Part of Music City Mondays: Morricone x3
With cinematographer Néstor Almendros (COCKFIGHTER, THE WILD CHILD) and composer Ennio Morricone (the films of Sergio Leone, for starters), along with an insistence to shoot during “the golden hour” with mostly natural light, Terrence Malick created what many regard as one of the most strikingly beautiful films ever made. It tells the story of Bill (Richard Gere), an early-1900s Chicago steel mill worker who flees town after accidentally killing a man. In search of a better life, he moves his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and younger sister Linda (Linda Manz, who narrates the film) to the wheat fields of Texas. But they run into tragedy when a wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard) falls for Abby.
“Malick’s directorial gestures wholly meld with the story, as every dramatically tangential stare at the vast 1920 Texas panhandle landscape, like every montage set to Ennio Morricone’s unbearably melancholic score, carries in it the narrative’s mournful, tragic emotional essence. It is, ultimately, nothing more or less than the definitive proof of film’s status as an inherently sensory medium.” —Nick Schager, Slant Magazine “The film places its humans in a large frame filled with natural details: the sky, rivers, fields, horses, pheasants, rabbits. Malick set many of its shots at the ‘golden hours’ near dawn and dusk, when shadows are muted and the sky is all the same tone. These images are underlined by the famous score of Ennio Morricone, who quotes Saint-Saens' ‘Carnival of the Animals.’ The music is wistful, filled with loss and regret.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
