NP - Terrence Malick SUCKS!
Danny Weltman
danny.weltman at gmail.com
Mon Nov 28 19:53:33 CST 2016
I guess I'm sort of interested in which features of Malick make his movies
seem like things that are "posing as depth." What makes it a pose, and
what's the depth his stuff is posing as?
Also, perhaps it's my inability to really understand Kierkegaard,
Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, but I've always had a lot of trouble imagining
that I know enough about depth (if that's the sort of depth we're talking
about) to tell when a movie's just posing at it vs. when a movie's actually
there. I'm happy to just ignore the pose and take it for what I can get out
of it, regardless of what it (ostensibly?) wants me to get out of it. But
maybe if I knew more about these guys I'd be mad at the movie fucking them
up just like movies that take on topics I'm more familiar with make me
unhappy when they fuck that stuff up.
Or perhaps Malick's movies aren't informed by his philosophical forays at
all, in which case I'm back at my first question, which is curiosity about
what the "depth" is that we're talking about.
Danny
On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 5:10 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's funny, but seemingly true, that people either love or hate Malick's
> films. I hate them. I would probably find his company maddeningly smug and
> purposefully obscure, projecting a sense of deep meaning in every sigh. It
> seems a formula, a facade, posing as depth. I guess that is the definition
> of "pretension."
>
> David Morris
>
>
> On Monday, November 28, 2016, Danny Weltman <danny.weltman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "(I think his thesis at college ... Yale? ... Harvard? ... was on a
>> Christian theme ... sorry to be vague.)"
>>
>> I have not read the thesis, but Wikipedia says: "After a disagreement
>> with his tutor, Gilbert Ryle, over his thesis on the concept of world in
>> Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, Malick left Oxford without a
>> degree. In 1969, Northwestern University Press published Malick's
>> translation of Heidegger's Vom Wesen des Grundes as The Essence of Reasons."
>>
>> I am going to go out on a limb and say that Malick has a bit more going
>> on with his philosophy than it being "basically Christian," at least
>> insofar as that label would be derogatory enough to make the influence of
>> the philosophy a "derailing" one as opposed to a guiding one or some other
>> neutral or perhaps praiseworthy adjective. I can say that one need not be
>> Christian in the last to find his stuff extremely compelling, as I do. It
>> perhaps helps that 99% of the time, when someone uses "pretentious" as a
>> derogatory term, it marks something I'm liable to enjoy. I'm lacking the
>> organ that generates bile when exposed to ostensibly pretentious stuff,
>> somehow.
>>
>> Danny
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 27, 2016 at 7:32 PM, Douglas Holm <dkholm at mac.com> wrote:
>>
>>> His first two films, Badlands and Days of Heaven, were extraordinary in
>>> telling a tale visually instead of through dialogue. After a long gap, he
>>> returned, but his basically Christian philosophy, which seems to go
>>> unnoticed, has derailed his recent films. (I think his thesis at college
>>> ... Yale? ... Harvard? ... was on a Christian theme ... sorry to be
>>> vague.). Al they all seem the same .... ladies in summer dresses twirling
>>> in meadows as an emotional high point.
>>>
>>> On Nov 27, 2016, at 6:30 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> All of them! The only one I could stomach was "What Dreams May Come."
>>> But even that is pretentious beyond belief. WHY do people like his shit?
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Sunday, November 27, 2016, Douglas Holm <dkholm at mac.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Which one?
>>>>
>>>> > On Nov 27, 2016, at 6:10 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > I HATE his shit!!!! How did he ever get it funded?
>>>> >
>>>> > David Morris
>>>>
>>>
>>
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