Early life

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. He is the son of Irene (née Thompson; 1912-2011) and Emil A. Malick (1917-2013), a geologist. His paternal grandparents were Assyrian Christian immigrants from Syria and Lebanon. Malick attended St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, Texas, while his family lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Malick had two younger brothers: Chris and Larry. Larry Malick was a guitarist who went to study in Spain with Andrés Segovia in the late 1960s. In 1968, Larry intentionally broke his own hands due to pressure over his musical studies. Their father Emil went to Spain to help Larry, but his son died shortly after, apparently committing suicide. The early death of Malick's younger brother has been explored and referenced in his films The Tree of Life and Knight of Cups.

Malick received a A.B. in philosophy from Harvard College, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1965. He did graduate work at Magdalen College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. After a disagreement with his tutor, Gilbert Ryle, over his thesis on the concept of world in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, Malick left Oxford without a degree. In 1969, Northwestern University Press published Malick's translation of Heidegger's Vom Wesen des Grundes as The Essence of Reasons.

After returning to the United States, Malick taught philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology while freelancing as a journalist. He wrote articles for Newsweek, The New Yorker, and Life.

Film career

Early career

Malick started his film career after earning an MFA from the AFI Conservatory in 1969, directing the short film Lanton Mills. At the AFI, he established contacts with people such as actor Jack Nicholson, longtime collaborator Jack Fisk, and agent Mike Medavoy, who procured for Malick freelance work revising scripts. He wrote an early uncredited draft of Dirty Harry (1971) and Drive, He Said (1971), and is credited with the screenplay for Pocket Money (1972). Under the pseudonym David Whitney, Malick was also co-writer of The Gravy Train (1974). After one of his screenplays, Deadhead Miles (1973), was made into what Paramount Pictures believed was an unreleasable film, Malick decided to direct his own scripts.

1970s

Badlands

Malick's first work as a director was Badlands (1973), an independent film starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as a young couple on a crime spree in the 1950s Midwest. It was influenced by the crimes of convicted teenage spree killer Charles Starkweather. Malick managed to raise the money himself by approaching figures outside the industry, such as doctors and dentists. This resulted in half of the budget, with the other half being raised by executive producer Edward Pressman, and an extra $25,000 from Malick's own personal savings. After a troubled production, which included many crew members leaving half-way through the shoot, Badlands drew raves at its premiere at the New York Film Festival, leading to Warner Bros. buying distribution rights for three times its budget.

Days of Heaven

Malick's second film was the Paramount Pictures produced Days of Heaven (1978), about a love triangle that develops in the farm country of the Texas Panhandle in the early 20th century. Production began in the fall of 1976 in Alberta, Canada, and was shot using primarily only natural light during magic hour. Much like Malick's first feature, Days of Heaven had a lengthy and troubled production, with several of the production crew quitting before the film was finished shooting, mainly due to disagreements over Malick's idiosyncratic directorial style. The film likewise had a troubled post-production phase, as Billy Weber and Malick spent two years editing, during which they experimented with unconventional editing and voice-over techniques once they realized the picture they set out to make was not working. The film was finally released in 1978, and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, as well as the prize for Best Director at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.

Hiatus

Following the release of Days of Heaven, Malick began developing a project for Paramount, titled Q, that explored the origins of life on earth. During pre-production, he suddenly moved to Paris and disappeared from public view for years. During this time, he wrote a number of screenplays, including The English Speaker, about Josef Breuer's analysis of Anna O.; adaptations of Walker Percy's novel The Moviegoer and Larry McMurtry's The Desert Rose; a script about Jerry Lee Lewis; and a stage adaptation of Sansho the Bailiff, which was to be directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda, in addition to continuing work on the Q script. Malick's work on Q eventually became the basis for his 2011 film, The Tree of Life. Longtime production designer on Malick's films Jack Fisk says that he was shooting film during this time as well.

Return to cinema

The Thin Red Line

Twenty years after Days of Heaven, Malick returned to film directing in 1998 with The Thin Red Line, a loose adaptation of the James Jones' World War II novel of the same name, for which he gathered a large ensemble of famous stars. Filming took place predominantly in the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland, Australia, and the Solomon Islands. Upon release the film received critical acclaim, was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and won the Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival,.

Those rambling philosophical voiceovers; the placid images of nature, offering quiet contrast to the evil deeds of men; the stunning cinematography, often achieved with natural light; the striking use of music - here is a filmmaker with a clear sensibility and aesthetic who makes narrative films that are neither literary nor theatrical, in the sense of foregrounding dialogue, event, or character, but are instead principally cinematic, movies that suggest narrative, emotion, and idea through image and sound.

