter until they recognize that simple fact. For the #Resistance to squabble over which mask the slouching imperial beast will wear, be it the folksy mask of George W. Bush, or the good ol’ boy mask of Bill Clinton, or the hope and change mask of Barrack Obama, or the brash and brazen mask of Donald Trump, is a fool’s errand and the devil’s handiwork.

A Hidden Life is a deeply moving and worthwhile cinematic venture because it shows the poignant struggles of a man who, unlike the current crop of “resistors”, was willing to sacrifice everything in the service of Truth. The #Resistance must learn the crucial lesson of Franz Jagerstatter, that loyalty to Truth must be the priority, if it ever hopes to attain any moral authority. The first, most basic and most important truth that the #Resistance needs to understand is this…that Donald Trump is not the cause of the evil of neo-liberalism and American empire…he is a consequence of it.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2019

Game of Thrones: The Battle of Winterfell and the Fog of War

****WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES EPISODE THE LONG NIGHT (SEASON 8 EPISODE 3)****

Last Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones (Season 8 Episode 3), titled The Long Night, was the climactic battle between the the Starks and their allies against the Night King and his army of undead wights. The Battle of Winterfell, as it has been dubbed, is thought to be the penultimate clash on the iconic program, with only the fight between the Stark/Targaryen forces against Cersei Lannister and her army in Kings Landing remaining.

The Long Night was a strange episode as the Battle of Winterfell was built up for years as a cataclysmic clash between the forces of good and evil, literally life and death, but the show uncharacteristically deviated from its long standing thematic and narrative traditions by limiting the amount of carnage upon the main characters of the show.

Game of Thrones made its name by flouting Hollywood conventions and sacrificing its lead characters on the altar of great story telling. Ned Stark lost his head so that Game of Thrones could be taken seriously, and the Red Wedding solidified the shows commitment to leading character carnage…but in The Long Night, way too many characters survived the apocalyptic battle. There is no way that Lady Mormont, Jorah Mormont (bad night for House Mormont!), Beric and Theon Greyjoy should be the only notable characters to go down in the Battle of Winterfell.

How did Davos Seaworth, Brianne of Tarth, Tormund, Varys, Missandei, Grey Worm and Podrick not die? I understand why they’d want to save Jon Snow Daenerys, Tyrion, Jaime, Sansa, Arya and Bran…but I don’t get why secondary characters weren’t slaughtered en masse. And even the ones who did die went in very Hollywood ways, with Lady Mormont’s action hero death while killing a zombie giant the most dubious. And while we are at it, Arya’s killing of the Night King was cool and all, but not totally in keeping with the show’s grounding in its established reality. I mean, how did Arya jump over all these people to get to the Night King? And if Game of Thrones is going all Hollywood, why not have Arya die while killing the Night King, at least then it feels somewhat in keeping with the shows themes?

Narrative choices aside, the biggest issue people are having with The Long Night is the cinematography of Fabian Wagner and director Miguel Sapochik, with many complaints that the show was much too dark and too visually muddled. I happen to agree with those complaints and thought it would be a worthy topic to briefly examine.

Game of Thrones has done an exceptional job of filming “medieval” combat over the years and so I was surprised to see them flail about on The Long Night. The mistake that the creators made was to try and convey the “fog of war”, the confusion and disorientation that can accompany combat, by literally creating a white/blue snow fog to simply obfuscating visual clarity. This sort of approach is an error that many make and it never fails to fail.

To be fair, the episode did have some bright cinematographic moments though, the lighting of the Dothraki swords and their charge into the darkness being one of them. But then the visuals went down hill when the White Walkers conjured up a wind storm to conceal their movements and sow confusion. That is a great battle plan for the White Walkers to take Winterfell, but a bad one for tv viewers trying to watch the fight.

There may be two reason why Wagner and Sapochik may have made the decision to muddy the visual waters at Winterfell, the first being that they wanted viewers to experience the chaos and confusion of war, the second being that they wanted to save some money from their huge budgets by limiting the amount of special effects they had to use to cover the scope and scale of the enormous battle. Both reasons are legitimate but misguided. Regardles of why, the end result was that viewers didn’t feel like they were participants in the Battle of Winterfell, they felt like they were going blind.

