If I could credit one filmmaker with stoking my nascent religiosity a number of years ago, I suppose it would have to be US director Terrence Malick, and I have since heard that he’s done the same for others. Never heard of him? I wouldn’t be surprised, given that he retreats into total obscurity between infrequent film releases and has given about two interviews over five decades, but he really ought to be on more radars, if for no other reason than this: his movies show, in a world so tired of listening to hollow preaching, ‘the mystery of God in things,’ as Dostoevsky put it.
What Malick is so effective at is forcing his viewers to do that which we’re so good at avoiding in our daily lives: confronting the fact that there is something rather than nothing, and that what we see often does little, if anything, to clarify just why there’s something rather than nothing. Quite the contrary, on all too many occasions – what we see and experience convinces us that there can be no good reason for having to endure all of this.
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