Terrence Malick and the Examined Life

Terrence Malick is a “philosopher as much as a movie director,” according to this erudite study of the Tree of Life filmmaker’s intellectual influences. Woessner (Heidegger in America), a history professor at the City College of New York, notes that in the 1960s Malick studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Harvard University and on scholarship at Oxford before turning to film. Exploring how that background informs the director’s work, Woessner argues that the sweeping shots of solitary characters on the plains of Alberta, Canada, in 1978’s Days of Heaven exemplify philosopher Martin Heidegger’s belief that “being” arises from the juxtaposition of opposites (“It is the lonely figure standing off on the horizon that allows us to differentiate earth from sky, nearness from farness,” Woessner writes). The author also discusses Malick’s literary inspirations, contending that his film Knight of Cups, in which an ennui-filled screenwriter goes on a “quest for philosophical and spiritual fulfillment,” echoes Walker Percy’s 1961 novel The Moviegoer, which follows a stockbroker’s existential search for meaning. Though the in-depth discussions of how Søren Kierkegaard’s views on suffering informed 2011’s The Tree of Life and how Ralph Waldo Emerson’s distrust of “heroism” pervades 1998’s WWII drama The Thin Red Line can get dense, Woessner’s careful analysis enlightens and convinces. Malick devotees should consider this essential reading. Photos. (Mar.)