It is a common mistake to conflate darkness with a lack of light, what darkness means in cinematic terms is a a sharp contrast between dark and light. In cinematic “darkness” viewers still have visual clarity but with a “lack of light”, contrast gets watered down and visual coherence evaporates.

Clear and clean contrast between dark and light make for clear and coherent images that convey both narrative and thematic information. For example, go watch The Favourite (2018), and notice the exquisite use of candles in the voids of darkness. Those images propel the story and the sub-text by using ‘illumination’ (literally and figuratively) that marks a clear delineation between the dark and the light. In The Long Night, light and dark wash into each other, colors are non existent and the action all becomes a visually muddled, grey mess.

Two films came out in 1998, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, that showed visually interesting ways to convey the fog of war. Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and its iconic Omaha Beach assault scene is a perfect example of how to maintain visual clarity while creating a sense of anxiety and confusion (the fog of war). Spielberg and his cinematographer Janusz Kaminski‘s camera dances amidst an understated and muted light from an amphibious vehicle, into the water, and up the zig-zag maze of the beach all while under assault from barely discernible machine gun nests. Kaminski’s camera picks up the textures of the muted colors and materials in each shot. Viewers are given a soldier’s eye view of the carnage of D-Day, and the camera movements and tangible textures help to convey the confusion of that assault, but the visuals were never unclear for more than a brief second or so. Kaminski’s camera shows us what is happening very precisely and distinctly and its handheld movements aided in creating tension and anxiety in viewers.

Later in the film Spielberg uses a character looking through a telescopic sight to watch a battle to convey the fog of war and confusion of what is happening. This sequence is interesting because unlike in the Omaha Beach scene where viewers are active participants in the action, in the telescopic sight scene the character becomes an audience member as he tries to watch the action and discern what is happening. To Spielberg’s credit, this was a great way to create psychological reciprocity between the audience and the character.

In The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick and his cinematographer John Toll use crisp and clean visuals with dynamic and rich colors to convey the fog of war. In the sequence where the Marines must make their way up a lush, green hillside to find and eliminate a machine gun nest, Malick and Toll give viewers a clear look at the surroundings, and just like the Marines, no clear shot of the machine gun nest. The rolling green of the hills are like a never ending sea and the machine gun nest a crocodile that only pokes its eyes and nose above the water line. The beauty of Malick and Toll’s visuals is in stark contrast to the physical and psychological mayhem unleashed with them.

Malick also gives clear focus to the nature which surrounds the battle, with Toll’s camera lingering long on a flower or an insect crawling on a leave of grass. Malick and Toll’s use of natural light and their ability to crisply define the colors, textures and contrasts of the setting make his fog of war confusion breathtakingly beautiful and utterly horrifying. (watch The Thin Red Line and notice that Malick’s camera picks up every little bump on Marine’s helmets…it creates an intimacy through texture that is one of Malick’s signature, understated styles.)

The Long Night made the same error of visual incoherence that Clint Eastwood made in American Sniper, where Eastwood rolled in a sand storm in Iraq to convey the moral confusion of the Iraq war. That tactic did not visually work in American Sniper either as it created little more than a cloud of yellow dust just like The Long Night gave us a blueish white cloud of snow. In Eastwood’s case I can almost guarantee you that his creative decision to muddy things up was a result of budgetary concerns, as he is a notorious slave to budget. As for The Long Night’s decisions making…they do have large budgets, but hey also have at least one more big battle in this final season, so maybe they were cutting corners too.

Game of Thrones have made some of the greatest battle scenes in television history, as the Battle of the Bastards, The Spoils of War and Hardhome have shown, but with The Long Night they fell into more than just the fog of war trap, they failed to fully establish the geography of the scenes and battle ground and never established a coherent time line.

As the Battle of Winterfell raged on, the locations of characters was never clearly elucidated, and so the lack of visual clarity became ever more heightened. I understand not wanting to give the “god shot”, an overhead view of things to show who is where and what is happening, but by failing to make the geography clear, the battle felt redundant and circular, and lacked specifics which could have heightened dramatic tension to a greater degree.

The timeline was as muddied as the visuals, as Arya ran through the castle trying to escape wights in an extended sequence, the battle raged outside. But when the camera returned to the battle outside, nothing had changed, and because viewers had no central character upon which to focus, the battle seemed aimless and incoherent.

