Director: Terence Malick
Film is a visual art, and the list of directors who truly understand what that means is very small. Terence Malick is one of those visual artists - some of his films fail for me on fundamental levels despite the fact that he never loses sight of the fact that film is a visual art.
It's easy to dismiss this film as solipsistic, pretentious twaddle - the film's insistence on showing a hyper-specific story against the backdrop of the creation of the universe and the entire span of life on Earth feels awfully grandiose. Still, I don't think Malick's point is to trumpet his film's story as the culmination of existence, but as tied to existence as all other things are, sharing in unity, and not discord. Malick is one of our last pre-ironic directors, and while it's easy to beat down his films with irony, I have a feeling this one will stand the test of snickering critics.
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