Set within the world of live music and the people who make it, Terrence Malick’s newest work, Song to Song, trades on Austin cool and affluent chic while lingering over an overlapping set of complex, fraught relationships.
There is a traditional story running along side this one, but Malick shot around it, making an unconventional story that only hints at the full story. It’s a series of vignettes, skipping forward in time, but not in the vein of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts or other films that take several stories and meld them into one. This one picks and chooses what we see and how we see it.
The voice-over work is straight out of Malick’s playbook, and gives glimpses into the thoughts and feelings of its main characters. Rather than being about existential matters of good end evil à la The Thin Red Line, these asides are about people and the way they can delight and hurt each other. It is very much like a poem, not in its structure or form, but in that it needs to be heard more than once. Song to Song will age well upon further viewing.
At this point Malick can use whatever materials he wants to build his toys, and in this case, he chose wisely. He mines all of Austin (and indeed select other parts of Texas) for perfect places for his pieces to play. A scan of the skyline shows Austin moving upward, and Song to Song takes us higher than most other films as the characters live, love, and laugh in living spaces high above the street-level scrum.
Casting proves to be a co-equal branch with aesthetics as the small group of characters push each other to greatness. Rooney Mara is the hub of this wheel, and her Faye is both reticent and enticing. She doesn’t know what to do with her life, or who to do it with. After beginning the film attached to music mogul Cook (Michael Fassbender) she slowly falls for musician BV (Ryan Gosling), who is a part of the same circle. This triangle holds its tension for a long while, but eventually all three go their separate ways.
The second line of characters proves to be as capable as the first. Natalie Portman embodies a small-town beauty beautifully in Rhonda, a waitress Cook gives entrée into his world, though at a high cost. Cate Blanchett’s elegant Amanda becomes the object of BV’s desire, but he can’t handle this seemingly perfect match. Bérénice Marlohe gives Faye a set of loving arms in which to rest as she wrestles with her feelings for BV. It’s an embarrassment of riches from some of the finest actors working today.
As the crew makes its way through Austin’s music festival scene, several well-known faces pop up: Iggy Pop, Johnny Rotten/John Lydon, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. None occupy as prominent a place as Patti Smith, who becomes somewhat of a mother figure to Faye. She speaks of her life (especially the loss of her husband) and gives almost too-sensible advice to Faye, who doesn’t appear ready to hear it. Smith’s segments sing, and two hours of listening to her talk would not be too much.
Malick’s use of Austin is extreme. At the premier hosted by South By Southwest at the Paramount Theatre, Gosling joked that the venue was the only place they hadn’t shot. This hyperbole holds a great truth. The camera zooms from Eastside bars and coffee shops to lakeside estates brimming with wealth and dozens of locales in between. Jaunts to West Texas and Enchanted Rock offer even more Lone Star goodness.
The most striking thing about Malick’s creation is how muted everything is. It’s about music, but only tangentially so. There are world-class actors that hold back at every turn. There’s sex and titillation, but it only barely breaks the surface. Malick is a master of more with less even when working with more.
While the casting and geography of Song to Song could appeal to a wide audience, we’re in acquired-taste territory here. The non-traditional narrative structure, slow pacing, and moments that do nothing but stare at something beautiful will make this a hard sell in megaplex land. Regardless, Song to Song is another in a long string of adventurous, beautiful, challenging works from Malick, and if we’re lucky, we’ll get several more before he’s done.
