Up until now, I tried to steer clear from any in-depth discussions of individual films, for the sake of the bigger picture: to formulate and distinguish from one another the basic types of transformational ethics that emerge from the project of film as philosophy. However, many film philosophers see the project as having little to gain from general theoretical claims. For them, to establish whether and how films contribute to philosophy indeed requires careful, detailed analyses of individual films. Notable in this regard is Stephen Mulhallâs (2008: 129 ff.) plea for a âpriority of the particularâ: rather than deal in global claims about the nature of film as philosophy, he says, we need to look at how particular films do particular things of philosophical value (cf. Sinnerbrink 2011a: 122â123; Wartenberg 2007: 31, 133â134). So where would be a good particular place to start?
Whenever the question of philosophically prone film directors comes up, it is most often Terrence Malick who emerges as the quintessential maker of philosophical films (see Sinnerbrink 2011a: 180; Neer 2011; Rybin 2012: xiv). Philosophers simply love to write about Malick.1 This holds especially true, as will soon become clear, for philosophers with an interest in the idea(l) of films doing philosophy. For these philosophers, quite evidently, thereâs something about Malick. And to ask what that something is, and how in different instances philosophers respond to it, will bring more concreteness to the bigger picture of transformational ethics in film as philosophy that I have been sketching so far.
So even though this chapter deals with a particular filmmaker and a selection of his films, rest assured that my overall agenda still remains a meta-critical
1 âIâve got style!â â A Prelude
This has got to be one of the most boring movies ever made ⦠I could just picture the director of this awful abortion of cinema sitting with a self-satisfied smile on his face, saying âWho needs dialogue or a story? I can put in random images of rocks and trees for 2 and a half hours instead! Who needs substance? Iâve got style!â.
Amazon Review by jonathan joneson, 24 May 2006
So why are philosophers so fascinated by Malick? As I aim to show, one major source of this fascination â and of some viewersâ frustration, evidently â is the often overwhelming preeminence of Malickâs distinctive style. Malick continues to be a mainstay of philosophersâ attempts at marrying film and philosophy; and recent appraisals of Malickâs work, especially, make issues of âstyleâ or âformâ â for want of a better term â of key importance to this pursuit.
One can argue that Malick also entices this shift, inasmuch as his style is often said to be so obvious, abundant, even excessive. If, like the reviewer cited above, one understands âstyleâ as particular pictorial and sonic expressions of narrative âsubstanceâ, one can say that Malickâs stylistic hallmarks tend to have a life of their own. Be it interjections of nature imagery, streams of voice-over reflections or a camera wandering where it wishes, these elements typically have little narrative motivation or stand in ambiguous relation to events that occur on screen. As a result, philosophers are made to respond to Malickâs style. And for many commentators this is precisely the point: the philosophical substance of Malickâs films is his style. But what, then, about Malickâs style makes it so inviting to philosophers â especially those engaged with the project of film as philosophy â to attribute value to things like ârandom images of rocks and treesâ?
2 âContemplative Styleâ, Philosophy, Transformation
Malickâs expositors have settled into a cosy lexicon for detailing his distinctive appeal by describing his cinema as âpoeticâ, âlyricalâ, âromanticâ, âvisionaryâ, âmythicalâ or even âmetaphysicalâ.3 Yet virtually any appraisal of his work, whether philosophical or film critical, also includes observations of its reflective, ruminative, and meditative qualities. Even though these features may have
Of what interest is this view of Malickâs style to the idea of film as philosophy? Since philosophy involves acts of contemplation, the connection between contemplative style and philosophy is, quite understandably, one that is easily drawn. What is more, a style that viewers experience as âcontemplativeâ â however you want to construe it â presents itself as an attractive invitation for philosopher-theorists to explore the nature of thought in, through or of film. Philosophers are therefore keen to use a âcontemplative cinemaâ, such as Malickâs, as a testing ground for the premise that films can enact uniquely cinematic forms of philosophical reflection. Of course, in the case of Malick, this proposition is made all the more alluring by the great deal of mythologizing around the figure of âTerrence Malickâ, and particularly his status as âex-philosopherâ, which I get to later on.4
A few clarifications are in order. Seeing that the notion of âcontemplationâ entails a diversity of possible subjective acts and procedures, I must assume the existence of a corresponding diversity of possible âcontemplative stylesâ. Consider the obvious stylistic differences, for example, between Malickâs work and contemporary Slow Cinema, a type of cinema that is likewise associated with contemplative aspirations. The so-called âslow filmsâ of filmmakers like Tsai Ming-liang, Lav Diaz and Lisandro Alonso exude a characteristic quietude that just as often prompts commentators to celebrate their âcontemplativeâ or âmeditativeâ qualities. Yet, although there are similarities between Malickâs oeuvre and Slow Cinema (e.g. the importance of rural or natural settings), the differences between the two are substantial. Slow Cinema, roughly speaking, indulges in long takes, static shots and patient camera movements. It generally also avoids music, revels in silence and thereby draws attention to what would otherwise be unnoticed sounds in the diegetic background. Malickâs
The notion of Malickâs own âcontemplative styleâ, however, is used here in a consciously general way. Each of Malickâs films exhibits singular qualities that cannot be covered by this blanket term. It may well be, therefore, that some of Malickâs films have specific contemplative modalities that are absent in others â think of the diverse kinds of first-person voice-over that he uses, for example5 â which raises the question of whether there might be more than one contemplative style at work within Malickâs oeuvre. But these concessions still do not rule out the feasibility of a more general conception of Malickâs contemplative style. As many commentators recognize, Malick displays pronounced stylistic hallmarks that persist throughout his filmmaking career. Moreover, his work has evolved in a manner that increasingly highlights these hallmarks. The âlate Malickâ6 has increasingly pursued the kind of abstraction that exposes the features most essential to his style, for example, his sublime images of nature, the voice-over narration, prominent camera movements as well as music scores. He seems evermore intent on âdistilling his appeal to its most rudimentary elementsâ which, according to one account, includes âwhispery voiceover narration, roaming camerawork and an unending collage of lush imagesâ (Kohn 2015). This increasing distillation of his style is so palpable that some critics have described Malickâs more recent efforts â such as To the Wonder (2012) and Knight of Cups (2015) â as exercises in self-parody (e.g. Bradshaw 2012; Kohn 2015).
So to which stylistic elements, according to Malickâs philosophical audience, do philosophers attribute the oft-cited contemplative-philosophical appeal of his films? Relevant literature presents us with a range of likely candidates; and any one philosophical reading of Malick usually addresses more than one
- 1)Photography of landscape and nature: Critchley (2005); Silberman (2007); Davies (2008b); Sinnerbrink (2011d); Rybin (2011: 14â18); Tucker (2011); Walden (2011: 206â209); Lehtimäki (2012); and Pippin (2013).
- 2)First person voice-over monologues: Polan (2004: 273â274); Bersani and Dutoit (2004: 124â178); Davies (2008b: 57â62); Kendall (2011: 150); Rybin (2011); Pippin (2013); and Virvidaki (2014).
- 3)Juxtapositions of image and sound: Bersani and Dutoit (2004: 124â178); Chion (2004: 12â13); Polan (2004: 273â274); Davies (2008b: 57â62); Plantinga (2010); Kendall (2011: 149â152); Neer (2011); Rybin (2011) Walden (2011: 197); Pippin (2013); and Virvidaki (2014).
- 4)Discontinuous editing: Chion (2004: 12â13); Polan (2004: 272); Davies (2008b: 573â574); Rybin (2011: 15); and Pippin (2013: 250, 269).
- 5)Repetition of devices: Bersani and Dutoit (2004: 151â153); Macdonald (2008: 90â98); Kendall (2011: 161â162); Neer (2011); and Sinnerbrink (2011d: 191â192).
- 6)Prominent music scores: Clewis (2006: 29); Kendall (2011: 150, 163); Neer (2011); and Sinnerbrink (2011d: 187â192).
- 7)Camera movements: Coplan (2008: 75â79); Rybin (2011: 17â18); and Virvidaki (2014: 30â31).
- 8)Episodic, elliptical narratives: Martin (2006); Coplan (2008: 70â74); and Kendall (2011: 152).
Philosophers connect the above stylistic devices with a variety of less concrete stylistic effects. The connection is not always clear, since commentators are prone to conflate stylistic devices with the experiential effects that they attribute to them. But there is no getting away from the two distinct dimensions of style that are at stake in their evaluations: analysts propose different profiles of stylistic effects by deriving them from a particular selection and interpretation of stylistic devices. In fact, the general claim that Malickâs style is âcontemplativeâ is itself a global, higher-order effect that commentators, in turn, derive from whatever intermediary stylistic effects they detect.