Maybe the focus should have been on Samwell, and we viewers could have seen the battle through his perspective at times (like the telescopic scene in Saving Private Ryan), or we could shift perspective through a series of characters in order to get clarity on different areas of the fight. Maybe have Jaime, Arya, Jon Snow, Danerys and Theon lead us through the battle and we see what they see…so when Lady Mormont gets killed it is through Jaime’s perspective…things like that.

Look, I thoroughly enjoy Game of Thrones, I admire the show for its integrity and quality, and I was disappointed in parts of the episode the Long Night. The bottom line is this, Game of Thrones has given us eight glorious seasons of thrills, chills, carnage, nudity, incest, murder, dragons, zombies and palace intrigue, I only hope they can right the ship for the final three episodes after their visual and thematic missteps in the much discussed Battle of Winterfell.

©2019

Knight of Cups : A Review and Dispatches From the Great Malick Civil War

***THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!***

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 14 MINUTES

MY RATING: 4.75 out of 5 STARS - SEE IT IN THE THEATRE

*** REVIEW SUMMARY***: If you like Terrence Malick films you will really like Knight of Cups. As the third film in Malick's undeclared autobiographical trilogy, with The Tree of Life and To the Wonder being the first two films, it is much more accessible than To the Wonder and ever so slightly less accessible than The Tree of Life. Be forewarned, if your tastes run more conventional and mainstream, Knight of Cups, and any other Malick film for that matter, will not be for you.

Once the soul was perfect and had wings, and could soar into Heaven…find your way from darkness to light. Remember.

In 2011, I went to see the film The Tree of Life written and directed by Terence Malick. I was deeply moved by the film and genuinely loved it. The greatest attempt at describing my feelings for the film would be to say it was the film that I had unknowingly been waiting for my entire life.  Considering I am very reticent to engage in hyperbole in regards to any film (or any-thing for that matter), this was high praise indeed. 

When I was asked by people if I liked the film, I shared with them that same glowing endorsement, and I was received in one of two ways, either people warmly embraced me as a fellow traveler and soul-mate on this incredible journey of life, or I was assaulted like a stranger in a strange land with a level of vitriol unprecedented in the long, troubled history of mankind. 

It was clear, the battle lines had been drawn, pro-Malick people on one side, anti-Malick people on the other. The people who disliked The Tree of Life, REALLY, REALLY HATED it, and the people who liked the film, REALLY, REALLY LOVED it. The anti-Tree of Lifers said the film was incoherent, rambling and pretentious, while the pro-Tree of Lifers said it was intimate, personal and visionary. I wasn't entirely shocked by the negative reaction to the film by some people, during the showing I went to, three different audience members, at different times, got up and turned to face the rest of the crowd and held their arms out wide as if to say "what in the hell is this?" and then made a spectacle of themselves as they stormed out of the theatre in a loud huff, making sure everyone knew how much they hated the film.  And thus, with these 'walk-outs', the first shots in "The Great Malick Civil War", which had been simmering for decades, were fired, and the horrible, bloody war rages on to this day with Malick's latest release Knight of Cups.

At the conclusion of the showing of Knight of Cups (which is written and directed by Terrence Malick, stars Christian Bale, and is shot by Emmanuel Lubezki) which I attended, two blue-haried old biddies sitting near the front of the sparsely filled theatre made a show of dismissively laughing loudly the moment credits rolled. This was followed by an older man, sitting by himself on the other side of my row, who cupped his hands by his mouth and booed loudly, vomiting his negative opinion over every one in the theatre. My instinct was to walk over and pour my root beer over this geezer's head, and tell him that since he felt the need to share his feelings with me, I thought I'd share my feelings with him. Thankfully my better nature prevailed, or I might be writing this post on the lam, wanted for the murder, justifiable in my eyes, of three old people in a Los Angeles theatre. When it comes to this Great Malick Civil War, I am trying, God knows, to follow John Lennon's example of "giving peace a chance."

The Malick Civil War is one of those wars to which we've become so accustomed, the type of war which no one can win and which will last until the end of history. I can't end the war myself but I can try to help you understand it, it's origins and how to survive it, so that you can tell your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren about how we got into this senseless slaughter we know as "The Great Malick Civil War", with the hope that those future generations can bring an end to the carnage.

FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN MOVIES AGO

The Abraham Lincoln at the center of this civil war is enigmatic writer/director Terence Malick. Malick has directed and written seven feature films, which are, in chronological order, Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005), The Tree of Life (2011), To the Wonder (2012) and Knight of Cups (2016). In keeping with his somewhat eccentric image, after his second feature, Days of Heaven, Malick disappeared from movie-making and public life, only to resurface twenty years later with the film The Thin Red Line. Malick is a unique man, unlike most other directors, as evidenced by his rarely doing any press or interviews for his films, and not even allowing himself be photographed on the set of his movies.

Malick's last three films, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, which seem to form a sort of personal and autobiographical trilogy, are films that are particularly challenging for some viewers, and down right off-putting to others. The biggest complaint about The Tree of Life, To the Wonder and Knight of Cups is the main complaint about many of Malick's films, namely people don't understand what the hell is happening in the story. In a Malick film, the narrative can be, at times, non-linear. Malick's films are like dreams...impressionistic, abstract and filled with symbolism.

"GIVE ME SIX HOURS TO CHOP DOWN A TREE AND I WILL SPEND THE FIRST FOUR SHARPENING THE AXE." - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Unlike most other other filmmakers, Malick likes to shift perspective in his films. We often hear, in voice over, the inner thoughts and feelings of multiple characters throughout his films. It is a technique very similar in story telling structure to a novel or even a long form poem, and when done well, as it is in Malick's case, it helps create an intimacy and personal connection between the audience and the character.

Malick heightens this effect by often having these voice-overs be done in a barely audible whisper. Examples of this multiple-protagonist-narration technique can be found in The Thin Red Line, where the narration comes from as many as five characters, Private Witt, Sgt. Welsh, Captain Staros, Private Bell and Lt. Col. Tall, and the perspective jumps across multiple story lines, so we see the overarching narrative through these different protagonists perspectives, giving the film a depth and complexity it would otherwise be lacking with a more conventional storytelling technique.

The New World is also narrated by three different characters as well, Captain Smith, Pocahontas and John Rolfe, giving the story a much more well-rounded and deeper personal dimension than a standard filmmaking approach. This love triangle, which is a theme often explored in Malick's films, is brought to greater life and depth by understanding the inner thoughts and workings of all the participants. 

In The Tree of Life, the narration jumps between the mother (Jessica Chastain), the father (Brad Pitt) and the son as both a child (Hunter McCracken) and as an adult (Sean Penn), which gives the film a vibrant and exquisitely powerful intimacy. The use of multiple protagonist's narrations and perspectives is extremely unconventional in filmmaking, hell, just using a single narrator is a technique that many filmmakers vehemently disagree with, never mind using multiple narrators. In the hands of a less visionary director, the voice-over is a bandage used to cover their weak storytelling skill, but with a handful of directors, Malick and Scorsese in particular, voice-over narration is a weapon they wield expertly that elevates their storytelling to glorious heights. 

Malick hasn't always use multiple narrators in his films, for instance in Badlands and Days of Heaven, his first two films, he uses a singular narrator, both young woman/girls, to guide the viewer through the picture. In Badlands, the protagonist is Sissy Spacek's teenage character, Holly, who shows us the story, and her innocence makes the brutality and barbarity of Kit (Martin Sheen) and the other male characters more palatable for the viewer. In Days of Heaven, a young girl, Linda (Linda Manz), narrates the story of Bill (Richard Gere) and Abby (Brooke Adams) as they make their way from Chicago to the plains of the Midwest. This technique gives the viewer a distance from the main protagonists, but maintains Malick's signature intimacy (and the theme of femininity), in this case, through the eyes of an innocent child. As Malick has matured and found his voice and style as an artist and filmmaker, he has become more deft at the use of the multiple protagonists and narrations, and has used it to great effect in his last five films to give the viewer more complex perspectives.

