Name: 存在することの意味 - テレンス・マリックを理解するために（The Meaning of Being – Understanding Terrence Malick）
Uploaded: 2022-03-19T03:05:44.000Z
Duration: 28 min 34 s
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There are only a few directors who have truly developed their own cinematic language like Terrence Malick has.

While we can break this down as a combination of techniques like his frequent use of Steadicam,

wide-angle lenses, or his use of poetic voice-overs,

I am more interested in the immediate experience  of his work,

which to me feels like a view of the world  that is always wandering,

that always seems to be in search of something that lies just beyond the story we are witnessing.

Actor John C. Reilly once told a story about how he was working on this big scene in The Thin Red Line.

He and some of his fellow actors were in this big truck that was set to drive into camp;

a huge set on which the crew had to coordinate not only the vehicles,

but also the dozens of extras  and planes flying overhead.

But all of a sudden, Malick spotted a bird and the entire scene was put on hold to film this one creature.

It seems to be a frequent occurrence as all of Malick's films contain these spontaneous moments

that capture something that clearly wasn't staged,

be it crickets in the wheat fields in Days of Heaven,  or a butterfly in the street in The Tree of Life.

At first glance, it might feel like the point of view of someone who is easily distracted, confused even.

This became even more pronounced in his later work,

a series of films that were essentially shot  without a script,

and diverged so much from any kind of pre-conceived structure that even his long-time admirers

began to wonder what Malick was trying to achieve.

I thought that we could build our nest high up.

With this year's release of A Hidden Life,

the true story of an Austrian farmer who was prosecuted for refusing to fight for the Nazis,

critics have hailed Malick's return to form.

And although the film is indeed more  conventionally structured,

it still contains many of the same elements.

Above all, the main question still remains: what is he trying to achieve?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Long before his first feature film, Malick was actually on his way of becoming a philosopher.

he was particularly drawn to the work of one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century:

Heidegger argued that philosophy,  since the Ancient Greeks,

had avoided what he sees as  the most fundamental question,

A question that was often dismissed for being either too obvious or too indefinable for meaningful engagement.

But for Heidegger, this was the result of a wrong perspective on the concept of being,

one that is too concerned with consciousness,

with traits of being,  and not the meaning of being.

He was particularly critical of Descartes, whose separation of body and soul,

created what for Heidegger was a needless abstraction of the way we relate ourselves to existence.

Heidegger carries out his fundamental ontology by introducing the notion of 'Dasein', or 'being-there';

the distinctive mode of Being particular to humans,  the beings for whom being matters.

Terrence Malick did not become a philosopher,

And this shift from philosophy to cinema, I think,  should be taken into account,

lest we make a mere overview of Heidegger's ideas as they are represented in Malick's films.

Heidegger's ambition was to move away  from philosophy

as an overly anemic and  intellectual endeavor.

To him, the discussion of metaphysics was limited by technical philosophical language,

one that, as he later admitted, he was not able to transcend in Being and Time

despite his already highly poetic style of writing.

And I can imagine Malick realized this as well,

and therefore set out to explore  a different kind of language.

So instead of trying to fit cinema into philosophy, let's try it the other way around.

Let's see how the work of Terrence Malick  not only captures,

but also clarifies and contributes to  Heidegger's ideas.

One of the most recurring elements in Malick's work is his clear distinction between the world of nature,

and the world of man, or more specifically;  the world of technology.

Malick's characters are almost always introduced as practical beings in a practical world;

a garbage collector, a factory worker, a soldier, architect, screenwriter, farmer.

They capture the fundamental break that Heidegger made with Descartes,

and to a lesser extent,  his own teacher Edmund Husserl.

For Heidegger argued that our default experience of the world is not based on knowledge or reason,

but on a pre-existing sense of practicality.

Before we question what is,  as previous philosophers proposed,

to point out that before we've intellectually questioned the attributes of such an object,

let alone pondered the meaning of its existence,

we already have an engrained idea of how to use it.

It is only when using the hammer fails or surprises us in some way,

And the same goes for our lives in general.

In Malick's first film, Badlands, the story is deliberately guided by a rather naïve narrator;

Little did I realise that what began in the alleys  and back ways of this quiet town

The  story begins with her falling in love with Kit,

a James Dean wannabee who takes her on an adventure that eventually becomes a killing spree

Through her eyes however, the crimes are presented with a rather careless lightheartedness,

with a level of mindfulness that does not seem to consider the meaning of what is happening.

It exemplifies what Heidegger meant when he said that our default state

is not one that questions the meaning of being,  and portrays what its consequences are.

For a disposition that does not engage with the meaning of being,

that does not relate itself to our mortality,  to our 'thrownness' as Heidegger called it,

has no real connection to life and death,  and renders both insignificant.

I want you to attack! I want you to attack right now  with every man at your disposal!

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存在することの意味 - テレンス・マリックを理解するために（The Meaning of Being – Understanding Terrence Malick）

perspective

anxiety

entire

eventually