My rough rubric of possible stylistic effects ranges from local perceptual or cognitive effects to the overall aesthetic effects that analysts may detect. I shall not try to order or rank them here. When it comes to Malick, philosophers typically emphasize the following stylistic effects:
- 1)
âEllipticalâ, âfragmentedâ or âimpressionisticâ aesthetic experiences: Coplan (2008: 70â74); Rybin (2011); and Antunes (2014). - 2)Experiences of âincongruityâ, âambiguityâ or âdisorientationâ: Bersani and Dutoit (2004); Polan (2004: 274); Coplan (2008: 71); Davies (2008b: 48â49, 59â60); Plantinga (2010); Kendall (2011); Neer (2011); Rybin (2011: 25, 37â38); Walden (2011: 197); Pippin (2013); and Virvidaki (2014: 27).
- 3)âQuestioningâ or âinterrogativeâ modes of presenting the world: Furstenau and MacAvoy (2007); and Pippin (2013: 269â272).
- 4)Experiences of âaweâ, âwonderâ or âsublimityâ: Clewis (2006); Silberman (2007: 170â175); Sinnerbrink (2011d); Pippin (2013); and Virvidaki (2014: 29).
- 5)Expressions of âperspectivesâ, âpoints of viewâ or âways of seeingâ: Bersani and Dutoit (2004: 158â178); Yates (2006); Davies (2008b: 50â56); Macdonald (2008); Manning (2011); Sinnerbrink (2011d); Walden (2011); Pippin (2013: 273, 275); and Virvidaki (2014: 29â31).
To get to the crux of how philosophers interpret Malickâs style â that is, to trace the philosophical and ethical value that they attach to it â is mostly a matter of discerning the stylistic effects that they identify. My reasoning is as follows: Firstly, it is mostly the perceived stylistic effects that show us what exactly the analyst understands by the âcontemplativeâ nature of the style. The notion is of course a highly pliable one: so the respective effects of being âimpressionisticâ, raising âambiguityâ, or evoking âwonderâ, for example, entail rather distinct notions of how the films are âcontemplativeâ and, thereby, of what philosophical use they are.
Secondly, diverse stylistic effects also imply distinct forms of contemplative engagement on the part of the viewer. The philosophers who approach Malickâs films-as-philosophy constantly resort to the assumption that his contemplative style draws the viewer into a reciprocating posture of philosophical contemplation. In short: Malickâs contemplative style is thought to do a certain contemplative work, meaning that it elicits from the viewer a related process of reflection or conscious experience. But, again, this work may be construed as having to deal with the âimpressionisticâ, the âambiguousâ, or the âwonderfulâ â each of which implies a distinct contemplative procedure on the part of the viewer.
Thirdly and lastly, it is this contemplative work that is time and again suggested to also have ethically significant effects on the viewer. The various contemplative effects of Malickâs style, as philosophers see it, can establish for viewers a contemplative mode of self-transformation; the supposed contemplative work of the style thus facilitates ethical work on the self. To be sure, Malickâs expositors âfill inâ this contemplative mode of the viewer in different
Now we begin to see why a contemplative style fosters just as much interest in transformational ethics. Although there is a natural affinity between contemplation and doing philosophy, the same can be said of contemplation and transformational ethics: performing contemplative techniques forms an integral part of many practices of transformation. The appeal that a contemplative style holds for the idea of film doing philosophy thus easily extends to and includes considerations of its ethical significance.
Expositions of âthe philosophicalâ and âcontemplativeâ in Malickâs style invariably lead to value-laden interpretations, in which stylistic devices are tied to certain effects and, together, are made to fit certain ethical ends. Philosophical commentary cannot really avoid such interpretations of style. Yet the presuppositions that go into philosophical dealings with film style, and the ethical implications that follow them, often go unrecognized and deserve to be critically formulated. However, before delving into the details, we first need to make an important detour.
3 Seeking Transformational Ethics in Malick: Contributing Factors
While Malickâs style is my chief concern, it alone cannot fully account for the philosophical and ethical attractiveness of his work. Before getting to the role of style in philosophical readings Malickâs work, therefore, we first need to consider two additional matters: (a) the ethically-inflected narrative interests of Malick and (b) the substantial authorial persona, âTerrence Malickâ, that has developed around the filmmaker. Both these factors should be kept in mind as also contributing to the kind of philosophical readings that his films receive and, importantly, the ethical commitments that those readings exhibit.
3.1 Personal Transformation in Malickâs Narratives
The recognition that Malickâs films are âcontemplativeâ is as much a recognition of their deep-thinking narrative appeal as it is of their style. Malick has an enduring interest in themes of the grand, philosophical kind that almost descend into cliché â nature, human identity, the problem of evil, and the meaning of life. As of late, Malick has also addressed questions of God, the spiritual, and transcendence, as theologically inclined commentators are keen
I do not want to dwell here on the thematics of Malickâs narratives as material for philosophical reflection. There is enough literature that makes a good job of this.8 The point that I do wish to drive home, however, is the prominence that these narratives give to transformational ethics as their subject matter. Most of Malickâs characteristic philosophical themes in fact concern issues of personal transformation. I offer a few salient examples relevant to my analyses later in this chapter:
3.1.1. Identity, Meaning, Transcendence
Malickâs central protagonists, as Hannah Patterson (2007a: 1) observes, are in a characteristic state of search â whether âfor a different kind of life, a sense of self, a reason for being, or a spiritual presence in the worldâ. It would be wrong to label these characters out-and-out transformationalists. Yet their searchings for identity, meaning, or transcendence nevertheless take the form of a quest for personal transformation. These characters put on display their ethical self-work, that of making the self available to the possibility, at least â for better or worse â of achieving sense, a sense of self, a sense of what lies beyond. This self-work usually finds expression through a pronounced contemplative mode in Malickâs characters. There is, for example, the naive self-dialogue and rationalizations of the female leads (who serve as the narrators) in Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978); the existential self-questioning and interrogation of soldiers in The Thin Red Line; or Pocahontasâ (Qâorianka Kilcher) devotional postures of wonderment and praise towards Nature in The New World.
3.1.2 Characters as Transformationalist Figures
Sometimes the typical searching Malickian character, engaged only in implicit personal transformation, does find itself magnified into a full-blown transformationalist. The most striking case hereof is Private Witt (Jim Caviezel), a pivotal character in most philosophical readings of The Thin Red Line. Witt offers much for us to construe him as such: he prefers a simple existence with an indigenous island tribe while on awol from his military company;
Yet âWitt as transformationalistâ can look very different from one reading to the next, depending on how commentators tailor him to their particular philosophical needs. Simon Critchley (2005: 136), for example, speculates that the âessential solitude to Wittâs characterâ (which was already evident in the original novel) must have appealed to Malick, who in the adaptation âtransforms him into a much more angelic, self-questioning, philosophical figureâ. Wittâs ascetic disposition thus seems to motivate Critchleyâs view of the character as âthe questioner, the contemplator, the mystic, perhaps even the holy foolâ, who âviews all things and persons with an impassive constancy, and sees beauty and goodness in all thingsâ (2005: 141). With this impassive constancy, Critchley celebrates Witt as something of a Stoic icon, which fits nicely with his claim that âcalmâ (which itself can be a transformational value) is the key to understanding this film. In the case of Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit (2004: 147â151, 153â154), interestingly, a substantially different picture of Wittâs transformationalist aspirations emerges. For them, Witt is not a calmly withdrawn or detached figure. As I will still show, they seek out in The Thin Red Line a transformation that diminishes individual subjectivity â hence, in contrast to the misguided solitude of other characters, Witt is taken to represent commitment to the transformational values of openness and connectedness, as exemplified by âthe remarkable clarity and openness of his lookâ (2004: 151).
3.1.3 Nature
The prominence of nature in Malickâs films is a great example of how a narrative theme, one with obvious philosophical relevance, can double up as a motivating context for transformational ethics. Again I make my point with The Thin Red Line in mind, although it should hold equally well for his other films. The meanings that analysts attach to nature in The Thin Red Line always support their underlying ethical claims about Malickâs style, which I demonstrate later on. Their widely diverging conceptions of nature therefore each attracts a fitting ethical-transformational stance.9 A cruel or merely indifferent nature, for example, implies the ethical need to foster appropriately human values (such as âcalmâ) both in response to, and despite of, nature (e.g. Critchley
3.1.4 Unity
Some narrative themes, lastly, invite more direct transposition into actual goals of personal transformation. Malickâs interest in the theme of unity (whether with respect to family bonds, social community, military comradery, shared humanity, etc.), for example, have been taken as grounds for considering how his films relate to the realization of unity as transformational value. Analysts thus pick up on a particular theme as indicative of a âhigherâ transformational value that they take to be beckoning. Stacy Peebles (2007: 161) illustrates this maneuver by noting, in The Thin Red Line, that Malick translates the war film trope of the âgrudging but productive comradeshipâ into âa more spiritual concern with universal unityâ. The film encourages this perspective, she says, with repeated family metaphors in dialogue and with various audio-visual allusions to connection and oneness.