"I WALK SLOWLY, BUT I NEVER WALK BACKWARDS" - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Malick also has a distinct and unique visual style where he only uses natural lighting. In addition to the natural lighting, Malick also highlights this naturalism with his camera movement by letting the camera dance and float about. He sometimes let's the camera stop to focus on the wonders of the natural world and setting, holding on an animal, an insect or a tree. Malick never rushes his camera, and his deliberate pace and natural lighting, free moving camera and occasional focus on nature, all create a signature style that has a tangible and palpable feel to it. You don't just see through Malick's camera, you feel the world it inhabits. Whether it is the minuscule bumps on a soldiers helmet, the abrasive blades of grass in a field, the texture of a character's sweater, through Malick's use of natural light, these objects have greater definition and every contour of them is accentuated, giving the viewer the sense memory of similar items they have felt in their own lives. It is a remarkable accomplishment for Malick to be able to bring his visuals to such a heightened  and naturalistic state that viewers not only bask in their beauty but recall their own tactile memories.

There is a sequence in Knight of Cups where Christian Bale wears a bulky, wool sweater, and Cate Blanchett simply reaches out towards him and feels it. Malick's camera, with the guidance of one of the great cinematographers working today, Emmaneul Lubezki, picks up every single nook and cranny of this sweater, it is palpable on screen, and when Blanchett reaches out for it you feel that sweater right along with her, and also feel her character's longing to connect with Bale.

"I DESTROY MY ENEMIES WHEN I MAKE THEM MY FRIENDS." - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Which brings us to acting in a Malick film. Of the many people with whom I have disagreed about Terrence Malick films, many of them are actors. A lot of actors I spoke with about The Tree of Life, absolutely hated the movie. I was shocked by this revelation as I would have assumed actors were a bit more cinematically sophisticated than the average Joe, but boy was I wrong. Actors may actually be even more culturally conditioned in their movie watching because they are so used to reading scripts and understanding the basics of how to tell a story. This does not suit the viewer of a Malick film, in fact it is poison.

Malick is very improvisational with his actors and his camera, which scares the living hell out of most actors. A lot of actors want to know what to do and when to do it. Being left out in front of a camera with no context and nothing to do but simply "be", is a form of torture for most actors. In addition, because Malick is able to bring us so intensely close to his subjects and into their internal world, the opportunities for a big external clash with the outer world are reduced. The brushes with the external are quickly integrated into the internal, so we don't have the explosive confrontation that actors love to embrace. Since Malick uses voice over so often, actors aren't allowed to talk their way through something, which a lot of actors desperately love to do. The actors are forced to be present in the moment and just "be alive" before the cameras. It is very improvisational and in some ways like watching an unrehearsed dance...kind of like…I don't know...life. Some actors hate it when they don't know what to do...am I mad here? Am I sad? Do I laugh? Do I cry? No, you just are here...alive and human. Once an actor can get comfortable with the "not knowing" of Malick's approach, then Malick can fill in the proper meaning and purpose he intends through voice over and editing.

Malick's style of filmmaking lays an actor bare. You can't bullshit, or rely on your good looks to charm your way through a Malick film. You need talent, skill and frankly, intelligence and gravitas to be able to thrive in a Malick film. There have been some extraordinary performances in Malick films, for instance, Cate Blanchett in Knight of Cups does simple yet stellar work, bringing her great craft to bear in a role that would have been invisible in the hands of a lesser actress. 

Blanchett being great is no surprise as she is one of the world's finest actresses, but Malick has been able to get great performances from some less expected places. In To the Wonder, Olga Kurylenko, who had previously been in little more than action films, gives a wondrous performance. Kurylenko, whose background is in dance and for whom English is a third language, is comfortable expressing herself through her body and movement, which means she is never stuck trying to figure out a scene, but rather is capable if just inhabiting it, a great quality for an actor to possess in a Malick film. Another surprising performance in a Malick film is Colin Farrell in The New World. Farrell's naturalism and tangible fear in front of Malick's camera made for a mesmerizing and unexpected  performance from the often-time uneven actor.

Other actors who have thrived in Malick films are Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in Badlands, with Sheen giving a Brando-esque level performance filled with charisma and power. Nick Nolte, Jim Cavezial, Sean Penn, Ben Chaplin and Elias Koteas all do very solid work in The Thin Red Line. Koteas and Nolte in particular do spectacularly specific work in very difficult roles. The aforementioned Colin Farrell, Christian Bale and Q'oriana Kilcher in The New World. Kilcher is simply amazing as Pocahontes, completely natural, charismatic and at ease as Malick's Native American muse. Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain all give detailed and vibrant performances in The Tree of Life, with Chastain really being the break out star. Chastain, like Blanchett, is one of the great actresses working today, and her work in The Tree of Life was so masterful and elegantly human that she was immediately catapulted into the upper echelon of highly respected actors.

