The Magic Hours by John Bleasdale
Film historian David Thomson called Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) “the most assured first film by an American since Citizen Kane.” Thomson added that like Orson Welles’ seminal debut, Badlands has “a serene, willful disdain for the surrounding industry.” In the ‘70s Malick gained the reputation as an outsider working at his own pace, following a vision rather than the money. But in his biography of the director, The Magic Hours, film critic John Bleasdale shows that Malick has also been an insider, befriended by the influential, earning money by screenwriting, producing and script doctoring for other people’s projects.
Malick was fortunate to arrive as the ‘60s transitioned into the ‘70s and Hollywood entered its second golden age. The studios were unusually open to new ideas as they struggled to respond to Easy Rider, the counterculture and the Vietnam War malaise as well as the rising new generation of maverick directors schooled in European and Japanese art house. Malick enrolled in the inaugural year of the American Film Institute (1969) with a rough draft of Badlands in hand. His fellow classmates included David Lynch and Paul Schrader. Malick was in the right place at a perfect time to begin a body of work that eventually encompassed Days of Heaven (9178) and The New World (2005).
And yet, his unique filmmaking was not a fortuitous accident. Malick came to Hollywood with an unusual background. He had studied philosophy at Harvard and Oxford, translated an obscure work by that difficult German philosopher Martin Heidegger, wrote for Newsweek and Life and went on assignment to the Bolivian jungle in search of Che Guevara. Bleasdale shows how Malick’s cultured family life and private schooling shaped his worldview. In his films, Malick’s sought poetry and meaning in human suffering and realities below our surface impressions. Bleasdale continually matches biographical snippets to scenes from the director’s films.
The Magic Hours’ title comes from Malick’s preference for filming in natural light, especially those precious minutes near sundown and sunrise. Malick never pleased every critic (Pauline Kael found him insufferably arty) and Bleasdale recounts negative as well as positive experiences from casts and crews. While alert for spontaneous moments, Malick is a filmmaker who seems collaborative but in the end, he always goes his own way.
The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is published by University Press of Kentucky.
Get The Magic Hours at Amazon here.
Paid link
