More on Malick, the visual visionary

My brother-in-law Steve, one of my favortie people ever, commented on my blog post below re. Terrence Malick’s forthcoming film “The Tree of Life.” I started to respond, then decided to make my response a separate post entirely.

Steve had said that he’d loved Malick’s “The Thin Red Line” but had been bored by his “The New World.” My experience was different.

My problem with “Thin Red Line” is that I had read the novel and was familiar with James Jones’ story, which depends heavily on standard novelistic construction — dense plotting, complex characterization and an involved story line. And such narrative — except in a purely visual sense — isn’t Malick’s strength. So while I enjoyed looking at the film, I didn’t get as much out of it as I’d hoped.

“The New World,” though, takes a classic American story — one that my generation learned about in grammar school, the story of the Pilgrims — and expresses it as a visual wonderland. Malick gives us just enough literal content to keep me intrigued but not hungering for more. Maybe I was just in the right mood or something, but I thought “New World” was a sumptuous experience.

And because of that, I can’t wait for “The Tree of Life.” From what I see in the the trailer, the film seems to deal with most issues that have marked my life, from enduring a tough-talking father to riding my bike behind the DDT truck … and so on. It seems to explore the questions that I find most interesting: What are we to make of life and, most important, what is our own role in that grand saga?

As I say, Malick’s film has the potential to be the greatest film ever made. And I write that having been disappointed more than once.

Below : The somewhat misleading trailer for “The New World,” which Terrence Malick directed in a distinctly non-Hollywood manner.