As these examples suggest, what seem to be prominent âphilosophicalâ themes in Malickâs narratives have just as much ethical relevance when taken through the lens of personal transformation. Insofar as they are approached as philosophical themes, therefore, they provide a context that encourages ethical-transformational tendencies in philosophical evaluations of Malickâs style.
3.2 Transformationalism in Malickâs Authorial Image
The generally acknowledged intellectual gravitas of Terrence Malickâs films is not on account of his films alone. Peopleâs perceptions of the persona of âTerrence Malickâ, as the contemplative creator behind the films, also play a considerable part in the attraction that philosophers feel toward his work. One major reason for this attraction â which has been noted to the point of tedium â is that Malick himself was a professional philosopher. He studied philosophy under Stanley Cavell at Harvard University, lectured at mit and also translated into English Martin Heideggerâs The Essence of Reasons (1969). This has prompted many to pursue existential-philosophical and phenomenological threads in his films. A great deal of Malickâs âauthorialâ image, therefore, is based on knowledge of the filmmakerâs earlier philosophical activities.
Constructions of Malickâs intellectual motivations are furthermore fueled by the filmmakerâs legendary reticence. After the release of his Days of Heaven, Malick retreated into what has become a much publicized âtwenty year hiatusâ during which he disappeared from the public radar. In 1998, Malick made a much anticipated return with the release of The Thin Red Line. Yet, since this comeback, Malick has persistently shunned any public exposure â be it press interviews, photographs or official appearances at events. The reticent, enigmatic Malick is particularly obstinate about not speaking about his films (see Kendall & Tucker 2011: 3â4). This silence, not surprisingly, has resulted in a great deal of mythologizing and gradually earned him the title of âreclusive geniusâ (e.g. Furstenau & MacAvoy 2007: 179).
These facts and perceptions all give a decidedly transformationalist âshapeâ to Malickâs authorial image. Such an image is always based on an interactive process whereby the author co-constitutes his image in tandem with various other mediating agents â be it critics, journalists, or even philosophers (Meizoz 2010: 84â85). In Malickâs case his refusal to have a public image itself greatly contributes to a very definite and influential image. And central to this image are basic ascetic gestures: to withhold oneself, to keep silent, to withdraw from the public attention that normally goes with a topflight filmmaking career.
These resultant ascetic features of Malickâs image are typically construed in ways that further endorse the contemplative aura of the filmmaker persona and, by extension, his films. Ascetic gestures easily evoke various related conceptions of contemplative activity with deep roots in Western culture. The ascetic topos of seeking social solitude, for example, endows Malick with inherited Romantic notions of the reflective artistic genius who craves seclusion for living his calling. This is moreover couched in the much older association between a life of serious contemplation and the need to retreat from the ordinary every day â as we for instance find in the religious model of a monk or hermit. Such culturally embedded connections serve to further bolster the contemplative weight that we expect from the products that the ârecluseâ releases to the public.
Malickâs silence is perhaps the most decisive aspect of his ascetic posturing. While Malickâs twenty-year-hush is of the more extreme kind, it fits into the more generally established topos of the writer or artist who refuses to interpret his own work. This topos is typically taken as a measure of care, on the part of the artist, not to pre-empt or reduce the possible meanings of his art. It is moreover seen as motivated by the related belief that art is, and should be approached as, autonomous. This is indeed the sentiment behind what has become a ubiquitous Malick catchphrase, shared by fans and scholars alike: âhis films speak for themselvesâ (e.g. Tucker & Kendall 2011: 4; Neer 2011).
This absence of authorial clarification sits well with the implicit âinterpretative asceticsâ of bold film-philosophical positions, as detailed in my discussion of preparatory ethics in the previous chapter. Recall, from the previous chapter, Simon Critchleyâs (highly idealistic) cautioning against the use of philosophical âmetaâ or âpre-textsâ when we deal with Malickâs films (2005: 138â139). The filmmaker who ascetically refrains from speaking about his films thus presents himself as a model for the equivalent interpretative attitude that the film philosopher is often admonished to adopt: not to presumptively speak to or on behalf of the film, but to in a sense âremain silentâ and allow the film to speak. In addition, Malickâs ascetic gesture of silence serves as an implicit
Another prominent image of the filmmaker is that of the âmysticâ, the figure who busies himself with âthe ineffable through parabolic narratives and gorgeous shots of natureâ (Neer 2011). Malick the mystic fits comfortably into the picture that I have sketched up to this point: it feeds on the poetic and spiritual impulses in Malickâs work; it is consistent with his general image as a contemplative, since contemplative activities typically provide a basis for mystical experiences; plus mystical preoccupations are consonant with what people would expect from an ostensive ascetic loner. If anything, it is the mystical aspirations attached to Malickâs image that most easily rouses ethical-transformational expectations in interpreters of his work. As Hannah Patterson affirms, for instance, of Malick the âpoetic visionaryâ: âthrough the very nature of his poetic vision Malick is ultimately an artist who reawakens and restores our sense of mystery and philosophical ruminationâ (2007a: 2).
With these remarks I hope to have given a sense of how Malickâs undeniable authorial image â thriving on topoi of contemplation, asceticism, and mysticism â supports the observed reflective nature of his films and elicits the kind of transformational issues that scholars pose with respect to them. But, of course: as much as Malick the âphilosopherâ, âpoetâ, or âmysticâ might encourage such ethical interests, his image as filmmaker can only have its effect in relation to interpretations prompted by his actual films. So let us now turn to Malickâs film style and the contemplative, ethical effects that his interpreters believe it achieves.
4 From Contemplative Style to Ethics of Transformation: Three Cases
For the sake of streamlining my meta-analysis of Malickâs style, I single out the three stylistic elements that are most prominent in philosophical writing on the filmmaker. They are (a) Malickâs cinematographic depictions of nature, (b) his uses of voice-over and (c) the effects of shifting, multiple perspectives. My aim is to sketch how analysts deal with these elements in terms of their relations to other stylistic features, the philosophical-contemplative
For practical reasons I limit my inquiry in this section to what may be called Malickâs two âmid-career filmsâ: The Thin Red Line (1998) and The New World (2005). As the kind of films with âa rich afterlife amongst professors of philosophyâ (Baskin 2010: online), these two works have by far attracted the most explicitly philosophical commentary and analysis â thus making them ideally suited to my purposes. Moreover, by this mid-stage in his career, after his so-called twenty year hiatus, Malick has fully matured into the key stylistic traits that are of concern here.
4.1 Cinematographic Presentations of Nature
It comes as no surprise that Malickâs photography of nature and landscape is frequently singled out as essential to his philosophical appeal. Many, if not most, accounts of Malickâs style coalesce around the filmmakerâs enduring fascination with nature. It certainly is true that he draws our visual attention to nature. This is not only by virtue of its photographed beauty or richness, but also its often cited disjunctive composition through editing â what the uninitiated may experience as a âslide showâ-effect.12 A common refrain among commentators is that Malickâs punctuating cutaways to nature are unmotivated by plot and only loosely connected to character and established diegesis (e.g. Davies 2009: 573â574; Rybin 2011: 15; Pippin 2013: 250, 269; Polan 2004: 272). Because of this striking and free-floating salience, âimages of nature seem to provide an additional semantic level that plays against both the narrative and the other semantic elementsâ (Davies 2009: 574). Considered from this angle, Malickâs contemplative cinema becomes a meditation on nature. I present readings by Simon Critchley, Robert Silberman and Robert Pippin as instructive instances of this approach to Malickâs style.
4.1.1
Critchleyâs (2005) well-known reading of The Thin Red Line â an influential exemplar for film as philosophy â is a good place to start. He argues that the metaphysical issues raised in the film are framed and answered by a pervasive âexperience of calmâ, which he sees as the key to Malickâs art. This, clearly, is an interpreted stylistic effect. And Critchley largely bases this effect on stylistic devices that put nature on display. He notes, for example, the âbeautiful indifferenceâ of nature imagery that repeatedly punctuates human drama and suffering. At the moment of private Wittâs death, for instance, the film abruptly cuts to soaring trees that remain unaffected by the tragedy below. In Malickâs visual presentation, Critchley (2005: 147) describes, âone has the sense of things simply being looked at, just being what they are â trees, water, birds, dogs, crocodiles or whatever. Things simply are, and are not molded to a human purposeâ. But the apparent philosophical appeal of this calm, impassive nature is as much a transformational one: Critchley finds that the filmâs calmness becomes also the viewerâs calmness. As he puts it, âThere is a calm at the heart of Malickâs art, a calmness to his cinematic eye, a calmness that is also communicated by his films, that becomes the mood of his audience: after watching The Thin Red Line we feel calmâ (2005: 147 [emphasis added]).
