This is a reaction, by accretion, to Terrence Malick's latest, Song to Song (2017)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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23 August
This is a reaction, by accretion, to Terrence Malick's latest, Song to Song (2017)
Though much better made than @knightofcupsmov, it remains well-made tedium, with zero conviction that Fassbender makes Gosling or Mara stars pic.twitter.com/Qjg1coERYe— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 23, 2017
Not explicable even by @songtosongmovie's inner conceit that Cate Blanchett (Amanda) is more alive / less unreal, she outclasses the others. pic.twitter.com/mpXkQYPLPy— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 23, 2017
Nothing that Stephen Poliakoff didn't do better in Friends and Crocodiles, or Truffaut or Sorrentino in Jules et Jim or La grande bellezza ! pic.twitter.com/J7GNzUKeM0— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 23, 2017
Plangently voiced over by Rooney Mara (Faye) as :— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 24, 2017
We thought we could just roll and tumble, live from song to song, kiss to kiss.#SoWeSaw pic.twitter.com/YzM3sx2tE8
By all means, it can pass for a point that all this looks cod, because it's stale / has lost its savour, but lost-generation stuff - again ?— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 25, 2017
His being an auteur, Terrence Malick can, of course, interpret that to mean doing what he wants - desiring, as his characters* grandiosely emptily do, 'to be free', and / or 'to set others free' (sc. delude themselves, and / or screw others over, in the name of Freedom).
If Malick chooses, he can have us infer (and maybe agree) that he is painting with light, and that we are redundantly seeking a narrative (which he does not actually have, and so cannot deny us) - until he then gives us one, of sorts, but only once he has had his way with our mind, with his fractured slices**.
[...]
Film-references :
* Hideous Kinky (1998)
* Jules et Jim (1962)
* La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty [but #UCFF prefers 'Immense Beauty' as a title]) (2013)
* On the Road (2012)
* The Last Station (2009)
* The Master (2012)
* The Neon Demon (2016)
Interlude ~ Irreverent parody No. 1 :
The travel of Song to Song is from deliberately momentary snatches of the past - which have been blanked out by the actors, in confused guilt and shame at having been paid to arse around implausibly on camera - to healing (and, of course, the pay-cheque).
However, this only comes through expressionless (and barely cleansing ?) confessional utterances, spoken to God knows whom (an on-line diary, via voice-recognition ? or a very professionally indulgent therapist ?). Thus, if just as implausibly, they become reconnected with good, honest, Tolstoyan toil on - dare one say so ? - the soil that they had spurned.
In essence, the road's shown to be tough, but (for actors, at least) healing for careworn hedonism can be won by lost wild-child rockers-in-their-heads stars of screen !
Other references :
* Friends and Crocodiles
* The Diamond as Big as The Ritz ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
* The Lost Ones [Le dépeupler] ~ Samuel Beckettt
End-notes :
* If we may rightly call them that... Gosling, though perhaps never heard called that, is credited as 'BV' = boundlessly vacant, as Gosling usually does / is, or boulevard verdure ?
** Naturally, Woody Allen and Charlotte Rampling (as Dorrie) did this with far greater impact in Stardust Memories (1980).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
