Terrence Malick: Film and Philosophy

Terrence Malick's four feature films have been celebrated by critics and adored as instant classics among film aficionados, but the body of critical literature devoted to them has remained surprisingly small in comparison to Malick's stature in the world of contemporary film. Each of the essays in Terrence Malick: Film and Philosophy is grounded in film studies, philosophical inquiry, and the emerging field of scholarship that combines the two disciplines. Malick's films are also open to other angles, notably phenomenological, deconstructive, and Deleuzian approaches to film, all of which are evidenced in this collection. Terrence Malick: Film and Philosophy engages with Malick's body of work in distinct and independently significant ways: by looking at the tradition within which Malick works, the creative orientation of the filmmaker, and by discussing the ways in which criticism can illuminate these remarkable films.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Stuart Kendall and Thomas Deane Tucker Voicing Meaning: On Terrence Malick's Characters Steven Rybin Terrence Malick's Histories of Violence John Bleasdale Rührender Achtung: Terrence Malick's Cinematic Neo-Modernity Thomas Wall Worlding the West: An Ontopology of Badlands Thomas Deane Tucker Fields of Vision: Human Presence in the Plain Landscape of Badlands and Days of Heaven Matthew Evertson The Belvedere and the Bunkhouse: space and place in Days of Heaven Ian Rijsdijk The Tragic Indiscernibility of Days of Heaven Stuart Kendall Darkness from Light: Dialectics and The Thin Red Line Russell Manning Song of the Earth: Cinematic Romanticism in Malick's The New World Robert Sinnerbrink Whereof One Cannot Speak: Terrence Malick's The New World Elizabeth Walden Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Thomas Deane Tucker is Professor of Humanities at Chadron State College. He is the author of Derridada: Duchamp as Readymade Deconstruction. Stuart Kendall teaches Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. He is the author of Georges Bataille and The Ends of Art and Design.

Review :
[A] robust invocation and endorsement of the relation between filmmaking and philosophy … The book is well written and well informed. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. The volume succeeds as an example of multitudinous approach to the philosophy of film, and broadly speaks to readers interested in the relationship between cinema and philosophy as well as the films of Terrence Malick. [...] [It] presents original investigation of a filmmaker whose work has clearly intrigued, yet often also baffled audiences. Terrence Malick: Film and Philosophy provides a wonderfully stimulating range of approaches to Malick's films, unlocking the philosophical depths of the most thoughtful auteur of recent decades. The collection engages Malick's cinematic oeuvre with the works of Heidegger and Cavell as might be expected, but also provocatively deploys Deleuze, Hegel, Marx, Schiller, Derrida and Merleau-Ponty alongside esteemed film theorists like Sobchack and Branigan. As such, this book is at the cutting edge of recent developments in film-philosophy, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. It is also a superb exploration of Malick's most important films as writer and director, from Badlands to The New World. --Dr David Martin-Jones, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of St Andrews, UK