Song to Song (2017)

Letterboxd.

5/5

"Song to Song" was, for me, easily Malick's most emotionally resonant and powerful effort since "Tree of Life". Part of that may be a purely personal thing. The film was shot in Austin, TX... a place I only live a few hours away from and am pretty familiar with. So to see these people wander around this beautiful place, that is so close to my heart, and bear their souls, and express so many feelings that I felt I could connect with, was simply sublime.

I was a little let down by Malick's previous film, "Knight of Cups". With that one, the whole thing felt stretched a little too thin. There wasn't as much to dig through, visually or thematically. While it did have some of those moments, it just felt too few and far between. Here though there was just so much for me to enjoy.

From the stacked cast which features many of my favorite actors, to the locale, to the exploration of the Austin Music Scene. It was a symphony of aural and visual delight, brought together by the strong narrative of 4 people who have it all, yet are still lost and searching for meaning. They're at their peak physically, sexually, creatively. But they're still empty. They indulge in every desire they may want, but they still need to find a way to live with peace in themselves.

I was just so moved by the way Malick conveyed their journey, and while the film may have some flaws inherent with the structure Malick has been using as of late, it simply didn't matter by the end. "Song to Song" met every expectation I had, and was exactly the film I wanted it to be.

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4/5

This might be Malick's most confounding movie... It's not relentlessly focused on one person's subjectivity the way Knight of Cups was, but in the absence of the gravitational pull Christian Bale had on that movie, as well as its Tarot-themed chapters, a kind of chaos (ahem) reigns over this one. Some sections flow freely, like Malick usually does, but some feel more like bits of film being violently bashed together. It's all a lot to take in, and it's so ephemeral that it's very hard to write about after only one viewing, several hours ago.

What I can say with certainty:

-Mara and Gosling are the two most purely likable Malick leads since Badlands.
-Fassbender should play the devil more. Villainy fits him like a glove.
-The sequences with Cate Blanchett and especially the ones with Bérénice Marlohe don't work super well for me.
-The opening chunk and the closing chunk are excellent. The middle isn't bad by any means but it doesn't feel as striking.
-The end, especially, has so much going for it... at a certain point, the movie just starts really hitting and then from there it's just brilliant scene after brilliant scene.
-"scene" being a relative term, of course, because sometimes a scene is just a few quiet, stunningly beautiful shots of foggy landscapes that have no discernible relationship to each other.
-There's a moment, late in the movie, that I won't spoil (as if this movie could be spoiled... can you spoil a sculpture? still...) where voiceover comes together with intercut shots from two different places and times and it all just lands in such an emotionally devastating way that I didn't know what to do... and then it's swept away, like everything else.
-I would love to go through this with a fine tooth comb in Premiere or something, looking at the lengths of shots, and when shots from different places and times are used... more than ever, Malick's structure feels like the structure of a distant memory.

Anyway, I don't think it's quite as strong as Malick's last couple movies (and certainly not The New World or The Tree of Life). But it's just so interesting to me. It's the kind of movie that makes me want to make movies (not movies just like this one... just movies. in general). I'm interested to see where he goes next. If internet rumors are to believed, Radegund has a much more conventional screenplay. Which wouldn't bother me. I love the style he's been pursuing for these last few movies, but I can't imagine a way for it to go further. The idea of him making something more conventionally structured (and I still doubt it'll be very conventional... Badlands is the closest he's come to a "normal" movie and that's still not very normal, is it?) after learning whatever it is he's learned from these years in the wilderness of semi-narrative abstraction... well, it has me curious.

P.S. - there are some hilarious moments in this movie, just as there were in Knight of Cups. It would be a shame for nobody to talk about them.

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4/5

My rebuttal to the critical consensus on Song To Song; "Oh no sir, fuck you."

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5/5

A film about nothing yet it's about everything. The emotions, the details, and everything the images that are shown on screen signify and say really resonated with me. No one is making films like Malick and honestly no one could. Patti Smith. Rooney Mara (in a mesmerizing role and who knew she could dance!). Ryan Gosling being very Ryan Gosling. Michael Fassbender. Cate Blanchett. Natalie Portman. Last but not least Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography proves why he's one of the best. Loved it. Check your expectations at the door and this film promises to take you for a ride.

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4/5

Can definitely see the criticism, but I think a lot of the negativity comes from the projection of "pretentiousness", something I've always been abhorred by. Yes it's existential ennui for the rich white elite; tourists in locations that they don't relate to or don't relate to them, but there's still validity in vapidity.

From a glance, with a real life point of view, Song to Song is completely vapid, First World Problems: The Motion Picture, but Terrence and more efficiently, Lubezki, are able to show authenticity in those problems. Lubezki's camera is always in motion, but it's cut jarringly so you're always aware that you're not meant to be in the story, you're just a voyeur. Same reason Lost in Translation works. The artist cameos seem like a cheap artifice as a viewer, but also to the characters, they don't give a shit about chilling with Iggy or Patti (who I LOVED in this; Patti Smith is GOD).

Overall, I enjoyed it; would see again. (especially without the need to go to the bathroom as soon as it started, that was the worst part.) I'm even 100% down to watch the original 8 hour cut.

Also, fuck the word pretentious.

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4/5

An improvement over the rather bland Knight of Cups, Malick does his wandering souls more justice here by giving us relationships that we can actually care about. It helps that he's offered something of a narrative arc here, slight as it is.

And Rooney Mara is radiant.

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Many new reviews on Letterboxd but they are super-long and filled with spoilers.