The Films of Terrence Malick, Ranked From Worst to Best

The closest thing to a critical failure in Malick’s career, “To the Wonder” likely suffered somewhat from comparison to the previous triumph of “The Tree of Life.” To be fair, it does sometimes flirt with self-parody. Malick pushes the impressionistic rhythms of his previous films to their logical extreme, abstracting conflicts, characters and relationships to turn them all into figures, and some of the sidetracks, like Ben Affleck’s tryst with an old flame (Rachel McAdams, who looks deeply uncomfortable) or Olga Kurylenko meeting an old friend, feature the clunkiest writing of Malick’s career. But “To the Wonder’s” abstraction is liberating more often than it is frustrating, and the film works as a darker companion piece to “The Tree of Life.” Where the earlier film suggested surrendering to the mysteries of life and God, “To the Wonder” is more tentative about this acceptance, more frustrated in the apparent one-sidedness of relationships. It’s about the joy of fleeting pleasures, and how more lasting ones (love, God, happiness) may be outside our grasp.

“The New World” is perhaps the most notorious case of Malick’s indecision, with the director releasing first a 150-minute cut for critics and awards qualification, then a 135-minute version for wide release, and finally a 172-minute version for DVD. The first version is difficult to find, while the other two both have their virtues and flaws, but the film is remarkable in any form. It’s perhaps the most literal version of an Edenic kingdom and a fall from grace in his filmography, with the new world representing a land of untarnished beauty and “civilization” representing the fall. But while Malick’s sympathies are with the natives and Pocahontas (Q’uorianka Kilcher in a mesmerizing performance), he doesn’t demonize the settlers or John Smith (Colin Farrell), seeing them as (mostly) decent men who make ultimately devastating choices. The film also begins Malick’s fertile collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, resulting here in some of the most purely lyrical imagery of Malick’s career.

The first film that suggested that perhaps Malick wasn’t going to be the most prolific director, “Days of Heaven” spent two years in the editing room, with the director finally finding an organizing principle by using Linda Manz’s voiceover as a commentary on Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Sam Shepard’s love triangle. “Days of Heaven” rivals “To the Wonder” as the director’s most elemental film, one that makes greater use of imagery than dialogue in most of the action, allowing most of the interpretation and nuance of the story to come from a child trying to comprehend what she’s seeing. But it’s a far more focused film, one that doesn’t obscure its emotion so much as it condenses and concentrates it into a deeply felt story of decent people making poor decisions and bringing (often literally Biblical) ruin down upon themselves. And while Malick has made great use of classical and other composers, Ennio Morricone’s evocative score makes one wish the two had worked together just once more.

It took twenty years for Malick to follow up “Days of Heaven,” and by the time he was ready nearly every movie star wanted at least to meet with him. The list of actors cut from the film is legendary, with Mickey Rourke, Gary Oldman and more cut from the film and Adrien Brody’s part, originally the protagonist, reduced to five minutes and two lines. It’s hard to blame some of them for being upset, Brody especially, but the final film is beautiful and purposeful in which characters it focuses on – Jim Caviezel’s faithful private vs. Sean Penn’s cynical sergeant, Nick Nolte’s career-minded colonel vs. Elia Koteas’ compassionate captain. It’s one of the most humane war films ever made, one that sees war and violence as a violation of both man and nature. It’s also the first film that made use of Malick’s more overtly philosophical use of voiceover, the first time its protagonists actively searched for God and purpose in their musings.

Terrence Malick has spent the past several decades working on “The Tree of Life” in some form or another, whether in his origin-of-life project “Q” that he worked on in the 80s or in his upcoming companion piece “Voyage of Time.” But “The Tree of Life” feels like his magnum opus, the work that he’s been building towards his whole life. Ranging from the pure impressionism of the creation of earth to beautifully-observed coming-of-age story, “The Tree of Life” ponders the whys of nature, of God, and of man and suggesting that the lack of an easy answer might not be so frightening. The film’s spectacular central conflict between Hunter McCracken’s moody child and his loving but authoritarian father (Brad Pitt in the best performance of his career) is simultaneously broadly drawn and utterly specific. Its narration is an extended prayer, a painful cry for an answer that may not be given, but one that asserts that there might be something there to comfort. It’s Malick’s most purely spiritual film, oddly unpretentious in its “pretentiousness,” one long expression of faith and hope even in an imperfect world.