The cinema of entanglement: how not to contemplate Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, Voyage of Time, and Knight of Cups

ABSTRACT

Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015), and Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey (2016) share a consistent use of theological and metaphysical references in voice-over narration. This paper frames the markedly spiritual and religious connotations of these 2010s films as an expression of a persistent teleological vision of time and history in contemporary settings. It argues that such vision is highly complicated and subverted by the films’ innovative formal and aesthetic elements. The analysis foregrounds the relevance of current scientific and philosophical notions of entanglement in Malick’s films and offers an ecocritical interpretation and application of some of the films’ formal and narrative complexities in contemporary settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Terrence Malick
• film-philosophy
• ecocriticism
• teleology
• entanglement

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks to Ted Geier for his patience, persistence, and thoughtful insights on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Rossouw (2017) reviews and reflects on the following works and film-philosophers: Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit (2004), Clewis (2006), Coplan (2008), Critcheley (2005), Davies (2008a, 2008b), Furstenau and MacAvoy (2007), Kendall (2011), Lehtimäki (2012), Macdonald (2008), Martin (2006), Neer (2011), Plantinga (2010), Pippin (2013), Rybin (2011, 2012), Silberman (2007), Sinnerbrink (2006, 2011a, 2011b), Tucker (2011), Virvidaki (2014); and Walden (2011). Rossouw identifies analysis of precise stylistic devices in the literature (such as photography of landscape and nature; first person voice-over monologue; juxtaposition of image and sound; discontinuous editing; repetition of devices; music; camera movement; and episodic, elliptical narrative) and analysis of stylistic effects (such as elliptical, fragmented or impressionistic aesthetic qualities; experience of incongruity or disorientation; questioning or interrogative modes of presentation; experience of awe, wonder and sublimity, expressions of perspectives, point of view or ways of seeing). Taken together, they enlist and solicit ‘ethically significant effects on the viewer … [and] a contemplative mode of self-transformation’ (284–285, emphasis in original).

2. As an example of such inadequacy, contemporary investigations into quantum physics and astrophysics are based on computational mathematical models as opposed to the analytic methods of applied mathematics.

3. Albert Einstein, in a letter to Max Born in 1947, referred to the notion of entanglement in quantum physics as the theory that ‘cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance’. See Siegfrid’s (2016) article detailing the enduring relevance of quantum entanglement’s ‘spookiness’ in contemporary research, especially the notion that quantum entanglement ‘builds up space-time’ (Van Raamsdonk 2010). In his article, Van Raamsdonk ends his scientific/mathematical calculations with the following evocative and philosophically groundbreaking conclusion: ‘it is fascinating that the intrinsically quantum phenomenon of entanglement appears to be crucial for the emergence of classical spacetime geometry’ (2328).

4. As the most recent examples of this double strand in theology and film studies, see the analysis of Malick’s films in Zocchi (2018) and McKim (2018).

5. The notion of entanglement is gaining momentum in film studies. Creed (2009) links it to the literary and cinematic uncanny in early cinema and Walton (2016) to phenomenological interpretations of Baroque aesthetics in particular films. See also Elsaesser's (2018) conception of the mind-game films and  Buckland’s (2009) conception of the ‘puzzle plot’ (also see note 10).

6. The mise-en scène associated with the father in Knight of Cups constantly displays old furniture, industrial sites and abandoned and dusty offices and workplaces belonging to late twentieth-century aesthetics.

7. As examples of mixed reactions and reviews, see Robey (2016) and Bradshaw (2016). See also volume 39 issue 2 of New England Review (2018), edited by J. M. Tyree.

8. In my extended work on Malick (forthcoming in the series Film Culture in Transition, Amsterdam University Press), I contend that Song to Song breaks exceptional new ground in film aesthetics and poetics. In particular, I suggest further reflection on the philosophical value of Malick’s inclusion of images and sounds of Saturn recorded and sent back to Earth from the Cassini space Mission (2004–2017). Images of Saturn’s moons are disguised under incongruent aesthetic styles, in an early-cinema style fragment and on a screen of a ProTools equipped recording studio. ProTools is a professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) made by AVID. (Thanks to Dr Lachlan Goold for giving a proper name to the sound engineering equipment figuring in Song to Song).

9. Five prolonged cuts at the end of To the Wonder take us back to the Palace of Versailles: the staircase and the fountain of Apollo in the gardens, the statues and the open gate.

10. Religious impetus and accumulation of material wealth share paradoxically similar motives: both are preoccupied with assuring stability and certainty (spiritual and material, respectively) in a world in which change and impermanence are inevitable. See Lehmann (2016).

11. When Father Quintana and Neil meet, there are two broken clocks carefully displayed in the mise-en-scène. In the same extended work mentioned in the previous note, I suggest further analysis of the significance of the recurrent image of the clock in Malick films particularly the reference to a tradition in Naturphilosophie.

12. Such a linear conception of time is embedded in notions of human narratives and storytelling. Complex plots, multiple timelines and complex manipulations of story-time are not uncommon in films. Certainly, the concept of ‘puzzle film’ (Buckland 2009) goes a long way in articulating a non-Aristotelian order of events, or plots, in film poetics (Aristotle 1987). For example, a puzzle film, for Buckland, is not defined by complex plots, but conceptualised as a movement away from causal complexities in films: ‘how do puzzle plots go beyond Aristotle’s definition of the complex plot? … Puzzle films embrace non-linearity, time loops, and fragmented spatio-temporal reality’. As Buckland further notes: ‘a puzzle plot is intricate in the sense that the arrangement of events is not just complex, but complicated and perplexing; the events are not simply interwoven, but entangled’.

13. There are two versions of Voyage of Time. A 45-min version narrated by Brad Pitt Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience, released in IMAX theatres in 2016, and a longer version (90 minutes) narrated by Cate Blanchett, presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2016 and distributed on DVD and online by One Entertainment in 2017.

14. ‘Light bringer’ translates into Latin lux fero.

15. Hamner (2016) notes that water images pervade and ‘saturate the film’s aesthetic canvas’, signifying its deeper religious-symbolic meaning and ‘daimonologic lure and promise of eternity’ (272).