In this way, Critchley poses a transformational relevance for nature-related devices: they exercise a transformation within the domains of affect and emotion, as the âexperience of calmâ, their supposed effect, prefigures the state of calmness that the viewer attains. Yet this claimed affective state seems to suggest a deeper ethical terminal: the normative ideal, or value, in question here is a transformation toward openness (cf. Sinnerbrink 2006: 33â34). This is in the sense that the âneverthelessnessâ of nature, as rendered by the film, is understood to prompt an ethical posture of acceptance and letting things be. Although Critchley (2005: 138â139) takes issue with reading Malick through established philosophical âpre-textsâ, Sinnerbrink (2006: 33) rightly notes Critchleyâs struggle to get away from Heidegger in his ethical conclusions. Critchleyâs account boils down to a Heideggerian ethic of âreleasementâ, even if he does not call it by the name.
Critchleyâs reading of Malick announces two important issues for the rest of my analysis. The first is that nature, as theme, is a constant and significant reference point for the ethical-transformational potential that philosophers find in Malickâs films. Assumptions about âthe nature of natureâ are especially relevant when philosophers address a nature-related device in Malickâs style. Such diverse assumptions govern the kinds of effects as well as the ethical importance that such a device is said to have. Critchleyâs account assumes that The Thin Red Line puts on display an indifferent, unenchanted nature in
All of this ties in with a second, wider issue that emerges in Critchleyâs essay: assumptions about what makes film (do) philosophy play a decisive role in how philosophers evaluate Malickâs style. When it comes to Malick, philosophers are not typically inspired by a motive of Knowledge, as I described it in Chapter 1. Barring the rare exception â like the claim that Malick âpresents a dialectical analysis with his cameraâ (Manning 2011: 172) â philosophers do not see his films as offering us forms of knowledge, such as illustrations, arguments or thought experiments.13 It appears that Malickâs exuberance of style and his narrative abstraction much rather encourage a motive of Subjectivity: many philosophers, that is, locate Malickâs philosophical worth with the movements of thought or experience that his films set off, be it acts of wonder, questioning or simply an experience of calm.
However, Critchley, we have seen, resorts also to the option of Nature, another motive that features strongly in film-philosophical discourse on Malick, often in combination with that of Subjectivity. To claim Nature as a condition for film as philosophy is to ascribe the philosophical achievement of a film to it having some ontological connection with reality: films can disclose the world, they can make things present, they can convey the nature of things. For Critchley, the philosophical value of Malickâs presentations of nature is precisely that â it makes nature present. We should, of course, not confuse the three separate matters that are at stake here: Nature as condition for films to do philosophy; visual depictions of nature as a stylistic device; and nature as a prominent theme. Yet Critchleyâs case makes it evident how these
4.1.2 Robert Silberman: Nature as a Challenge to Imagination
Robert Silberman (2007), unlike Critchley, detects a great deal more enchantment in the nature of Malickâs nature. It is perhaps because of this that Silberman envisages another domain for the deviceâs transformative work â not that of affective response, but, interestingly, the viewerâs imagination.
Silberman argues that representations of nature and landscape in The Thin Red Line form the main device through which Malick expresses his views. He likens it to a âphilosophical proving groundâ for testing the ideas that the filmâs characters express (2007: 170). Here it is noteworthy that Silberman, like many others, sides with the perspective of Private Witt, whom he takes to represent the filmâs spiritual point of view. (As we shall see, the supposed priority of Wittâs perspective remains a point of contention among commentators.) Even though his ideas are made explicit through voice-over and dialogue, they are ultimately couched in a broader visual outlook: Silberman claims that the filmâs final monologue, for instance, is backed up by âluminous visualsâ that âprovide an unmediated, nonverbal argument for the radiant splendour of the world and the victory of a faith in spiritâ (2007: 174). So while Private Witt challenges our sensibilities by saying that there exists âanother worldâ in the midst of war and death, it is actually Malickâs extravagantly rich depictions of nature that drives this point home. The ethical upshot of this, for Silberman, is that the film âposes a challenge to our powers of imaginationâ (2007: 173). Yet this conclusion only follows, in this case, from the sort of spiritual sublimity as the effect that he sees in Malickâs treatment of nature. In Silbermanâs account, therefore, the filmâs contemplative method consists of bringing the viewer to âa spiritual version of landscapeâ: it uses verbal devices to name the issue of âanother worldâ, but employs visuals of landscape to give us a sense of what this may actually be (2007: 173). Its transformational work consists of cultivating our artistic imagination, thus enabling a vision of the world that is open to possibilities of renewal and redemption.
4.1.3
[B]oth the presence of the non-plot-driven photographs and the seriousness, even solemnity of the attention to such objects (often heightened by the musical score) create a general expectation of a different kind of attention from the viewer, and the seriousness of the tone suggests much more than mere atmospherics. The effect of the sort of framing, attentiveness, and lingering over the living things is to alter what we are actually to be attending to. It is not merely the objects we see when framed this way but rather, given the lingering attention of the camera, if one can put it this way, the objects in the light of such attention, photographed as if seen in a mode of interrogative attention that, by its very intensity and independence from the plot, detaches the objects from any normal intercourse with viewers and allows some other dimension of meaningfulness (or some different sort of question about life) to emerge visually, and so requires some other stance or attitude to be possible with regard to such a presence. To a large extent that suggested stance is similar in tone to the voice-overs: intensely interrogative and unresolved. (2013: 269)
From this it is clear that Pippin detects in Malickâs images of nature a freedom and intensity that prompts in viewers a modification of their attention. He thus illustrates how something like attention â or awareness, in more typical transformationalist parlance â can double up as both the domain and value of an ethic of transformation: Malickâs treatment of nature both has an effect on our attention and helps create an ideal mode of âinterrogativeâ attention, as supposedly modeled by the filmâs own attentiveness.
Yet one may still ask of this attentive mode, âattention to what?â Presumably, there must be an overseeing value or ideal that qualifies the nature of this focused attention, but this remains ineffable. The most that Pippin divulges is to describe it as a âsense of ontological attentionâ that can disclose for us an
In the way negative theology is held to be itself a mode of knowledge about God, Malickâs negation of narrative and character conventions and patterns of intelligibility, we might say, forces us to see things about dramatic events and the characters and the visual images in a distinct way, in a kind of fresh strangeness, a strangeness echoed in the photography of nature. (Pippin 2013: 265)
It is thus by subtraction â an implicit ascetic method, if you like, which withholds certainty of meaning from the viewer â that Malick is said to pave the way for
4.2 Voice-Over
Let us turn to what is certainly Malickâs most recognizable stylistic device, the case of his extended voice-over monologues. It is easy enough to see how his highly distinctive use of the device makes critics speak of a contemplative cinema: his voice-overs give voice to charactersâ inner contemplations. Malick refuses to spoon-feed his audience through dialogue, opting instead to verbalize the meditative free association through which his characters try to make sense of the world. These reflections also provide an obvious resource for philosophical interpretations of his films. In Malickâs matured work, especially, voice-overs are of an increasingly interrogative nature that articulates metaphysical issues like death, transcendence, and the meaning of life. The voice-over adds a separate âcontentful elementâ, as Davies (2009 575â576) puts it, that brings a philosophical focus to depicted events that would otherwise not have been there.
Malickâs meditative voice-overs, to be sure, attract just as many connections with transformational ethics as it does with contemplation per se. This is not only a matter of what is said, but also how the voice-over is deployed within particular narratives. If a voice-over monologue belongs to a character portrayed in the film, it creates a sense of an ethical self that reflectively engages with its own life and experiences. The retrospective voice-overs of Malickâs first two films, for example, convey someone who is distanced from her life as she evaluates it from some future state. In the present tense monologues of Malickâs later work, characters increasingly address and interrogate themselves. These later voice-overs, moreover, tend to play out in contexts where they also typify inner prayers or confessions. As a result, commentators such as Furstenau and MacAvoy (2007: 187) find it easy to equate Malickâs use of voice-over with the âinwardnessâ of charactersâ reflections. Yet it is not only about what happens but also how it happens: the typical Malick voice-over has a quietly reciting, âwhisperyâ quality that adds to its sense of private introspection, sometimes amid scurrying activity and other people talking. The impression of the voiceâs distant, removed interiority is sometimes further enhanced by muted diegetic sound. So, since people commonly perform such
Malickâs use of voice-overs is of importance to philosophers who locate the potential of film to do philosophy within a general condition of Subjectivity â this device, after all, ârepresent[s] the subjectivityâ of characters and âprovide[s] a psychological thickness that would otherwise be lackingâ (Davies 2008: 577). The simplest claim, in this regard, would be to say that the represented thoughts of characters stimulate and guide the viewersâ philosophical self-reflections. This, however, assumes a simple, unaccounted-for complicity between the voice-over and what the viewer thinks (e.g. Critchley 2005: 137).
