Am I the only one who absolutely this film? After watching it and reading through a few reviews I felt, as usual with Terrence Malick, unsurprised but wholly frustrated at the glut of criticism towards this film. As expected, they devolved into the typical comments regarding Malick's "pretentiousness" and how his style has diminished into overindulgent "self-parody." I understand the niche taste Malick has come to cater to (if he really is catering to anyone but himself). I can even understand complaints about his recent films' painfully long runtimes, his static pacing and tone, his tedious, sparse narratives, which are all reasonable and grounded opinions. What I cannot understand are these notions of self-parody because, to my knowledge, parody requires humor and there is nothing funny about the deeply personal stories and haunted characters Malick shows us. There is also nothing pretentious about Terrence Malick. The word "pretentious" denotes an attempt "to impress by affecting greater importance than is actually possessed" but who are we to claim what is important and what isn't? Even if his films seem affected and contrived to many, they are clearly also important and deeply personal works to him and, in my opinion, to an artist that should be all that matters.
With that said, Song To Song is perhaps one of Malick's best films yet. I disliked To the Wonder and although I absolutely loved Knight of Cups (my second favorite film from 2017), Song To Song proves to be a much more cohesive work while still managing to transcend time and space as past, present, and future all flow into each other, making the viewer question how the chronology of the narrative might have transpired. In this sense, Song To Song is a cerebral film that challenges the audience to piece together director's landscape of fractured memories and complex emotions. However, in this film it is achieved with much more comprehension, unlike Knight of Cups which utilized a similarly fragmented narrative but then threw us off (or at least me) by giving the false impression of being a linear episodic story.
It's also impossible to write a review for this film without discussing the music. The music! Malick's approach to the crazed, liberated, drug-fueled music scene in Austin, Texas really embraces the opportunity to introduce a quality rock soundtrack in contrast to his usual classical scores, which is still present but overwhelmingly outnumbered by tracks by Patti Smith (who appears in the film), the Black Lips and, oddly enough, Die Antwoord. The music aids the film's sense of progression and cohesion, as it quite fittingly moves from song to song in a manner that reminded me a lot of another musically-infused romantic film, 9 Songs (Winterbottom, 2004). Though at first this may sound like a gimmick it actually serves a satisfying symbolic function, which is revealed by an important line in the movie that I will not spoil (you'll know it when you hear it). At the very least, it's safe to say that the music helps liven the otherwise brooding tone of the movie while also providing a stark contrast to Emmanuel Lubezki's beautiful cinematography, which I need not even get into.
Overall, Terrence Malick's latest tone poem captures its subjects with candid grace, like a haunted lover reminiscing on splintered memories with regret and sorrow. As usual, he focuses not on the content of characters' relationships, nor their actions or words, but on the very feeling of being in love, of being torn in half, of being lost and confused. He welcomes you into his own haunted psyche, manufacturing a dreamscape that I trust myself to be immersed in because it is a deeply personal one. At one point, Ryan Gosling's character even speaks to his two brothers, harking back to his earlier film, The Tree of Life, and undoubtedly a parallel to Malick's own tortured past. There is no doubt that the characters in his films are all important parts of him, but they are also parts of ourselves; and the fact that he opens himself up to us which such sincerity in order to allow ourselves to explore our own pain and regrets, is truly a brave act. Ultimately, Song To Song is a phenomenal experience that, like most of Malick's work, is grounded in memory because he understands that it is never the exact details or conversations that we remember, but the pain, the joy, the sadness, and the fleeting moments that meant the most to us.