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{"id":18815,"date":"2017-04-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=538"},"modified":"2017-04-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T00:00:00","slug":"malicks-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/04\/malicks-hollywood\/","title":{"rendered":"Malick’s Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Terrence Malick has been on a filmmaking tear, most recently releasing Song to Song<\/em>. He\u2019s back, but that hasn\u2019t dulled his skepticism about the film industry.<\/p>\n

Brett McCracken sees<\/a> Malick\u2019s earlier Knight of Cups<\/em> as, in part, a reflection of Malick\u2019s \u201ccomplicated relationship with Hollywood\u201d: \u201cMalick\u2019s critique of Hollywood, as a sort of stand-in for the larger spiritual \u2018searches\u2019 of mankind, comes into focus. Hollywood is a dream factory, a purveyor of fantasies and searches for holy grails (or mystical \u201cpearls\u201d). Southern California\u2019s mythic status as the place where dreams come true, where the sun never sets, reinforces the mystique. But the images of Hollywood and our broader media environment deceive and disappoint when they are not icons pointing beyond themselves but idols to be worshiped in themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malick\u2019s film-making techniques themselves offer a challenge to the Hollywood ethos: \u201cIn his notorious habit of hiring A-list actors for his films but then leaving them largely dialogue-less (or absent altogether) in the final cut, Malick is confronting the priorities of Hollywood\u2019s cult of celebrity, which since the studio era has ordered the audience\u2019s gaze mostly around \u2018star power.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But McCracken recognizes that Malick\u2019s critique is animated by a philosophical\/religious outlook: \u201cHe dares the audience to look beyond the beautiful bodies and magnetic charisma of the \u2018stars\u2019 and instead to see the beauty around the periphery: the animals, the plants normally relegated to the background, the unknown actor, those with disabled and deformed bodies (see particularly Wonder<\/em>), every leaf and every ray of God\u2019s light.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"