LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Terrence Malick: American West
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Terrence Malick is simply the greatest living American filmmaker. Only Stanley Kubrick was his equal or superior. That’s not to say that Martin Scorsese nor Woody Allen have not made great films, but they’ve both made stinkers in their careers, and neither has had a great film in over a decade (although I’ve heard good things about Allen’s current Match Point).
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Malick has never been a plot person. He’s less interested in establishing narrative turning points than he is in capturing a moment: a savage knife thrust in battle that takes away the life of a beloved character; the Native Americans’ sighting of three settlers’ ships that will forever change their lives; the tentative first contact between the settlers and the natives. Especially effective are the street scenes in London, which doesn’t seem notably less grungy than Virginia.
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Malick's feature-length debut, "Badlands," borrows heavily from Arthur Penn's 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde" as it delves into the psychology of two young killers on the run from the law in the American West. But whereas in "Bonnie and Clyde" the violence is stylized and balletic, the characters larger-than-life, "Badlands" makes little attempt either to romanticize or explain away the actions of its characters, making their distracted, apathetic reactions to the killing spree on which they embark all the more harrowing.
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The unique style Malick developed in those three films draws heavily on the philosophic training he received at Harvard. Like Heidegger’s archetype of the human as a being who simply “exists,” with no direction or motivation, Malick’s American everymen and everywomen drift from scene to scene, through non-linear plots and rich landscapes.
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Few filmmakers have made such deliberately transcendental films as Terrence Malick, the poet-philosopher of American cinema, and fewer still have been influenced by them. It’s actually shocking that a decidedly naturalist, meditative auteur like Malick survived his own self-imposed hiatus from the film industry to return, as I can see no popular interest or herald for his having done so. But those few who have seen and admired his work often agree that no one captures the essence of the strange, brutal, idiosyncratic beauty that is America quite like he does.
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American West