By Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
As filmmakers obsessed with his early work continue to ape his style, Terrence Malick has ventured beyond, reaching into territory that is stubbornly spiritual and anti-narrative. He eschews story conventions. He turns movie stars like Ben Affleck and Christian Bale into props, using them not for their acting but their broad shoulders that fill up the screen as ethereal women twirl around them. He has become his own genre and with experimental reveries like "To the Wonder" and "Knight of Cups," he has alienated some of his most ardent fans.
That modern trilogy concludes with "Song to Song ," taking the filmmaker and his stars Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling and Michael Fassbender to his adopted hometown of Austin, Texas. For those who wrote off Malick after "To the Wonder" or "Knight of Cups," it's unlikely that "Song to Song" will inspire a change of heart. But for the others, who've reservedly or unabashedly stayed with him, "Song to Song" is entirely worthy and even invigoratingly different from the previous two. There's actually a plot (kind of) and the actors are allowed to act and even have some life and (gasp) fun.
"Song to Song" is a love triangle of sorts, very much in the Malick mode, where one is pure (Mara and Gosling's struggling musicians), one is untenable (Cate Blanchett and Gosling), one is damned (Fassbender's sleazy, wealthy producer and Mara) and one is doomed (Natalie Portman's local waitress/teacher and Fassbender). There are others sprinkled in there too, mostly for the guys. As retrograde as it is, in Malick's worlds they're emboldened to sleep around in the name of searching. The women are always a different story.
If there is a main character it's Mara's Faye, who we're told is a musician although we never see her playing – only hanging out on the side of the stage, idly holding a guitar. She's a local girl ashamed of her "bad heart" who takes up with both Gosling's BV and Fassbender's Cook at the same time. The innocent BV remains ignorant to this, even as the three become close enough to vacation together. Faye flits between the two and the tension builds as we wonder when the charade of fidelity is going to lift.
Combined with Emmanuel Lubezki's sumptuous cinematography, these travel scenes are fairly riveting. At times I even forgot I was watching a Malick film, which has somehow become more of a compliment recently than a criticism. There are unexpected moments of joy, too, that don't involve fields or women twirling or cryptic voiceovers: BV dancing in the dusk to Del Shannon's "Runaway," BV and Cook weightless on a plane, Patti Smith giving sage advice, Val Kilmer taking a chain saw to an amp. Do they add up to anything? Maybe mood. Maybe nothing.
But it's wild and confident and unlike anything that his peers are making. There's even a youthful restlessness in his exploration of the impossibility of reconciling wealth and success with innocence and authenticity.
Gosling in particular is a refreshing presence. He lets his smarmy charisma shine through Malick's words, which many actors before him have taken too seriously and made leaden and lifeless. Gosling flirts and smirks while Fassbender festers with menace. Mara is enthralling if a little hard to grasp. Malick's women are usually more enigmas than characters – paragons of grace and goodness who must in turn experience deep shame when they stray, whether encouraged by a lover ("Days of Heaven") or in spite of one ("To the Wonder"). It's a one-sided and almost biblical morality that may have made sense in his period pieces, but is glaringly odd in these contemporary stories.
Still Malick's just doing his own thing. Everyone's still running to catch up with what he did in the '70s. He's already on another planet.
"Song to Song," a Broad Green Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "some sexuality, nudity, drug use and language. Running time: 129 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
Full Lineup Set For AFI Fest; Official Selections Span 44 Countries, Include 9 Best International Feature Oscar Submissions
The American Film Institute (AFI) has unveiled the full lineup for this year’s AFI Fest, taking place in Los Angeles from October 23-27. Rounding out the slate of already announced titles are such highlights as September 5 directed by Tim Fehlbaum, All We Imagine As Light directed by Payal Kapadia, The Luckiest Man in America directed by Samir Oliveros (AFI Class of 2019), Zurawski v. Texas from executive producers Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence and directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, and Oh, Canada directed by Paul Schrader (AFI Class of 1969). A total of 158 films are set to screen at the 38th edition of AFI Fest.
Of the official selections, 48% are directed by women and non-binary filmmakers and 26% are directed by BIPOC filmmakers.
Additional festival highlights include documentaries Architecton directed by Victor Kossakovsky; Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie directed by David Bushell; Devo directed by Chris Smith about the legendary new wave provocateurs; Gaucho Gaucho directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw; Group Therapy directed by Neil Berkeley with Emmy® winner Neil Patrick Harris and Tig Notaro; No Other Land directed by a Palestinian-Israeli team comprised of Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal; Pavements directed by Alex Ross Perry; and Separated directed by Errol Morris. Notable narrative titles include Black Dog (Gou Zen) directed by Guan Hu; Bonjour Tristesse directed by Durga Chew-Bose with Academy Award® nominee Chloë Sevigny; Caught By The Tides directed by Jia Zhangke; Hard Truths directed by Mike Leigh with... Read More