Instead, most commentators who express an interest in the voice-over locate its contemplative-philosophical appeal in its interplay with other stylistic devices and the combined effects that they yield. A recurring claim is that Malickâs voice-overs (telling) stand in stark contrast to events on screen (showing):14 at best the relationship between the two is allusive or ironic; at worst the connection remains entirely enigmatic.15 The disparity between the devices of showing and telling is interpreted as a deliberate attempt at creating effects of incongruity and ambiguity, which is taken to spur the viewer to heightened meaning-making and reflection. Carl Plantinga (2010), for example, narrows the contemplative pull of such incongruity-effects down to the domain of affect. He argues that The Thin Red Line does not develop a unified structure of feeling, as is conventionally the case, but one marked by affective counterpoint â the film constantly juxtaposes âdifferently valanced, affect-laden representationsâ that result in âaffective incongruityâ (2010: 98). And since there are cognitive implications to emotions and affects, as Plantinga reminds us, such mismatches invite speculation about their meaning. Our experience of affective disunity therefore cues emotions like wonder and curiosity, as well as the acts of rumination that accompany them (2010: 93, 95). The implied transformational value of this stylistic design is what Plantinga labels as encouraging âa contemplative mode of film viewingâ (2010: 93).
4.2.1 Steven Rybin: Self-Reflection and Voicing Meaning
Steven Rybin (2011), to begin with, locates the philosophical functions of Malickâs films in the general disparity that he finds between the voice and the visual world. He sees Malickâs characters as âstrivingâ (a term he adopts from Heidegger), heroically, to voice meaning over and against the âsensually dispersiveâ and âinexhaustibleâ film worlds that they are subject to.
These characters are not, strictly speaking, philosophers, but in their struggle to shape meaning out of the shards of light, sound, movement, and beauty to which they are subject, they, no less than the viewer, voice their own creative interpretations of Malickâs fictional worlds. (Rybin 2011: 13)
Viewers, as this quote suggests, are just as much confronted by the âsensually dispersiveâ effect of Malickâs film worlds. They are thereby drawn into their own process of meaning-making, within the greater process of accompanying characters who voice their meanings (2012: xii, xv; 2011: 14).16 With this, Rybin,
As is often the case with Subjectivity-inspired approaches, this instance of film as philosophy thus becomes for the viewer an exercise in self-reflection. Rybin basically says that Malickâs style fosters a greater awareness of our own experience (of striving for meaning). We may see this as acquiring knowledge of the self â we gain insight into our own condition as meaning-making subjects, who âcan never reach a point where natureâs mystery is foreclosed [â¦] by human experienceâ (2011: 30). And this self-awareness can extend to improving insight into our existing knowledge, seeing that Malickâs film worlds âchallenge viewers to reflect upon the ideas brought to, and inspired by, each viewingâ (2011: 28). Rybin says of Malickâs characters that their introspective voice-overs suggest an attempt at âself-understandingâ (2011: 28). This notion, it turns out, captures much of the transformational value that he imagines for the viewer.
The motive of Subjectivity that Rybin entertains also incorporates into itself a motive of Nature. The philosophical crux of Malickâs style, for Rybin, lies in how a subjectivizing device â first person voice-over â runs up against the bewildering visual presence of the film world. He details the latter, for instance, as âan autonomous presence that opens up an interpretive question for both the character and the viewerâ (2011: 16). This again raises the by now familiar theme that film can present a world that eclipses our experience and refuses to succumb to any final knowledge thereof. Yet Rybin, to his credit, still hangs on to the philosophical relevance of Subjectivity in Malickâs films â and thus affirms voice-over as the device that carries it. It is worth noting that Rybin accords equal significance to voice-overs â in an irremovable, inconclusive tension with presentations of nature â and treats them as raising genuine subjective responses to the world, worthy of consideration. In contrast, analysts led by a Nature-motive can be rather dismissive of Malickâs voice-overs and effectively judge them to be beside the point, as we shall see. These analysts, it will become clear, are interested in personal transformation that aligns our awareness with the world âoutsideâ ourselves. In Rybinâs account, however, we
4.2.2 David Davies: Self-Reflection and Embodied Agency
I now turn to David Davies (2008b), who extracts from Malickâs style an overall disparity involving the voice-over. He argues that The Thin Red Line uses voice-over to the effect of creating a contrast between the charactersâ reflective thinking and their depicted actions â the latter of which he accepts to be of an essentially embodied nature, seeing that Malickâs opaque characters respond to the world in a âless deliberatively mediated wayâ (2008b: 55). Daviesâ commitment to Subjectivity as a condition for film as philosophy is clear: the philosophical possibilities of Malickâs cinema reside in how it presents different âinflections of our cognitive engagement with the worldâ (2008b: 50). And Daviesâ emphasis on modes of embodied experience indicates that he, too, attends to a motive of Nature, albeit with a different accent: it concerns not nature, as âworldâ, which stands over and against the reflective subject, but nature as an inherent part of the sensing subject.17
Daviesâ account sets the device of voice-over monologues against images that convey the tactile, visceral qualities of the charactersâ embodied engagement with nature; hence he does not focus on images of nature per se. He bases the supposed haptic effects of the imagery on a few related features: depictions of actual hands and touching; photography that accentuates the textures and tangible qualities of things; and a moving camera that visibly brushes against its natural surroundings (2008b: 56). For Davies, these are all gestures of the spontaneous, embodied manner in which the characters respond to the world.
Davies, however, recognizes that Malickâs voice-over reflections, even though standing apart from the charactersâ actions, represent a mode of human engagement in its own right. As Davies sees it, Malickâs style thus urges the viewer to contemplation by staging two separate modes of human agency, side by side. The discursive thoughts in the voice-over do not motivate a characterâs actions, nor do they explain a characterâs motivations for acting. But they do show how the characters reflect on their embodied engagements with the world (2008b: 60; cf. Manning 2011: 166). Again, the claimed philosophical payoff of such a juxtaposition coincides with a transformative exploration of the self: Davies argues that this stylistic arrangement makes viewers more aware of the distinctness of human embodied agency as it stands apart from
4.3 Perspective-Effects
In my third and final case, I consider a perhaps more elusive feature of Malickâs cinema, although it is a feature that is often invoked. Here the focus is directed not at any stylistic device, strictly, but at a more broadly perceived effect â what I roughly group together as the postulated âperspective-effectsâ of Malickâs style. Philosophers are keen to explain Malickâs approach to film, not only in terms of âperspectivesâ (e.g. Macdonald 2008: 91â93; Manning 2011: 172; Sinnerbrink 2011d: 180â182), but also by using related notions such as âpoints of viewâ (e.g. Yates 2006; Coplan 2008: 72; Virvidaki 2014: 29, 31); âways of seeingâ (e.g. Bersani & Dutoit 2004: 158â160; Davies 2008: 50â53, 61â62; Pippin 2013: 273, 275); and âworldviewsâ or âways of knowingâ (e.g. Walden 2011: 197â198). It has to be said that these terms are not used with great clarity. They are often applied interchangeably, with a casual disregard for the difference between their literal and figurative meanings or, for that matter, whether they refer to subjective perception or knowledge. As a result, the highly accommodating concept of âperspectiveâ can be related to just about any stylistic device conceivable: analysts single out, for example, Malickâs cinematographic presentations of nature and voice-over, as we have seen, but also dialogues, juxtaposed elements, point of view shots, close-ups, notable camera movements and prominent music scores: a variety of devices is taken to express âperspectiveâ.
Besides this, the narratives of The Thin Red Line and The New World, alone, provide ample material for adducing this effect. The Thin Red Line, for instance, explicitly raises the question of diverse perspectives as one of its central themes. This is especially evident in the confrontation between the spiritual worldview of Private Witt (âIâve seen another worldâ) and the sober materialist outlook of Sergeant Welsh (âthere ainât no world but this oneâ), backed up by a cinematography which highlights the âupwardsâ orientation of the one and the âdownwardsâ orientation of the other (see Plantinga 2010: 94â97; Rybin 2011: 28â29). Opposing perspectives therefore reflexively interpret and interrogate one another.
From this angle, then, the thoughtful aura of Malickâs style comes from the strong sense of perspective â and, indeed, the competing perspectives and shifts in perspective â that he is said to establish. As one should expect,
4.3.1 Whose Perspective?
This however raises the question of who or what exemplifies the ideal, âhigherâ perspective of Malickâs films. There are, after all, many perspectives at play â not only those of characters, but the metaphysical perspectives of âSpiritâ or nature, that of the filmmaker, and that of the contentious entity that Baskin and others call âthe cameraâ.
When it comes to character perspectives, assessments of Private Witt in The Thin Red Line is particularly instructive. It is fairly obvious that this âmore angelic, self-questioning, philosophical figureâ stands out from the crowd (Critchley 2005: 136). Yet analysts (Baskin among them) take this as a reason to accept that Wittâs is the privileged and indeed the model perspective of the film. Stacey Peebles (2007: 157), for instance, notes that âthough Malick enters the consciousness of other characters in the film, he always returns to Witt, and the filmâs images are invariably framed the way that Witt would see them â quiet, calm and untaintedâ.18 A recurring claim, therefore, is that Witt sees the world as âMalickâs cameraâ shows it â and thus personifies (embodies, if you will) the educating, larger perspective of the film (and, by implication, the filmmaker).
