Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

[HJackson]

Every time I leave a theatrical screening of a new Malick film, I'm briefly convinced its his best. That feeling left me quite quickly with Knight of Cups, which has moments of immense beauty but probably does veer towards being too loose for its own good, but it feels much more permanent here. He's retained the stylistic elements that made To the Wonder and Cups so interesting (and surely Lubezki deserves credit here almost as co-author - has there been much continuity on the editing team between these efforts?) but I think this one has much more clearly defined narrative and emotional stakes that make the rumination more meaningful. I'm really frustrated I can't get to another screening of this before it leaves theatres in the UK.

I haven't surveyed the critical attacks on this film in full, but it seems some people are getting incredibly lazy in their approach to late Malick and are more than happy to turn off when entering a screening to just recycle criticisms of previous entries as if they still apply. One review I stumbled upon this morning complained:

"Song to Song apparently concerns a love triangle between an aspiring singer-songwriter (Gosling), his boss (Fassbender) and the secretary-dog-walker (Mara) who is sleeping with them both, evidently as an ill-thought-out career move. She is also a budding songwriter. Such vital information, however, may only be gleaned through the film’s promotional materials, because it sure as hell isn’t in the movie."

Literally every detail she mentions is provided - explicitly - in the film, and is often pored over at some length. You aren't reading runes here. There an extended sequence where Fassbender and Gosling have a huge row over the rights to songs that Gosling wrote. Gosling asks Fassbender how he met Mara and he says she worked for him as a receptionist. Her employment history is spoken about clearly again later. The central relationship breaks down over Fassbender trying to sign Mara because she's a budding songwriter.

[tenia]

Since The Tree of Life (included), it seems to me many people are either trying too hard or too little.
I've read many people like the ones you're quoting, which seemed they just not paid enough attention.
On the opposite of the spectrum, there are people that seem to think that because it's a Malick movie, they need to analyse very specifically his movies while most can be looked at with a relatively simple eye. The Tree of Life, To The Wonder, Knight of Cups and Song to Song are easily followed and understood without having to resort quoting Heidegger or Tarkovsky.

I get people not paying enough attention, it's actually quite usual (and I myself sometimes don't), but people looking too deep seems quite specific.

I bought a French book about Malick's movies last year (Un jardin parmi les flammes by Philippe Fraisse). It's so mono-maniac in the way it's trying to analyse Malick's movies only through the prism of deep religious or psychoanalitic thematics than I didn't went further than the first third. It just felt like Fraisse was trying to push this analysis while you can very much understand and analyse them without these. At some point, it just feels forced (and it's also poorly written, but that's another problem altogether).

[Foam]

But Malick's films really do contain and in two cases are literally named after esoteric images. I haven't read Fraisse, and if you think that the "only" way to engage these films is to compare it to Heidegger you're a jerk--but to act like any careful philosophical/theological exegesis whatsoever is "forced" strikes me as anti-intellectual. If anything, the films explicitly solicit these kinds of readings. (And it's not as if just because they contain these deeper meanings that those who stay on the surface aren't entitled to their perspective.)

[domino harvey]

EDIT: Mods are fallible

[Foam]

You have been very quick to misread me in this thread. I wasn't referring to another member:

It's so mono-maniac in the way it's trying to analyse Malick's movies only through the prism of deep religious or psychoanalitic thematics

[domino harvey]

You're right, my apologies

[tenia]

But Malick's films really do contain and in two cases are literally named after esoteric images. I haven't read Fraisse, and if you think that the "only" way to engage these films is to compare it to Heidegger you're a jerk--but to act like any careful philosophical/theological exegesis whatsoever is "forced" strikes me as anti-intellectual. If anything, the films explicitly solicit these kinds of readings. (And it's not as if just because they contain these deeper meanings that those who stay on the surface aren't entitled to their perspective.)

I understand your point, and you're right, but some of these analysis read as if there is no other way to see through Malick's movies, and Fraisse book really is over-analysis 101 regarding this (but he isn't the one who seemed not to be able to look past this kind of over-analysis).

I don't want to be anti-intellectual, and it's clear that Malick put this kind of background in most of his movies, but often, the reviews and discussions I've read about his movies felt convoluted because of that. It certainly is a useful prism to add another layer of understanding, but surely, it's not an obligation.

EDIT : will try to refine what I want to convey. I think sometimes, critics are making Malick's movies seem way too complicated even if they could choose not to go that route. I'm not sure why, but sometimes, it almost seem as if Malick's new movie is expected to provide a critic showcase. "Ooh, that's this time of year to show off !" as if it couldn't be avoided but to resort to this.

What I love best about Malick's movies however is that, in their core, they're all very simple. I love The New World and The Tree of Life and they're just a story of paradise lost and a beautiful movie about forgiveness. Do we really have to make them way more complicated than this ? Can't we be just moved by these universally understandable and relatable elements ?

I suppose that yes, because they certainly contain more than this, but again, to me, there are too many times where these deeper elements look like they're the core of these movies, while I just don't think they are. I just think some should just watch these movies with their heart rather than with their brains so much.

[Oedipax]

What I love best about Malick's movies however is that, in their core, they're all very simple. I love The New World and The Tree of Life and they're just a story of paradise lost and a beautiful movie about forgiveness. Do we really have to make them way more complicated than this ? Can't we be just moved by these universally understandable and relatable elements ?

I think they're both - they can be understood first on an intuitive, emotional level (Song to Song certainly moved me multiple times throughout), and later on more deeply, through the philosophical breadcrumbs Malick packs in along the way. If Malick could say everything he wants in a purely philosophical register, he'd be better off writing books. He makes films because he also wants to speak about the experience of being alive and present in the moment. That's philosophy too, of course, but one he conveys best through the way he approaches making a film, the freedom he gives to his performers and other collaborators, by engaging with things beyond his immediate control. He is confident enough in what he wants to say that he believes turning a camera on unscripted moments will still, in time, reveal the things he's speaking about, through the unfolding of life, given form through cinema. For me, that's what makes him one of our greatest filmmakers, because his films at their best encompass the entirety of human experience, where the idea of this kind of mind/body divide is an illusion.