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7 Tips To Help You Like Terrence Malick Movies More, Maybe

The idea of your quintessential ‘art film’ and director Terrence Malick go hand in hand. His latest, To the Wonder, is one of his most polarizing, some hailing it as his latest masterpiece and others decrying it as either a typical Malick poetic snoozefest or an uncharacteristic flop from an otherwise solid filmmaker. I can’t speak to the quality of this release specifically since as far as I know it’s unavailable for those of us here in Canada, but I know that this response is somewhat predictable when it comes to Malick’s movies. He’s not someone who’s going to ever really make a universal hit. But that doesn’t mean he should be dismissed by the majority of movie fans.

[h2]6) Don’t worry if you feel stupid watching it[/h2]

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I care little for the movie watcher who enjoys a movie only as far as he or she can explain it or write about its virtues or vices immediately after. This turns all movies into these cerebral exercises where you’re looking for all these minute details and clues and hints as to what it’s supposed to be ”about” until you’ve gone all the way down the Room 237 vortex. I advocate a less intellectualized movie approach, which isn’t to say that I think everyone should watch the same way I do but that it’s a valid way to watch if it’s how you’re already watching or how you would like to watch. The point is this: Terrence Malick’s movies operate like a visual stream of consciousness, the type of thinking that we do when we’re not really thinking about what we’re thinking. So wouldn’t it make sense that the best way to watch movies like this would be to not think too much about what we’re watching?

This would eliminate the problem that I often faced watching movies by Malick or the Coens or Stanley Kubrick, and still face with a lot of filmmakers, and that problem is losing interest in a movie because I just didn’t get it. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be thinking and feeling in response to the action in front of me, and resented whoever was responsible for it because I felt like a moron. This still happens all the time. When I’m able to let go of those insecurities, though, and just let something act on me, and not worry so much about getting it or not getting it, I find it much easier to just appreciate the present, as opposed to stressing about the future or the past of what’s in the movie I’m watching. That way the series of moments can be taken on their own more fully, if that makes sense.

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