Conversely, there have been actors who have been exposed in Malick films as being little more than a pretty face with an empty head. Richard Gere simply lacked the gravitas to carry Days of Heaven and the film suffered greatly for it. Gere was just unable too fill the screen and maintain the viewers interest mostly due to a lack of focus and grounding. Along the same lines, Ben Affleck is really dreadful in To the Wonder. Affleck was revealed to be a dullard with absolutely nothing going on behind the eyes. He is obviously a handsome guy, but he is unable to express much with his face, leaving him being awkward and uncomfortable in front of Malick's camera without anything to do but just be. Simliarly, Rachel McAdams also struggled mightily in To the Wonder, as both actors seemed lost and wandering throughout their screen time, especially in comparison to Olga Kurylenko's transcendent performance. 

The ability to be able to communicate non-verbally is paramount for an actor in a Malick film, which is why highly skilled actors, like Chastain, Blanchett, Penn and Sheen were able to shine, as were relative novices like Kilcher and Kurylenko who are grounded and comfortable in their bodies. 

In Knight of Cups, Christian Bale shows his great craft and skill by being able to carry the narrative of the film without saying a whole lot. He is an often underrated actor, but his work in Knight of Cups is testament to his mastery of craft and innate talent.

"ALL THAT I AM, OR HOPE TO BE, I OWE TO MY ANGEL MOTHER." - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Malick often returns to the same themes in his films. One theme that runs through all of his films, and is the central focus of Knight of Cups, is the Anima, the feminine. Malick has always had a certain, very specific type of feminine archetype on display in his films. His central female characters have almost always worn flowing, light dresses, mostly in the style of the 1940's or so, and have also frequently gone barefoot, both symbolic of femininity and maternity. This particular female archetype, probably inspired by the director's own mother, is not a damsel in distress, or a vixen or a school marm, it is a femininity of strength and intrigue, like the goddess or the Virgin Mary. At once mystical, mysterious, powerful and enchanting. This archetype is vividly on display in The Tree of Life in the mother character portrayed by Jessica Chastain. The archetype also shows up in fleeting and tantalizing glimpses in The Thin Red Line, as Ben Chaplin's wife (Miranda Otto) who writes him at the front. 

In Knight of Cups, the entire film is an exploration of the Anima, and the director's relationship, in the form of Christian Bale, to her many faces. Even the interaction between male characters is entirely based upon their individual and unique relationship to the Anima. The different faces of the Anima, such as Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, are sign posts along the journey of the main character as his relationship to the feminine changes as he ages and matures.

Other themes running through all of Malick's films are philosophy and spirituality, usually in the form of a Gnostic Catholicism. Malick is one of the rare directors who even considers having characters who think about God in their life in his films. The big questions that Malick tackles, questions of life and death, love and loss, God, nature and the infinite, are almost never found in any other films. Malick is alone out in the wilderness in trying to understand the world in which he lives, both in its external and internal forms, and the universe he inhabits and the God who created it, be he merciful or not, or if he exists or not, and what that all means to the individual making his way in the world. 

In the Knight of Cups this Gnostic Catholicism is a major theme as well. Christian Bale's character is lost amid the decadence and debauchery of a modern day Babylon, and has forgotten his true self and that he is a divine Son of God. The spiritual seeking and struggle on display in Knight of Cups is a common and powerful theme running through all of Malick's films and it is part of what sets him apart from other directors.

HOW TO WATCH A MALICK MOVIE - A PRIMER

Malick's films, especially his later ones and the autobiographical trilogy, are less storytelling as they are meditations. Meditations on God, faith, nature, grace, annihilation, fatherhood, motherhood, childhood, the duality of man, the duality of God, and Malick's cinematic meditation can become meditative for viewers. The key to appreciating Malick's films are to understand that they are not something you actively try to figure out. You don't have to decide if the guy in the red hat is in internal affairs, or if the doctor is really a ghost or the ship's captain is a spy. Watching Malick is, in and of itself, an artistic meditation. A meditation on the internal life of his characters and the character's struggle, as it relates to our own struggle and to our own internal life. Viewers are not consumers of a Malick film, they are participants. The catch being, of course, is that viewers don't participate intellectually with Malick's films, but emotionally and spiritually.

