In the build-up to Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, you might consider (a) embarking on a rigorous course of fasting and prayer and (b) rewatching his four earlier features on the big screen. Because for all Malick's pointy-headed, Pynchonesque allusiveness, it's the sheer cinematic sensationalism of his work that puts it over: the chilling ambiguity of the landscape in Badlands, the tactile beauty of the elements in Days of Heaven, the dreamlike soundscape on the road from Eden to the inferno and back in the battle epic The Thin Red Line, and the quivering awe of an even more Edenic landscape in The New World (pictured). The brilliant critic and certifiable Malick nut Matt Zoller Seitz will introduce four screenings, one for each film.
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