Chris Wisniewski about Days of Heaven and The New World

The New World

After learning of Malick's work on an article about Che Guevara during the 1960s, Steven Soderbergh offered Malick the chance to write and direct a film about Guevara that he had been developing with Benicio del Toro. Malick accepted and produced a screenplay focused on Guevara's failed revolution in Bolivia. After a year and a half, the financing had not come together entirely, and Malick was given the opportunity to direct The New World, a script he had begun developing in the 1970s. He left the Guevara project in March 2004. Soderbergh directed Che (2008). The New World, which featured a romantic interpretation of the story of John Smith and Pocahontas in the Virginia Colony, was released in 2005. Over one million feet of film was shot, and three different cuts of varying length were released. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, but received generally mixed reviews during its theatrical run. It has since been hailed as one of the best films of the decade.

More than any other active filmmaker, Mr. Malick belongs in the visionary company of homegrown romantics like Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and James Agee. The definitive writings of these authors did not sit comfortably or find universal favor in their own time. They can still seem ungainly, unfinished, lacking polish and perfection. This is precisely what makes them alive and exciting: Moby-Dick, Leaves of Grass, The Bridge and A Death in the Family lean perpetually into the future, pushing their readers forward toward a new horizon of understanding.

A. O. Scott in review of The Tree of Life

2010s

The Tree of Life

Malick's fifth feature, The Tree of Life, was filmed in Smithville, Texas, and elsewhere during 2008. Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Sean Penn, it is a family drama spanning multiple time periods; it focuses on an individual's reconciling love, mercy and beauty with the existence of illness, suffering and death. It premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Palme d'Or. It also won the FIPRESCI Award for the Best Film of the Year. At the 84th Academy Awards, it was nominated for three awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director for Malick, and Best Cinematography for Emmanuel Lubezki. A limited theatrical release in the United States began on May 27, 2011.

To the Wonder

Malick's sixth feature, titled To the Wonder, was shot predominately in Bartlesville, Oklahoma; a few scenes were filmed in Pawhuska, Oklahoma and at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. The film premiered at the 69th Venice International Film Festival. It is described in the program notes as "an exploration of love in its many forms". The film stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko, and Javier Bardem.

Knight of Cups and Weightless

On November 1, 2011, Filmnation Entertainment announced international sales for Malick's next two projects: Lawless (now re-titled Weightless) and Knight of Cups. Lawless would star Ryan Gosling, with a supporting cast including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Haley Bennett. Knight of Cups would star Bale, and also feature Blanchett, along with Isabel Lucas. The films were shot back-to-back in 2012.

During the weekend of September 16, 2011, Malick was photographed and caught on film while on set for one of the first times ever, while he and a small crew were following Christian Bale and Haley Bennett around the Austin City Limits Music Festival as part of preliminary shooting for Weightless. He was also seen directing Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara at the Fun Fun Fun Fest on the weekend on November 4, 2011. In early 2012, the title Lawless was given to The Weinstein Company's Lawless, leaving Malick's project untitled. It was announced in March 2015 that the film's new title was Weightless.

Knight of Cups was released in 2015, and has been considered more divisive than The Tree of Life and To the Wonder and Malick's most experimental film yet.

During post-production on these two pictures, Malick was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in June 2012.

Voyage of Time

Concurrent with these two features, Malick has been working on an IMAX documentary, titled Voyage of Time. The Hollywood Reporter described it as "a celebration of the Earth, displaying the whole of time, from the birth of the universe to its final collapse." The film expands on the footage that special effects luminaries Douglas Trumbull (2001) and Dan Glass (The Matrix) created for The Tree of Life. Brad Pitt was signed to do the narration. Footage from the film was screened for investors at the Cannes Film Festival and world sales rights were later picked up by The Wild Bunch. Voyage of Time will have it's US IMAX release on October 7.

Personal life

Malick is famously protective of his private life. His contracts stipulate that his likeness may not be used for promotional purposes, and he routinely declines requests for interviews.

From 1970 to 1976, Malick was married to Jill Jakes. His companion afterward in the late 1970s was director and screenwriter Michie Gleason. In 1985 in France, he married Michèle Marie Morette, whom he met in Paris in 1980; in 1996, Malick asked for a divorce, which was granted. Afterward he married Alexandra "Ecky" Wallace, his high-school sweetheart. Malick's relationship with Michèle Marie Morette and Alexandra Wallace was explored in the semi-autobiographical To the Wonder (2012).

As of at least 2011, Malick resides in Austin, Texas.

Filmography

Main article: Terrence Malick filmography

• Badlands (1973)
• Days of Heaven (1978)
• The Thin Red Line (1998)
• The New World (2005)
• The Tree of Life (2011)
• To the Wonder (2012)
• Knight of Cups (2015)
• Voyage of Time (2016)
• Weightless (upcoming)

Awards and nominations

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Terrence Malick

[ Source: Wikipedia ]