Playlist: Days of Heaven & Badlands

I just watched Terrence Malick's films Badlands and Days of Heaven. The reclusive (which really means absent) director will be releasing Tree of Life later this year as his 5th film in a career that spans 40 years. So Malick is a bit like the snob's version of Stanley Kubrick.

I liked Badlands and I liked Days of Heaven...but a little less...what was to be a Playlist on why I liked Days of Heaven less has now changed...I was struck by how Malick is seen as some visionary poet-director who used images and story as an existentialist or transcendent emotional experience...I saw Thin Red Line years ago in the theater and came out bored...sorry, but that's the honest feeling I had...I certainly was not bored by Badlands...but I was having a similar experience watching Days of Heaven...a film about migrant/run away workers in pre-WWI Texas and how a rich farmer falls for Richard Gere's girlfriend. The film has the Malick narration...told by a young lady who has an accent like a 13 year old Red Hook Prostitute..its kind of eerie, but I bet all the intellectuals dig it. Don't get me wrong, Days of Heaven is a good film, shot in beautiful colors and great scenes, it's almost too short, but then again you could watch this film on mute and understand the plot, the dialogue is murky at best, but the art direction by David Lynch veteran Jack Fisk is wonderful. Anyway...at the end of the film I realized that the Philosophy professor (which Malick is or was) hates humans and sees us as invading on the environment...he spends great lengths to show the viewer (In his first 3 films, and I am going out on a limb that Europe invading kind Indians in A New World also falls into my theory) that humans are evil and we are wrong for our failings, and we bring evil to nature...Kubrick on the other hand...and this is just my theory...through his films shows how humans dominate, and good or bad we are in charge...not nature...and that is the order of life...I guess we will see what happens in the Tree of Life...I have a feeling I know just based on the title...Man, I wish Kubrick could have made just a few more films.