Days of Heaven

I love Malick. So much that I was kind of shocked after watching this to realize that he's only made four films, and that this is the last film of his that I hadn't watched yet. I mean, I kind of already knew that, but somehow the fact just didn't feel right. Anyway, I wish I could see this in a theater someday. Everything anyone says about the cinematography being amazing is true. It is.

It occurs to me as I'm writing this that part of why I felt like I'd watched a lot more Malick than actually exists is because I was forgetting that I've watched a lot of David Gordon Green's films, and his approach to film-making is to try to make more Malick films. I really can't distinguish between their films, I think, except by being aware of who made what. I feel like I should probably back off my Malick worship until I can tell the difference between his stuff and the stuff of his followers (followers? worshippers? acolytes? copiers?).

As I explained to Elliot, I really don't understand why so many people find Malick boring. I mean, I understand that it's because there's not a lot of dialogue and little plot and stuff, but I get kind of exhilarated watching his films cuz they're just wall-to-wall gorgeous. So I don't really understand how people don't respond to that.

More than "The New World," which is the other most recent Malick film I've seen, the plot seemed really tight in this movie, actually. It was really skeletal, but the scenes that advanced the plot did so incredibly efficiently, often with just a half a line of dialogue. In the end, though, I think kind of because of that swiftly moving plot, I felt like it was kind of short. I definitely wanted it to be longer, with more room to breathe. Which probably makes me very weird, I guess.