Station Zero

'The images and acting are beguiling, but the absence of narrative drive means that if the spell falters, Malick loses his hold on us. As with Andrei Tarkovsky, I watch his films in a heightened state of excitement and drowsiness. A great revelation is about to manifest itself, yet I fear I will fall asleep and miss it. Malick and Tarkovsky dare to engage with the metaphysical. They have taken film to the very edge of what is possible.’    John Boorman, Conclusions When I was a teenager, just getting interested in cinema, there were two Terrence Malick films. They were Badlands and Days of Heaven , and they were both superb. If you don’t know Malick’s work and this post inspires you to give it a try they are still probably the best place to start - they’re among the best American films of the 1970s, and the ‘70s was a very good decade for American films. But that was it: after Days of Heaven , Malick vanished. It seemed as if, having made his two masterpieces, he had...