Terrence Malick

Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American filmmaker. His films include '' Days of Heaven'' (1978), '' The Thin Red Line'' (1998), for which he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, '' The New World'' (2005) and ''The Tree of Life'' (2011), the latter of which garnered him another Best Director Oscar nomination and the Palme d'Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival.

Malick began his career as part of the New Hollywood wave with the films '' Badlands'' (1973), about a murderous couple on the run in 1950s American Midwest, and ''Days of Heaven'' (1978), which detailed a love triangle between two laborers and a wealthy farmer during the First World War, before a lengthy hiatus.

Malick's films have explored themes such as transcendence, nature, and conflicts between reason and instinct. They are typically marked by broad philosophical and spiritual overtones, as well as the use of meditative voice-overs from individual characters. The stylistic elements of his work have inspired divided opinions among film scholars and audiences; some praised his films for their cinematography and aesthetics, while others found them lacking in plot and character development. His first five films have nonetheless ranked highly in retrospective decade-end and all-time polls.

Early life

Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. He is the son of Irene (née Thompson; 1912–2011) and Emil A. Malick (1917–2013), a geologist. His paternal grandparents were of Lebanese and Assyrian descent from Urmia. Malick attended St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, Texas, while his family lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Malick had two younger brothers: Chris and Larry. Larry Malick was a guitarist who went to study in Spain with Andrés Segovia in the late 1960s. In 1968, Malick intentionally broke his own hands due to pressure over his musical studies. Their father Emil went to Spain to help Larry, but his son died shortly after, possibly by suicide. The early death of Malick's younger brother has been explored and referenced in his films ''The Tree of Life'' (2011) and '' Knight of Cups'' (2015).

Malick graduated from Harvard College in 1965 with an Bachelor of Arts, '' summa cum laude'', and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received a Rhodes Scholarship, which he used to study philosophy at Oxford University's Magdalen College. After a disagreement with his advisor, Gilbert Ryle, over Malick's thesis on the concept of world in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, Malick left Oxford without a degree. In 1969, Northwestern University Press published Malick's translation of Heidegger's ''Vom Wesen des Grundes'' as ''The Essence of Reasons''.

After returning to the United States, Malick taught philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology while freelancing as a journalist. He wrote articles for ''Newsweek'', ''The New Yorker'', and ''Life''.

Film career

Early career

Malick started his film career after earning an MFA from the brand-new AFI Conservatory in 1969, directing the short film '' Lanton Mills''. At the AFI, he established contacts with people such as actor Jack Nicholson, longtime collaborator Jack Fisk, and agent Mike Medavoy, who procured for Malick freelance work revising scripts. He wrote early uncredited drafts of ''Dirty Harry'' (1971) and ''Drive, He Said'' (1971), and is credited with the screenplay for '' Pocket Money'' (1972). Malick was also co-writer of ''The Gravy Train'' (1974), under the pseudonym David Whitney. After one of his screenplays, ''Deadhead Miles'', was made into what Paramount Pictures believed was an unreleasable film, Malick decided to direct his own scripts.

1970s

''Badlands''

Malick's first feature-length work as a director was '' Badlands'', an independent film starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as a young couple on a crime spree in the 1950s Midwest. It was influenced by the crimes of convicted teenage spree killer Charles Starkweather. Malick raised half of the budget by approaching people outside of the industry, including doctors and dentists, and by contributing $25,000 from his personal savings. The rest was raised by executive producer Edward R. Pressman. After a troubled production that included many crew members leaving halfway through the shoot, ''Badlands'' drew raves upon its premiere at the New York Film Festival. As a result, Warner Bros. bought distribution rights for three times its budget.

''Days of Heaven''

Malick's second film was the Paramount-produced '' Days of Heaven'', about a love triangle that develops in the farm country of the Texas Panhandle in the early 20th century. Production began in the fall of 1976 in Alberta, Canada. The film was mostly shot during the golden hour, with primarily natural light. Much like Malick's first feature, ''Days of Heaven'' had a lengthy and troubled production, with several members of the production crew quitting before shooting was finished, mainly due to disagreements over Malick's idiosyncratic directorial style. The film likewise had a troubled post-production phase, as Billy Weber and Malick spent two years editing, during which they experimented with unconventional editing and voice-over techniques once they realized the picture they had set out to make would not fully work.

''Days of Heaven'' was finally released in 1978 to mostly positive responses from critics. Its cinematography was widely praised, although some found its story lackluster. In ''The New York Times'', Harold C. Schonberg wrote that it "is full of elegant and striking photography; and it is an intolerably artsy, artificial film." However, it later won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography and the prize for Best Director at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. ''Days of Heaven'' has since grown in stature, having been voted one of the 50 greatest American films ever made in a 2015 critics' poll published by BBC
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