The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America

by Hannah Patterson

Overview

With 2005's acclaimed and controversial The New World, one of cinema's most enigmatic filmmakers returned to the screen with only his fourth feature film in a career spanning thirty years. While Terrence Malick's work has always divided opinion, his poetic, transcendent filmic language has unquestionably redefined modern cinema, and with a new feature scheduled for 2008, contemporary cinema is finally catching up with his vision. This updated second edition of The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America charts the continuing growth of Malick's oeuvre, exploring identity, place, and existence in his films. Featuring two new original essays on his latest career landmark and extensive analysis of The Thin Red Line—Malick's haunting screen treatment of World War II—this is an essential study of a visionary poet of American cinema.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781905674268
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/19/2007
Series:	Directors' Cuts
Edition description:	second edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Hannah Patterson is a freelance writer and critic. She is also the co—editor of Contemporary North American Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide (2002).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Poetic Visions of America, by Hannah Patterson
1. All Things Shining: The Struggle for Wholeness, Redemption and Transcendence in the Films of Terrence Malick, by Ron Mottram
Through the Badlands Into Days of Heaven: Malick's Filmmaking in the 1970s
2. Two Characters in Search of a Direction: Motivation and the Construction of Identity in Badlands, by Hannah Patterson
3. The Highway Kind: Badlands, Youth, Space and the Road, by Neil Campbell
4. Days of Heaven and the Myth of the West, by Joan McGettigan
5. Terrence Malick and Arthur Penn: The Western Re—Myth, by John Orr
6. 'Enjoying the Scenery': Landscape and the Fetishisation of Nature in Badlands and Days of Heaven, by Ben McCann
7. Innocents Abroad: The Young Woman's Voice in Badlands and Days of Heaven, with an Afterword on The New World, by Anne Latto
8. Listening to the Aquarium: The Symbolic Use of Music in Days of Heaven, by Richard Power
9. Sound as Music in the Films of Terrence Malick, by James Wierzbicki
Negotiating The Thin Red Line
10. 'Everything a Lie': The Critical and Commercial Reception of Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, by Martin Flanagan
11. The Greatest Generation Steps Over The Thin Red Line, by John Streamas
12. The Other World of War: Terrence Malick's Adaptation of The Thin Red Line, by Stacey Peebles
13. Terrence Malick, Landscape and 'What is this war in the heart of nature?', by Robert Silberman
14. Terrence Malick's Heideggerian Cinema: War and the Question of Being in The Thin Red Line, by Marc Furstenau and Leslie MacAvoy
Discovering The New World
15. Praising The New World, by Mark Cousins
16. Making Worlds, Making Pictures: Terrence Malick's The New World, by James Morrison
17. Approaching The New World, by Adrian Martin
Filmography
Bibliography
Index