Song To Song (2017) Movie Review: Frustrating, Maddening and Deeply Beautiful

It is so difficult to not be evoked by anything Terrence Malick directs. He touches a moving frame and it flows like painting, whispers words and they turn into poetry, expose pulsing wounds, and whirl into healing. A meditation in themselves, nearly all his experimental narrations have been transcending barring a mere few. But sadly, that’s where Song To Song finds itself, hanging onto the concepts of wisdom that just can’t be achieved by such paper-thin of a plot.

It happened with To The Wonder, Terrence Malick lost track of his storyline and drifted into tangential themes, sometimes unrelated and often jarring. Song To Song suffers from a similar illness, though, not to the same damaging extent. Set against the Texas music scene, it captures the rise and fall of love, success, and destinies of four individuals whose lives are interlocked in innumerable ways. They float like feathers on the surface of a hurricane, impervious to the violent undercurrents their souls demand and ultimately, fall defenseless in front of the merciless power of love.

With thunderstorm of a star power, Emmanuel Lubezki as cinematographer, and a drifting essence of direction from Malick, what missed the mark is the lack of profundity. When the backdrop itself is music, it’s rather an acoustic shock to see the songs not making the impacts they should as the emotional highs never hit the crescendo. However, Malick takes the shape of a rustic wind and molds his characters through numerous circumstantial blows (caught as if all in a far-away dream) along a gradual arc, so much so, that we witness altered souls when the affair ends.

Of unrequited love, passions that go beyond bones to make holes in souls, hearts that know nothing but unconditional romances and treacherous deceiving, Terrence Malick with Song To Song has crafted yet another disorienting portfolio of individuals sunk knee-deep in betrayal and lost in the chaos of chasing dreams. It’s frustrating, maddening, and yet, resoundingly beautiful.

Also Read: Knight of Cups (2015) Review: A Prince on a Quest

Song to Song (2017) Links: IMDb, Wikipedia

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