But the supposed priority of Wittâs perspective is by no means a settled issue. Furstenau and MacAvoy (2007: 189), quite on the contrary, find that the film does not endorse any perspective. Pippin (2013: 167â168, 273), likewise, observes that no point of view trumps another and, rightly, warns against making a characterâs view representative of the film or its maker. And Iain Macdonald (2008: 108n20) goes entirely against the stream by singling out Welshâs materialism as a âcorrectionâ of Wittâs perspective. These interpretative divergences give some much needed food for thought: why should Wittâs
The refusal to privilege any characterâs perspective has a notable implication: it endorses the idea that Malick achieves some larger perspective that is taken to educate the viewer. One option is to see a higher perspective in the concurrence of conflicting perspectives, whereby the viewer can holistically consider different sides at once. Russell Manning (2011: 170â175) argues that this form of âdialectic argumentâ in Malickâs cinematic philosophy privileges the viewerâs point of view to acquire a âhigher unity of thoughtâ. Alternatively, one can attribute a perspective-transcending perspective to the visual exploits of âMalickâs cameraâ, as Steven Rybin for instance does. âBecause Malickâs camera sees the world from a different perspectiveâ, he says, âit always remains at one remove from the meanings its characters ascribe to their experiencesâ (2011: 37). And through this autonomy of the camera, cinema becomes a different way of seeing, relative to human perception (2011: 18). Yet another option is to define Malickâs overarching perspective as one of a metaphysical, spiritual realm. Katarina Virvidaki (2014) points to ambivalent applications of voice-over and camerawork in The Thin Red Line which, she says, create the feel of a dynamic, depersonalized perspective. This ethereal effect of a âpoint of view that transcends the limits of empirical, naturalistic understandingâ is said to carry affective meaning, rendering for the viewer an experience of wonder (2014: 28â29).
However, if one wishes to pose a source for a âhigherâ perspective in Malickâs cinema, there is a much more palpable candidate: the vast presence of nature. In what follows, I will consider three philosophical readings of Malick which focus on perspective-effects relating to the theme of nature â that of Robert Sinnerbrink, Iain Macdonald and the widely cited analysis by Bersani and Dutoit. My purpose is to bring my meta-analyses full circle, as we have already seen how nature prominently features in analyses of Malickâs work.
4.3.2 Robert Sinnerbrink: The Perspective of Nature
Robert Sinnerbrink (2011d) describes the philosophical ambition of The New World as an attempt at letting us experience an âimpossibleâ point of view. With this, Sinnerbrink attributes to the film a particularly elusive instance of what I call a perspective-effect, one that he connects to a few related perspectives â historical, mythical, and metaphysical. To begin with, Sinnerbrink argues that the film relates the imagined experience of the foundation of colonial America â a meeting of colonists and natives, the Old World and The
The âmesmerizing philosophical meditationâ that Sinnerbrink attributes to Malick â the contemplative method, as I see it â hinges on the putting together of this âimpossibleâ melting pot of perspectives: it encompasses historical cultures, myths, and nature. Yet it is clear that, for Sinnerbrink, nature provides the decisive point of view, breaking the impasse of perspectives, so to speak. Nature is revealed as a participant in and among opposing historical perspectives, showing itself as that which they have in common. For this reason, Sinnerbrink argues, The New World is a poetic retrieval of both the possibility of reconciling cultures and âthe possibility of a âNew Worldâ in which human dependence upon nature is acknowledged as the basis of any enduring intercultural or historical reconciliationâ (2011d: 183).
So what ethical value does this particular perspective-effect hold for the viewer? Sinnerbrink, as we have seen in earlier chapters, associates film as philosophy with an inherent power to transform. The New World, as affective experience, thus affords the same kind of provocations to thought that Sinnerbrink claims of other films. But he finds in its poetic disclosure of natureâs âperspectiveâ also more particular value: it can reveal to viewers new ways of relating to nature. Most notable is Sinnerbrinkâs claim that it brings us to an acknowledgment (read: awareness) of our deeper unity with nature; a unity that underlies and can overcome our cultural-historical oppositions (2011d: 190, 192).
Sinnerbrink thus implicitly conceives an interlocking chain of transformational values: he poses that the film encourages awareness, an awareness of nature, the content of which is our essential unity with nature. I take the value of unity to be crucial here: it not only bridges this reading and those
Whereas Sinnerbrink seems set on retaining a spiritual dimension to natureâs âperspectiveâ, Iain Macdonald as well as Bersani and Dutoit proceed from forthright materialist commitments â the former a self-confessed Nietzschean, the latter patently Deleuzian. Yet their shared interest in perspective-effects, which all of them relate to nature, brings them to similar if not the same ethical conclusions.
4.3.3 Iain Macdonald: A Deconstruction of Perspectives
[T]he point here is to explore the deeper question of what binds them together in nature [â¦] At this level, love and cultural difference are relegated to the status of epiphenomena or manifestations of natural processes. (2008: 92)
Malick not only foregrounds similarities in Pocahontas and Smithâs reflections, but also reiterates a deeper commonality between their worlds by repeatedly deploying parallel imagery, according to Macdonald. He identifies resemblances in depictions of natural elements and human creations like interior spaces, windows and doorways, all of which serve to bridge, visually, what the narrative presents as two different cultures. Because of this, Macdonald argues, âMalick insists that their difference is purely perspectival and that at root they share a common logic, a common reason that engenders their respective worlds and defines their relation to natureâ (2008: 93).
The ethical benefit that Macdonald considers to be implied in this deconstruction is by now a familiar one: it âincites the viewer to undertake a change of perspectiveâ (2008: 100). This new perspective is, quite simply, that of nature. The New World thus encourages us to see Pocahontasâ story as âthe story of natureâ, to look upon what occurs in the narrative as ânature itselfâ (2008: 98â99). Again, this is understood as a bringing to awareness of the essential unity that the perspective of nature entails: Macdonald speaks of bringing the viewer to the âindifference and unity of nature that is at the root of what presents itself initially as its oppositeâ (2008: 100). Macdonald also notes the potential difficulties of this manner of seeing with regard to our viewing habits and cultural expectations â a remark that is typical of transformationalist discourse (see 2008: 99). Hence, he speaks of the viewer having to âawakenâ to the âdeeper processâ of nature, as communicated by the film (2008: 105â106).
We should note, however, the markedly different methods whereby Macdonald and Sinnerbrink take the âhigherâ perspective of nature to emerge. Whereas, for Sinnerbrink, poetic evocation and myth are crucial means by which Malick achieves this effect, Macdonald sees the filmâs contemplative work as a process of undermining its own clichéd romanticism. Macdonald does make a compelling argument: Malick deliberately resorts to telling the stereotyped love story of Pocahontas, an American foundational myth, as is made famous by the Disney animated film Pocahontas (1995, Mike Gabriel & Eric Goldberg). In fact, he highlights various ways in which The New World specifically recalls its Disney counterpart: it duplicates certain scenes from the
4.3.4 Bersani & Dutoit: An Erasure of Perspective
This brings me, lastly, to Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoitâs (2004: 124â177) substantive and often quoted essay on The Thin Red Line. They provide a fitting synthesis of my meta-surveyâs findings with regard to Malickâs style. In addition to being widely acknowledged, Bersani and Dutoitâs path-breaking essay also touches upon many of the topics and issues that have emerged from my analyses thus far. It must be said from the outset that Bersani and Dutoitâs position is decidedly anti-subjectivist â and more so than any other account considered here. While they do not flaunt Deleuzeâs voice, their approach has all the hallmarks that one would expect from Deleuzians. Accordingly, as we will see, they embrace a bold motive of Nature, which takes their ethical interests in unity, or connection, to an immanentist extreme.
Bersani and Dutoit locate the main philosophical thrust of The Thin Red Line in a particular effect of perspective: they call this âa certain kind of lookâ, one that is âwholly openâ, as enacted by the emblematic character of Private Witt. The film launches its âvisual argumentâ, they say, by making us see in and through Wittâs eyes (2004: 2, 151, 158). This âlookâ therefore relates to two stylistic devices. Cinematographic presentations of nature, on the one hand, let us see through Wittâs eyes. Here Bersani and Dutoit recall the same understanding
Note, here, that Bersani and Dutoit deliberately downplay the voice-over as a potential source of subjective perspective in the film. This fits into their overall adherence to a motive of Nature, which impels them to privilege visual presence over the voice and its discursive content, or more simply: showing over telling. They constantly look to trivialize the role of the voice-over in favor of their affirmation of the filmâs visual arguments. They emphasize, for instance, that the close-up is often unaccompanied by speech (2004: 145); and that private Wittâs âremarkable presenceâ has âlittle to do with his very general and abstract questionsâ (2004: 134). We are also told that the content of the voice-overs has âvery little intellectual weightâ (2004: 132), and that it âfails to be adequate to the filmâs visionâ (2004: 171). This stands in stark contrast to analysts who are led by a Subjectivity motive and the definitive value that they find in Malickâs voice-overs. For them, to downplay the significance of the voice-over would be to deny the film the philosophical capacity to fully relate individual human experience â a sphere which Bersani and Dutoit, as will become clear, are quite set on getting away from.