The key to enjoying a Malick film is to stop trying to impose standard storytelling rules upon it, and trying to figure it out consciously. A Malick film is like going to an art exhibit, you don't mentally figure the art out, you just let it wash over you and go for the ride. You trust that the artist/auteur has something to say and that you'll understand it at some point in time. The artist may be working on an unconscious level, beyond the ability of the viewer to articulate how or why the piece moves them. With Malick, it may not even be when the film is over, it may be after you see it a second time, or third time that it resonates with the viewer. Or it may be when an event in the viewer's life changes their perspective and the film then makes more sense to them in retrospect.

Some people may not be ready to hear what Malick is saying. Maybe they have become a prisoner to formula and cultural conditioning. Maybe they've been taught to be a passive consumer and need their films to only be entertainment and can only tolerate their art when it's spoon-fed to them. Maybe Malick's philosophical and theological perspective are off-putting to many viewers who do not share his Catholicism or any belief in God at all. I mean Adam Sandler is a trillionaire and makes a couple of movies a year, and they've made TWO Sex in the City films for God's sake, but poor Terence Malick has only made seven films in the last forty years, so trust me when I tell you that I totally understand if people don't believe in God. The truth is, belief in God is not a requirement to enjoying a Malick film, but belief in art is.

Another requirement to enjoying a Malick film is that you must have lived a life in order to truly appreciate Malick's work. Malick's films are not for some twenty-something who is joyously jaunting through life with the world as their oyster. A Malick film is for those who have experienced the slings and arrows of life and have the scars to prove it, and those who have loved and lost or lost and loved. For example, The Tree of Life is entirely about loss. If you haven't lost a loved one, a dear friend, a child, then maybe the film is a jumbled mush of nonsense. But if you have, like me, lost someone, the film walks you through the questions, the thoughts, the meditations, the doubts, the hopes and the fears of what this life, and the ending of it, all mean. It has no answers, and therein lies the rub.

We have been culturally conditioned to want answers. We pay our $10 and if we are asked a question by a film, then by God that same film better give us answers. And if it doesn't, if we are left walking out of the theatre with questions, with doubt, with a humility before the vastness of the universe and all of time, with nothing more than an understanding of how miniscule and insignificant we are in the big picture of things and yet how meaningful and powerful we are in the lives of others in the same predicament as we are. Well...that causes some people to walk out before the film is over. Or to shut down and seethe while waiting for it to end and then unleashing their boos on anyone within earshot. Or to simply want to go back to sleep walking through life avoiding the only certainty that we are born with...that we will all die. Everyone we know, have known or will ever know, will die. Everything we know, have ever known or will ever know will disappear. And so will we. The clock is ticking.

This is why I love Terrence Malick films, because they feel as if they were made especially for me. Malick and I have lived very different lives, but his films, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, in particular, are as close to my actual inner life and struggles as anything ever captured on film. Malick speaks my language, walks in my world and is able to cut me to the bone and reveal things about my inner being that I wasn't even aware of until he enlightened me. Malick asks me the same questions that I ask myself and struggles with the same answers, or lack of answers, that I struggle with. This is what makes Malick such a genius, and why I admire his work so much, and also why others may loathe his work. 

"MEDIOCRITIES EVERYWHERE…I ABSOLVE YOU…I ABSOLVE YOU…I ABSOLVE YOU ALL." - SALIERI

"MOZART, MOZART, FORGIVE YOUR ASSASSIN!! I CONFESS I KILLED YOU…" - SALIERI (AND THE REST OF US)

We live in a world of Salieri's, where mediocrity is rewarded and genius shunned. Some great examples of this are that Steven Spielberg has two Best Director Oscars and Terrence Malick has none. Spielberg is the ultimate Salieri to Malick's Mozart. A comparison of their two war films is proof of that. In 1997, after a twenty year absences from directing, Malick returned with his World War II film, The Thin Red Line, based on the James Jones book. Also that year, Steven Spielberg released his World War II film, Saving Private Ryan. The films could not have been more different and more glaring examples of the genius of one man, Malick, and the pandering mediocrity of the other, Spielberg. 

