David Marchese

Terrence Malick, World War II.

The simplest way of describing it would be Terrence Malick's World War II drama.

But despite being a war film, or maybe because of being a war film, the thing that touched me so deeply was that there was a mysticism in that movie and a transcendental feeling about the natural world and a transcendent visual poetry to that film.

that I hadn't seen in a movie before that, that I just felt connected with so deeply.

And then with Rushmore, there was a combination of alienation and openheartedness that I certainly had been feeling back then.

And then again, just to see it represented so beautifully, like I said, felt like it made me understand something about myself.

A beautiful movie.

I have to tell you a quick little anecdote about Tree of Life.

That's the one that has the flashbacks to like the time of dinosaurs, right?

Yeah.

I remember seeing that movie at the BAM theaters in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

And there was an older couple sitting beside me who I'm sure bought a ticket for that movie because they thought it was just a Brad Pitt movie.

They didn't really understand what they were getting into.

And they were sort of muttering to each other the whole time.

And then there's one scene in that film where like a predator dinosaur puts its foot on the chest of a smaller dinosaur.

Yes.

But then lets the smaller dinosaur go.

Already dying.

It's like the dinosaur has shown an act of mercy.

It's like a pretty wild, wild film.