Nordling here.
I thought THE TREE OF LIFE was transcendent, still one of the very best films of the year for me. It's not so much a movie as a kind of prayer, and it felt intensely personal; I imagine it must have been a cathartic experience for Terrence Malick to make. Now that he's got that film behind him, Malick seems to be more productive than ever. First, he's still working on that IMAX documentary VOYAGE OF TIME, which was rumored to be a companion piece to THE TREE OF LIFE. It's unclear how far Malick is into that; whether he's still filming, or in post-production, or even if that project is still going forward. Also, not only does he have a film with Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Javier Bardem in the can (possibly titled THE BURIAL), but he's working on two additional films, announced today through FilmNation Entertainment.
The first, titled LAWLESS, will star Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, and Rooney Mara. No word on plot, of course, but I wonder if Malick saw this year's DRIVE and got some ideas. The title hints at something more genre-specific; a Western perhaps? Malick keeps his film plots very close to the vest, but as with TREE OF LIFE, I'm sure nuggets of information will come out.
The second, called KNIGHT OF CUPS, will also star Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett, and will film back-to-back with LAWLESS in 2012. Are these companion pieces? Or separate films? Knowing Malick, it may be a bit of both. His films aren't so much centered on plot, but they are meaningful and profound all the same. Malick was spotted at Austin City Limits shooting footage with Bale and Haley Bennett, but it's unknown for which project.
So that's the IMAX doc, the Affleck/McAdams/Bardem project, LAWLESS, and KNIGHT OF CUPS. For a filmmaker who before TREE OF LIFE only had four other feature films to his credit, that's impressive and really shows Malick as quite the prolific filmmaker after all. I can't wait to see what he has working; I've only seen TREE OF LIFE once, but it's stuck with me since I saw it, and I'm almost intimidated to watch it again. Malick is one of our great American filmmakers and I'm overjoyed to see that he isn't stopping anytime soon.
Nordling, out.