The juxtaposition of these two films is perfect for making the point about Malick as a singularly unique and original artistic voice and brilliant filmmaker. In Saving Private Ryan, a standard formulaic war film, we are shown the devastating effects of war upon the human body. Spielberg's gymnastic D-Day sequence shows the physical brutality of war in a very tense and riveting way. But after that sequence the film falls into the pattern of standard war film tropes. Malick's The Thin Red Line on the other hand, shows the impact of war not only on man's body, but upon his psyche, his spirit and his soul. Malick also has a vividly compelling war action sequence, where Marines must take a hill with Japanese machine gunners atop it, but Malick gives a more nuanced and human view of war beyond the physical carnage of it, by showing how it impacts not only the external life of the soldiers fighting, but the internal life. The torment of war upon the mind, the heart, the humanity and the spirituality of the men forced to fight it is front and center in The Thin Red Line, and completely missing from Saving Private Ryan. The Thin Red Line is the rarest of the rare, a multi-dimensional, deeply intimate war film that leaves us questioning war and our own righteousness, while Saving Private Ryan is simply another one-dimensional, standard war film that never forces us to question our virtue or morality. Saving Private Ryan shows us men surviving war, while The Thin Red Line teaches us that it is what men do to survive in war that does the most damage to them.

Spielberg won a Best Director Oscar for Saving Private Ryan. No one boos or walks out of a Spielberg film because he never questions his audience or makes them think or feel. He just mindlessly and soullessly entertains and leaves us on our way. Malick never let's his audience, or himself, off the hook. He challenges the audience, to surpass their cultural conditioning and to ask themselves the big questions that they don't want to think about. 

We are the guilty ones. We are all mini-Salieri's who reward the work of other more famous Salieris. Mediocrity has become King in America. Tom Hanks has won two Best Actor Oscars while Joaquin Phoenix has won none. A malignant mediocrity like Steven Spielberg has two Best Director Oscars, when two of the most rare cinematic geniuses, Terrence Malick and Stanley Kubrick have none. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, poster children for mediocrity, currently lead our Presidential elections. We have sentenced ourselves to a life term of mediocrity and deceive ourselves by calling it greatness. We are the ones to blame for this, no one else.

It is interesting to me that the people who walked out of The Tree of Life when I saw it, and the people who were so dismayed at the Knight of Cups when I saw it, were older people. These are the people who should most be thinking about the questions of life and death that Terrence Malick raises, yet they were the ones who were the most resistant to these Malick films. Maybe the fact that the next big thing to happen in the life of these folks will be the ending of it, is why they do not want to think about death, and they would rather be mindlessly entertained rather than confronted with their mortality. Of course, their fear and cowardice speaks more to them and their failings than it does to the artistry of Terrence Malick.

The people who would walk out of a Malick film, or boo it upon its conclusion, are the same people who laughed at Van Gogh, Picasso, Jackson Pollack or Mozart. They are the Gatekeepers of Mediocrity, Salieri's all, who want to keep genius in a cage while they whistle by the graveyard of their own worthless lives. I don't hate people who boo Malick films, I pity them. These people are missing out on so much beauty and joy and wisdom. To their credit, they do make me think about what things might I be resistant to out there that may be so fantastically wonderful but which I am too afraid to experience or understand. There is a lot of art in the world which is beyond my limited intellect, but I would never be so presumptuous as to boo it and stamp it as worthless. While I may not intellectually understand Jackson Pollack's work, I can still marvel at its dynamism. The same can be said of Opera, or classical music. While those art forms are things I know very little about, I would not presume to belch my inadequacies upon them in order to not feel stupid. Rather I would try and learn more about them and see if I could find the ageless beauty and wisdom that resides within them. 

Malick is an incomparable filmmaker. No one even attempts to do what he is and has been doing in cinema for the last forty years. Terrence Malick is among a very small, handful of true cinematic geniuses the world has ever known. The reality is, if you stand up and walk out of a Malick film, or boo loudly at the completion of a Malick film, that is an indictment of you and your compulsively myopic artistic tastes. Not understanding the genius of a Malick film is not a Malick problem….it is a YOU problem.

The Great Malick Civil War still rages to this day (and obviously, I rage along with it!!), with neither side willing to give an inch, but only one thing is assured…this war will end, and years from now, the fools, the clowns and the idiots who laughed and booed at Malick will be long gone and completely forgotten, but Malick's films will stand as a monument to his genius for the ages to come. Knight of Cups will be among those films which history will revere.

©2016