8. Terrence Malick Loves Tall Grass (And Pondering The Meaning Of Life)
If you're seeing a hand in close-up, brushing delicately through a field of wheat as an ethereal yet crucial orchestra soundtracks the moment and an oh-so-slight voiceover details the simultaneous fragility and epic import of life and its meaning, chances are you're watching a Terrence Malick picture. The cornfields and the lost, thoughtful protagonists are there in Badlands, Malick's first feature, and they return with spiritual overtones but less plot in Days Of Heaven. From there on out the man who epitomises (and occasionally comes close to parodying) the word 'auteur' turned to big, multi-character dramas with a much wider scope (The Thin Red Line, The Tree Of Life) but the exact same sense of childlike wonder at the universe, marvelling and getting lost in the minutiae of the world - there's a sequence in The Thin Red Line, a WWII drama set in the Pacific Theater, that follows the lives of snails and wildlife in the warzone the characters are occupying, and The Tree Of Life regularly diverges from its '50s suburban family drama to explore the compassion of dinosaurs and the beginning of the universe. Yep. Dinosaurs. There are many imitators of Terence Malick's style (occasionally himself,
as with To The Wonder), but few manage to come close to the sense of mystery and romantic faith that exudes from every frame of his films. No-one shoots grass quite like Terrence, that's for sure.