University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2012 All Things Shining: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis of Terrence Malick's Films C. Clinton Stivers [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Stivers, C. Clinton, "All Things Shining: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis of Terrence Malick's Films. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2012. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1473 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by C. Clinton Stivers entitled "All Things Shining: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis of Terrence Malick's Films." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Charles J. Maland, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Christine Holmlund, Mary Papke, Allen Dunn Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) All Things Shining: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis of Terrence Malick’s Films A Dissertation Presented for The Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville C. Clinton Stivers August 2012 Copyright © by C. Clinton Stivers All rights reserved ii Dedication For Bradford iii Acknowledgements I am fortunate to have a number of wonderful people to thank for their contribution to the completion of this project. I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to my chair, Dr. Charles J. Maland, for being willing to allow me to tackle a project on Malick and for being most generous with his knowledge, his time, his encouragement, and his support. I would also like to thank him for giving me the opportunity to teach Introduction to Cinema Studies, an experience I have found invaluable. The example Dr. Maland has set as a scholar, a mentor, and a person is inspiring to me. I am eternally grateful for his kindness and understanding. I would also like to thank Dr. Christine Holmlund, who was also an invaluable resource to me with her expertise in film, her insightful and extremely thorough comments, her encouragement, and her enthusiasm for my project. I am most grateful for her service on my committee. I would like to thank Dr. Mary E. Papke for her expert insight and editing, and, finally, I would like to thank Dr. Allen Dunn whose insights on Heidegger helped me to focus my dissertation. I am grateful for my entire committee and their belief in me while I worked on the project. Other members of the English Department have provided advice and guidance to me during my graduate career. I would especially like to thank Dr. Bill Larsen for serving as my mentor in teaching Introduction to Cinema Studies. His vast teaching experience and his support while writing my dissertation (for example, demanding that I wear an orange Bruce Pearl t-shirt every day until I finished my first chapter), were invaluable to me. Most of all, I would like to thank Dr. Kirsten Benson for her support and tough-love throughout the writing process. As a fellow lover of Malick, she helped inspire me to write on him and her conversations with me on his films were invaluable to my project. Kirsten is the best friend anyone could ever have. Georgia Caver was kind enough to employ me in the Thornton Center writing lab, and I found her to be the kindest and most understanding of supervisors. It’s been a pleasure to work for her. I am most grateful to my family for everything they have done for me. I have depended on their patience, encouragement, and love as I completed the program. When I needed to ruminate, complain, cry, or talk crazy, my mom, dad, and sister were there for me. My mother and father’s love and belief in me have kept me going. My sister is my best friend, for whom I am every day thankful. My entire family supported, cared for, and loved me during this project, especially in the worst of times. My family is the best. Finally, I’d like to thank Bradford. The people there saved my life and transformed who I am. iv Abstract This dissertation fills a gap in the scholarship on the films of Terrence Malick by providing a historically based and grounded auteur study that provides a comprehensive examination of his formal and thematic concerns in Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005), and with a coda on The Tree of Life (2011). This auteur study draws on critical approaches to formalism, Hollywood genres, American cultural myths, and the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Each chapter that addresses a specific film opens by historically situating Malick and that film within an industrial and production context that has evolved in response to varying social and cultural forces. Each chapter then includes a close formalist analysis of the film’s narrative and stylistic elements. The focus of the study is an examination of how Malick uses Heideggerian philosophy as an instrument to critique American cultural myths, which he engages by drawing on and revising popular Hollywood genres. Malick’s ontological aesthetic is integral to his critique of American cultural myths, and is influenced by the philosophy of Heidegger, about which he has an intimate understanding, having translated and written an introduction to Heidegger’s The Essence of Reasons before becoming a filmmaker. His aesthetic makes use of a decidedly Heideggerian critique of what Heidegger once called our “destitute times,” in which a Western mode of self-assertion and instrumental thinking has distorted the world, transforming it into objects to be manipulated and consumed. In this mode of self- assertion, says Heidegger and Malick’s films, human beings have become forgetful of v what it means to be human, forgetful of a relation to Being, which connects all human beings. While Heidegger identifies the ancient Greeks as the originators of this Western perspective, Malick engages Heidegger’s work by extending Heidegger’s critique of destitute modern times to American culture and to the cultural myths conveyed by the Hollywood film industry. vi Table of Contents Chapter I: On Decoding Terrence Malick…..…………………………………...…….….1 Chapter II: “Backing Over”: Terrence Malick’s Early Path…………………..…………19 Chapter III: An Architect’s Message Left Unread: Unfolding “Blueprints” and Horizons in Badlands ………………………..……………...…..…..…56 Chapter IV: “Pointing” Toward Horizons in Days of Heaven …………....…………….113 Chapter V: “What’s your name kid?” The Enigmatic Voiceover in The Thin Red Line ……………………………………………...…..…..167 Chapter VI: Rising and Falling in The New World ………………….………………….242 Chapter VII: Coda: The Tree of Life and the Evolving Achievement of Terrence Malick…..…………………………….….…………..296 Bibliography:…………………………………………………………………………...306 Appendices………………………………………………………………………….…..326 Appendix I…………….…………………..………………………………..…………..327 Appendix II……………………………………………………………………………..337 Appendix III……………………………………………….......………………………..341 Appendix IV………………………………………………………………………….....350 Vita……………………………………….……………….……………....…………….365 vii Chapter I On Decoding Terrence Malick The difficulty is not one of decoding him. […] If Heidegger resorts to his own peculiar language, it is because ordinary German does not meet his purposes. If we cannot educate ourselves to his purposes, then clearly his work will look like nonsense. And yet we should not conclude that it is nonsense merely because we are not sure what is to keep us from the conclusion. When it comes to divining Heidegger’s purposes, his arguments and descriptions will not be very helpful […] They assume that we have learned where to look for their relevances—that, paradoxically, we have already gained the “horizon” which Sein und Zeit set out to open for us, namely, the “transcendental horizon of the question about Being”—and that, insofar as we have, we necessarily share his purposes and need not depend on his arguments. -- Terrence Malick, Translator’s Introduction, Martin Heidegger’s The Essence of Reasons (1969: xvii- xviii) “Nobody knows why” (Biskind, GM 255). Nobody knows why director Terrence Malick disappeared, why he abruptly vanished from Hollywood for twenty years, and perhaps even America, after making just two films, Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978), both of which received critical praise for their gorgeous cinematography and innovative voiceover narration. An intensely private man, Malick failed to provide an explanation; he refused interviews and mysteriously dropped out of sight. In the following years, the public desire to know—to divine the reason for Malick’s seemingly peculiar behavior—led to various rumors and tales of his whereabouts, mental and spiritual health, and occupations. In other words, unable to latch onto a reason that could justify Malick’s actions, a narrative developed that described him as a “living abstraction” (Bart 3), a “cinematic Salinger, as silent as Garbo, as evasive as the Fugitive” (Biskind, GM 255). Perhaps because of this, as the years continued to pass, Malick’s reputation acquired evocative power, that of an enigmatic auteur, an “archetypical figure” (Turan 1998) whose legend has become “one of Hollywood’s genuine myths” (Biskind GM 255). 1 “Nobody knows why he came back,” but in the early 1990s, producers Michael Geisler and John Roberdeau announced that Malick would direct a film about World War II, an adaptation of James Jones’s war novel, The Thin Red Line .