Bersani and Dutoit do, of course, recognize the interaction of voice-over and image as the filmâs principle stylistic maneuver: the film raises verbal questions that are responded to visually, by different ways of looking at the world. But this juxtaposition, they make clear, is ânot equal in valueâ inasmuch as âthe film enacts the imageâs superior inclusiveness over the wordâ (2004: 143). With this normative evaluation they of course choose not to consider the inverse possibilities of the verbal-visual interaction or combination: that the verbal content, on the contrary, responds to the visual content and thereby defines what we see (see MacCabe 1999). Leaving this aside, Bersani and Dutoit nevertheless recognize that the interplay with the voice-over produces effects of
This new relational ethic brings us back to the matter of Private Wittâs âlookâ, seeing that the philosophical stakes of this look, for Bersani and Dutoit, are inherently ethical. Wittâs look, they say, defines an ethic identical to âtotal absorptionâ: it is devoid of subjectivity; it simply connects to the world and locates him within it (e.g. 2004: 160â161, 164â165, 176â177). Two things deserve our attention here. First, I have already raised the difficult issue of who (and what) gets to be the privileged perspective of the film. On this point, Bersani and Dutoit wholeheartedly accept that Wittâs âlookâ sets the norm by which we should measure both the characters and the overall perspective that the film aspires to. Second, Bersani and Dutoit construe Wittâs perspective as one of fundamental involvement with the world â which means that, in essence, we are again under the instruction of a âperspective of natureâ.
Bersani and Dutoit characterize Wittâs ethical attitude with a range of time-honored transformational values, sometimes adorned in evocative metaphors. And each of these values concerns a deeply embracing stance towards the world. Most evident are the following:
- 1)Openness. The metaphor of Wittâs âabsorptionâ suggests the intrinsic openness that Bersani and Dutoit attribute to the character. This is especially true for his look, which is said to have a âremarkable clarity and opennessâ (2004: 151). Bersani and Dutoit even take to photographic metaphors, likening characters to âcamerasâ: whereas the squinting Sergeant Welsh tries to see less, they say that Witt has an âapertureâ that is âwide openâ (2004: 149).
- 2)Receptivity. Bersani and Dutoit see an âall-inclusive receptivenessâ in Wittâs look that refuses to impose anything on the world (2004: 169). And again comes the camera metaphor: Witt, say the writers, âindiscriminately registers the worldâ in what amounts to a âmode of filmingâ (2004: 169). They go as far as to suggest that Malickâs craft imitates Wittâs posture of receptive âfilmingâ: we see this in the filmmakerâs âattempt to avoid projecting a moral or aesthetic identity on the world he films, to allow his camera to be as mildly but thoroughly invaded by objects as Wittâs eyes areâ (2004: 163).
- 3)
Emptiness. Bersani and Dutoit explain that such pure receptivity requires âa subject divested of subjectivityâ (2004: 164). Wittâs look, they say, illustrates a subject who owns nothing and has no claims on the world: âWitt approaches the limit of subject without selfhood, ideally an anonymous subjectâ (2004: 165). While they never call it by this name, they hereby attribute to Witt a classic transformational notion: an emptying or voiding of the self. They do have many other labels for it â among which is a âdispersalâ, âdissolvingâ or âshatteringâ of individual identity (e.g. 8, 169â170, 177). - 4)Unity with nature. The values above pave the way for âconnectionâ as the vital virtue in Wittâs demeanor. The implicit agenda here is the negation of individuality. Wittâs inherently relational ethic, as Bersani and Dutoit have it, supplants individuality in favor of a basic continuity and oneness with the world. Other characters, they say, strive for individuality, with âa willful non-connectedness that violates the continuities of beingâ (2004: 154). Witt, however, excels at just the opposite. For Bersani and Dutoit, his look constitutes a unity with the community of all being â hence all the talk of his âconnectednessâ and âparticipationâ that essentially locates him within the very world that he âabsorbsâ (2004: 159, 175â176).
Malick encourages us to collaborate with Wittâs look. We see the objects and the people Witt looks at, but in the close-ups what we see is Witt looking at us [â¦] Wittâs look [â¦] receives us in the same way it receives the rest of the world. We are, as a result, tacitly summoned to be the world as Witt sees it, and since that world is inseparable from Wittâs look, we are also being called upon to share Wittâs looking, to adopt his subjectivity in looking at the world. The immense yet beneficent demand being made on us is that we both be the world as Witt, looking at us, receives it, and that we imitate that receptivity [â¦] when we leave the film and turn again to the world outside it. (2004: 163â164)
The merit of this particular argument is not my immediate concern here. More important is the transformational work that the authors attach to this perspective-effect: it prompts us to emulate the same values of openness and
In this way Bersani and Dutoitâs long and often poetical treatment of The Thin Red Line leads us back to what has become a familiar place: the notion that Malickâs style helps bring home our essential unity or âconnectionâ to nature.23 It is by staging and inviting an absolute abandonment to the world that it encourages the viewer to become a âsubject divested of subjectivityâ (2004: 164), and thus gain the perspective that is âan erasure of perspective itselfâ (2004: 146).
5 Some Things about Film as Philosophy: Method, Value, and Assumption
With this meta-critical excursion, I have undertaken what easily fits under the banner of âmeta-hermeneuticsâ (Korthals Altes 2013, 37â39) â an examination of the interpretative paths that interpreters resort to, which in this case are the paths along which philosophers make sense of Terrence Malickâs film style. I have shown that the diverse interpretative âpathsâ taken by philosophers, as to the ethics that they imply, lead to much the same âdestinationâ. The philosophical intentions of the above cases are undoubtedly diverse. But their ethical overtones ring in clear harmony: all the cases converge around a general concern with personal transformation. According to this picture, Malickâs cinema affords not only a contemplative encounter, but moreover an inherently
By all means, one could go into a discussion on the validity of these claims about Malickâs work and its effects â but it is not my aim to do so here. My own meta-agenda, rather, is to ask what philosophersâ conclusions about Malick, as a local case, suggest about the procedures and presuppositions that go into the general project of film as philosophy.
To start with, the case of Malick affords an opportunity to play devilâs advocate around the implicit methods of film philosophers. For example: if readers hope to get from these philosophers an exact explanation of how the elements of Malickâs style link up with particular transformational effects, they will be left disappointed. The connections drawn between elements of style and transformational effects remain speculative and suggestive, even evocative. True, the philosophers in question are not explicitly arguing for such transformational effects. But if you take away from their readings the connections nevertheless implied, little worth saying would remain. We should therefore ask whether their suggested connections between style and effect are in fact tenable. One response to that question could be that these claims are hopelessly idealistic. Can elements of style â say, ârandom images of rocks and treesâ â really achieve the valued effects that philosophers say they can? The implied contemplative methods that are thought to connect style to such effects often take much for granted â if the question is even posed, which is not often the case. Or, another response: perhaps these effects have little to do with Malickâs style, and instead come down to the adequacy of the philosopher-viewerâs (contemplative, ethical) mindset? In this case, as critically discussed in the previous chapter, the main initiative would come from the preparatory ethics practiced by the viewer â and not Malickâs style.
There are also deeper questions to be raised about the whole business of âdrawing connectionsâ, before all else. Surely, as I have shown, the sheer range of connections made with various stylistic devices, and the sometimes contradicting interpretations of their effects, testify to the inherent ambivalence of these connections on which philosophers nevertheless base their readings. So do philosophers not slip into a baseless exercise in essentialization, in which favored stylistic devices get tied to (and, ultimately, reduced to) seemingly appropriate effects?
Yet for me to demand from film philosophers to give greater empirical grounding to the style-effect connections that they pose â Ã la the devilâs
I thus wish to pursue a more productive and relevant appraisal: to see the transformational effects that philosophers connect to Malickâs style as acts of value-attribution, in accordance with the fieldâs broader impulse to value films-as-philosophy for purposes of personal transformation. As I have said earlier, I cannot pretend this transformational impulse is purely a desideratum of the philosophers. The films in question have to play their part. So, much as film philosophers are committed to this ethical interest, we have in Malick films a special set of factors â the attribution of a thoughtful filmmaker persona with existential narrative obsessions; and most of all, it seems, the perceived effects of an evocative contemplative style â that markedly enhance their existing impulse unto transformational ethics.
