Colaboración especial CRÍTICAS
OBSERVANDO CINE
TERRENCE MALICK: MY TREE OF WONDER
Following the recent release of his last film, we have to analyze visually and conceptually, daring style of the filmmaker, so loved and hated.
When he released “The Tree of Life” (2011) film critic Nick Pinkerton wrote, "Better than a masterpiece, whatever that is".
The film began with a biblical quote from The Book of Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth! When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
And between liquid images, volcanic eruptions, intense blue of deep sea, some Brahms symphonies and disjointed narrative structure, Malick showed a family history of a couple with three children and the trauma that each develops to cope with the loss of one of their children. A story that is completely banal when we find out what is behind one of the great questions which beset mankind. That is when the lead actresses´ words resonate like an echo: “…There are two paths you can take in life; Nature or Divine… Divine does not seek to please himself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten… Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only seeks to please themselves and get others to enjoy… Find reasons to be unhappy when all the world around her smile and love shines through all things… The only way to be happy is to love. If you do not know love, your life will happen in a flash. Love. Hope. Wonder…”
Following the recent release of his last film, we have to analyze visually and conceptually, daring style of the filmmaker, so loved and hated.
When he released “The Tree of Life” (2011) film critic Nick Pinkerton wrote, "Better than a masterpiece, whatever that is".
The film began with a biblical quote from The Book of Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth! When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
And between liquid images, volcanic eruptions, intense blue of deep sea, some Brahms symphonies and disjointed narrative structure, Malick showed a family history of a couple with three children and the trauma that each develops to cope with the loss of one of their children. A story that is completely banal when we find out what is behind one of the great questions which beset mankind. That is when the lead actresses´ words resonate like an echo: “…There are two paths you can take in life; Nature or Divine… Divine does not seek to please himself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten… Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only seeks to please themselves and get others to enjoy… Find reasons to be unhappy when all the world around her smile and love shines through all things… The only way to be happy is to love. If you do not know love, your life will happen in a flash. Love. Hope. Wonder…”
A few weeks ago we had been able to
enjoy his last visual poem “To the
Wonder” (2012). And the viewer, who has gone back to the cinemas following
the fame of a famous actor or after reading the synopsis, will again leave
disappointed.
Malick again hides their obsessions
behind the love story -I insist again, banal- of a couple, with their fears of
commitment, of failure, and their desire for perfection, for fullness. But
love, as reminded by one of the protagonists,
“is a must. You will love”, whether you like it or not.
Unfortunately, we are heirs to a romantic
vision that tells us what and how we should love. When love is perhaps like
alchemy or arts and crafts.
Art as written by Dino Formaggio, “art is everything that man calls art” putting
it in such a clear way, the impossibility of defining art priori, normatively,
considering only the intentions of the artist or the art´s characteristics. Craft
when Juan Gelman referred to poetry as “the
burning witchcraft”.
They are not therefore random
sequences wherein the young couple shows their love and revels with lines and spaces and the serenity that
the great Architecture offers. It is here, when the
words of Plato in the “Timaeus” come
to us, when he called his fellow countrymen “eternal children”, because they saw in wonder the highest condition of human existence.
This is the proposal of our filmmaker: to test the
sense of wonder of the contemporary man.
And with daily activism, we lose our creative
ability, and when suddenly collided with a “masterpiece”, we feel lost, full of
doubt, amazed as children… thirsty for Faith, thirsty for Love, whatever that is.
Para OBSERVANDO CINE 2013
Comentarios