But why is it that ethics of transformation, specifically, weigh in so strongly on the kind of value that philosophers see in films that do philosophy? One factor, as noted in the introduction, is the obvious affinity that exists between philosophy and the aims of self-transformation. Another factor has to do with a growing uneasiness about interpreting the philosophical âmeaningâ of films, which is thought to âimposeâ philosophy on film. As I see it, the current intellectual milieu dedicated to considerations of ontology, materiality, performativity, embodiment, and affect, leads philosophers to rather affirm what films-as-philosophy do; and, more so, what such films do to and for us (cf. Rodowick 2007: 73; Rybin 2012: xvi). Hence we find, with regard to Malick and beyond, that philosophers now pay more attention to concrete details of style, attendant experiences, and the ethically significant transformations that these may evoke.
The hesitancy that I have about the cases considered here, however, is that the philosophical âreflectionsâ, âreadingsâ and âdescriptionsâ of style-and-effect do not sufficiently own up to still being interpretations (not of narrative meaning, but of what stylistic devices do), and invested, value-laden interpretations at that. Of course we should not â and, in fact, cannot â do away with acts of interpretation and value-attribution. The problem, rather, is the inattention of film philosophers to their own interpretative strategies and interests, and the way these guide their evaluations, and indeed valuations, of film style. Particularly telling instances of this problem are to be found where the ideals of personal transformation get allied with a variety of normative assumptions of what it is (for films) to do philosophy. Such preconceptions of film as
These implications are well demonstrated by two prominent streams of philosophical interpretation of Malickâs cinema that emerged from my analysis. These streams mark two essentially diverse paths along which analysts explain the contemplativeness, and philosophical significance, of Malickâs style: one is led by a motive of Subjectivity, emphasizing how his style embodies and elicits reflective thinking (e.g. Rybin, Davies); and the other is led by a motive of Nature, giving priority to the world to which his style gives presence (e.g. Critchley, Bersani & Dutoit). Both groups approach Malickâs cinema from two fundamentally different commitments â what may be roughly called a commitment to the âinsideâ versus a commitment to the âoutsideâ.
A range of issues follow from this. To begin with, the respective commitments of the two interpretative streams prompt different prioritizations of stylistic features. Both approaches, for instance, recognize the prominent place of nature in Malickâs cinema. However, they differ markedly in their evaluations of the voice-over: whereas the likes of Rybin and Davies give ample attention to the voice-over, and posit a tension between it and Malickâs presentations of nature, Bersani and Dutoit, in contrast, either neglect or even explicitly trivialize the role of voice-overs in favor of what is achieved by visual displays (see Bersani & Dutoit 2004: 132, 170â171).
More importantly, such preempted interpretations of style correspond with ethical imperatives that, likewise, cater to the basic philosophical commitments of each approach. Consider, again, Malickâs visual motif of nature, a reference point in relation to which each stream formulates its own direction of transformation. The first stream has an overall ethical orientation that affirms subjectivity, roughly in accordance with the ethics of âself-concentrationâ distinguished in Chapter 3. The second, quite the opposite, hopes for a negation or loss of individual subjectivity, an ideal common in ethics of âself-expansionâ. This entails that one approach will hold dear certain transformational values that the other does not cherish. Nature-led approaches to film as philosophy are undoubtedly drawn to the value of unity (with nature), as it typifies the ideal of a dispersed subject who escapes the self through its connectedness to the world. Film philosophers dedicated to a Subjectivity motive instead uphold the distinctness and separation of human experience, which seeks meaning
I do not allege that everyone will necessarily agree with my designation of Malick as the philosopherâs favorite. But, at least, a host of philosophical articles, edited volumes and books â over the past fifteen years in particular â attests to my point. See Sinnerbrink (2019), Rybin (2012), Tucker and Kendall (2011), and Davies (2008a) for but a few notable examples of philosophy books dedicated to Malickâs cinema. Also see Patterson (2007b), an influential common reference in this circle. That being said, the likes of Von Trier, Lynch, Tarkovsky, Akerman, and Hitchcock can of course also qualify as âphilosophersâ favoritesâ, and do so on their own distinctive terms.
I therefore have no reason here to take up the long history of the fiercely discussed notion of âstyleâ, which can be traced in a host of directions â whether Russian Formalism (such as Poetica Kino, the famous 1927 anthology edited by Boris Eikhenbaum), French New Wave criticism (like Alexandre Astrucâs auteurist notion of the caméra-stylo) or, more recently, Neoformalism (notably the âhistorical poeticsâ of David Bordwell).
See Hannah Pattersonâs introduction to The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America (2007a) for a sample of this discourse of which she provides an overview.
This is suggested by the treatment of other âcontemplativeâ filmmakers, the likes of Yasujirô Ozu, Andrei Tarkovsky, or Hou Hsiao-hsien, who have not garnered the amount of attention from philosophers that Malick has.
Whereas the interior voices in Malickâs first two films are single, female and speak in past tense, Malickâs third feature features multiple, male voices that speak in present tense (Chion 2004: 53). The former device thus raises more of a retrospective, nostalgic contemplative experience, whereas the latter offers a sense of rumination based in the âtimeless presentâ (Chion 2004: 53).
The âlate Malickâ, following critic Jon Baskin (2013), refers to the sequence of films that Malick released after his twenty year absence from filmmaking in 1998.
See Barnett (2013), Baskin (2013), Leithart (2013), Handley (2014), Young (2015), Barnett and Elliston (2016), Hamilton (2016), Robbins (2016), and Sinnerbrink (2016b).
See Morrison and Schur (2003), Patterson (2007b), Davies (2008a), Michaels (2009), Tucker and Kendall (2011), and Rybin (2012).
For a helpful outline of typical interpretations of nature in Malickâs films see David Davies (2008: 572â574).
Of course, this is not the only way in which Malickâs turn to filmmaking has been construed. Another recurrent opinion is that film offers Malick a medium more suited to pursuing his interests in Heideggerian philosophy (e.g. Furstenau & MacAvoy 2007).
The publicity surrounding his twenty-year hiatus, especially, solidified the kind of hermetic mystique that surrounds Malick. Michael Nordine (2013) gives a refreshing take on the dynamics behind this publicity and offers some much-needed debunking of the most endearing myths about Malick.
âIf I wanted to watch a slide show, I would have just watched my cable boxâs screen saver. It was Boring to the last moment, and you never really know what was really happeningâ (Amazon Review of To the Wonder by âKlebrchelpâ, 23 November 2013).
Critchley in fact raises this very point, explicitly opposing forms of Knowledge as condition for film as philosophy. In Critchleyâs words: âa consideration of Malickâs art demands that we take seriously the idea that film is less an illustration of philosophical ideas and theories â letâs call that a philoso-fugal reading â and more a form of philosophizing, of reflection, reasoning and argumentâ (2005: 139).
See, for example, Bersani and Dutoit (2004: 134â135, 143), Davies (2008: 58â61), Kendall (2011: 150), Neer (2011), Pippin (2013: 249â250), Rybin (2011: 28), Virvidaki (2014: 26) and Walden (2011: 197).
The theoretical dichotomy of showing versus telling is well entrenched in film studies and beyond. For a well-known overview of theories of film narration in terms of the dichotomy, see Bordwell (1985: 3â26).
The uncomplicated complicity posed between the viewer and the character, âalongsideâ whom thoughtful viewers are encouraged to make meaning, is troublesome â and Rybin does little to account for it (see 2011: 13â14; 2012: xv). The closest that he comes is to note that the cinematic encounter is inherently relational (2012: xiii); and to note in passing that âMalickâs cinema insists upon a degree of empathetic commitment to the fictional lives dramatizedâ (2012: xvii).
In terms of approaches to film as philosophy, Daviesâ specific emphasis on embodied experience puts him in the company of Vivian Sobchack, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 3.
Also see Bersani and Dutoit (2004: 158â160, 163â164), Silberman (2007: 173â174), Davies (2008: 51â54, 61â62), and Plantinga (2010: 95â97).
In addition to what he calls the âvisual symphonyâ of nature imagery, Sinnerbrink does single out Malickâs repeated use of Wagnerâs Das Rheingold overture as a further means of natureâs self-expression (2011d: 191).
Macdonald proposes that we can discern in The New World a naturalism that can be articulated beyond Malickâs original strictly Heideggerian interests. He thus designates Malickâs metaphysics in this instance a âmaterialismâ, âroughly Nietzschean in character, that denies not only cultural essentialism, but also any meaningful distinction between reason and natureâ (2008: 94).
Bersani and Dutoit note Deleuzeâs description of the close-up as âpsychologically non-expressiveâ, in light of which they deem Malickâs presentation of faces âa certain mode of registering the worldâ (2004: 143â144 [emphasis added]). His characters are therefore individuated, not on the basis of personality or inner-experience, but âas perspectives on the worldâ by virtue of âthe different worlds we see them registeringâ (2004: 145â146).
This claim rests on the normative assumption that subjectivity, and the experience of individuality at that, is something that is to be evaded â despite the obvious contradiction that this âflightâ, by its very definition, is conditioned by subjectivity. I have already taken up the contradictions and ironies attached to such Deleuzian immanentist claims in Chapter 3.