“Back in Black,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Welcome to the Jungle,” and Other Classic Rock Songs Played on Traditional Japanese Instruments

in Music | June 12th, 2018

Name any clas­sic rock band — or maybe any band, peri­od — and you can rest assured that their biggest, most obses­sive fan lives in Japan. Though it pos­sess­es a native musi­cal cul­ture of its own, with a rich his­to­ry and a dis­tinc­tive set of aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, that coun­try has also cul­ti­vat­ed great enthu­si­asm for the music of oth­er lands. Just as 21st-cen­tu­ry Japan con­tin­ues to pro­duce mas­ters of such tra­di­tion­al instru­ments as the stringed koto, the bam­boo shakuhachi flute, and the taiko drum, it also con­tin­ues to pro­duce increas­ing­ly all-know­ing, all-col­lect­ing fol­low­ers of bands like AC/DC, Guns N’ Ros­es, and Led Zep­pelin.

Sel­dom have those cur­rents of Japan’s music world had a venue to reli­ably meet — or at least it had­n’t before the advent of NHK Blends. Pro­duced by NHK World, the inter­na­tion­al chan­nel of Japan­ese nation­al broad­cast­er NHK, the show offers per­for­mances of well-known West­ern songs, usu­al­ly rock and pop hits, inter­pret­ed with tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese instru­ments played in tra­di­tion­al set­tings by musi­cians in tra­di­tion­al dress.

Here we’ve embed­ded NHK Blends’ ren­di­tions of “Back in Black,” “Stair­way to Heav­en,” and “Wel­come to the Jun­gle,” and on their videos page you can find many more: Michael Jack­son’s “Smooth Crim­i­nal” and “Beat It,” Toto’s “Africa,” and the Bea­t­les’ “Let It Be.”

Those all rank among NHK Blends’ most pop­u­lar videos, hav­ing racked up hun­dreds of thou­sands and even mil­lions of views. This sug­gests that, no mat­ter how many count­less times we hear these songs on the car radio, at the gym, or while gro­cery-shop­ping, a suf­fi­cient­ly rad­i­cal re-inter­pre­ta­tion can still breathe new life into them. Some per­for­mances pull off extra dimen­sions of cul­tur­al trans­po­si­tion: the NHK Blends ver­sion of “Misir­lou,” for instance, takes a tra­di­tion­al piece of music from the East­ern Mediter­ranean and inter­prets it for the kokyo, a stringed instru­ment that orig­i­nal­ly came to Japan from Chi­na. Or rather, it inter­prets French gui­tarist Jean-Pierre Danel’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “surf gui­tar” king Dick Dale’s famous ver­sion from 1961. Close your eyes and you can very near­ly imag­ine the samu­rai pic­ture Quentin Taran­ti­no some­how has­n’t yet made.

See the full list of songs here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Bowie/Nirvana’s “The Man Who Sold The World” Played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an Instru­ment from the 6th Cen­tu­ry

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s Ver­sion of “Lit­tle Wing” Played on Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment, the Gayageum

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Anthony Bourdain’s Free Show, Raw Craft Where He Visits Craftsmen Making Guitars, Tattoos, Motorcycles & More (RIP)

in Food & Drink, Travel | June 11th, 2018

Why has food become such an object of inter­est in recent years? One pos­si­ble expla­na­tion is that it rep­re­sents one of the last pur­suits still essen­tial­ly untouch­able by dig­i­tal cul­ture: for all you can write about and pho­to­graph food for the inter­net, you can’t actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence it there. Food, in oth­er words, means phys­i­cal­i­ty, dex­ter­i­ty, sen­si­bil­i­ty, and hand-crafts­man­ship in a con­crete, vis­cer­al way that, in the 21st, cen­tu­ry, has come to seem increas­ing­ly scarce. But anoth­er, short­er expla­na­tion sums the phe­nom­e­non up, just as plau­si­bly, in two words: Antho­ny Bour­dain.

Ever since he first entered the pub­lic eye at the end of the 1990s, late chef-writer-trav­el­er-tele­vi­sion host taught a read­ing, and lat­er view­ing pub­lic to appre­ci­ate not just food but all that goes into food: the ingre­di­ents, sure, the intense train­ing and labor, of course, but most of all the many and var­ied cul­tur­al fac­tors that con­verge on a meal. Bour­dain found robust cul­tures every­where, those that devel­oped cart-filled streets of cities across the world to the kitchens of the most unas­sum­ing-look­ing restau­rants and every­where in between. He deeply respect­ed not just those ded­i­cat­ed to the mak­ing and serv­ing of food, but those ded­i­cat­ed to crafts of all kinds.

Bour­dain’s nat­ur­al kin­ship with all crafts­men and craftswomen made him a nat­ur­al choice to car­ry Raw Craft, a web series spon­sored by the Bal­ve­nie, a pop­u­lar-pre­mi­um brand of Scotch whisky. In its four­teen episodes (each of which finds a way to fea­ture a bot­tle of the Bal­ve­nie), Bour­dain goes char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly far and wide to vis­it the stu­dios and work­shops of real peo­ple mak­ing real suits, shoes, sax­o­phones, drums, gui­tars, hand­print­ed books, fur­ni­ture, motor­cy­cles, and “tra­di­tion­al­ly fem­i­nine objects.” That last may break some­what from Bour­dain’s swag­ger­ing, mas­cu­line-if-not-macho image, but as the series’ host he dis­plays a good deal of enthu­si­asm for the sub­ject of each episode, includ­ing the trip to the spon­sor’s own dis­tillery in Dufftown, Scot­land.

Nat­u­ral­ly, Bour­dain can engage on a whole oth­er lev­el in the episodes about food and food-relat­ed objects, such as pas­tries and hot choco­late, kitchen knives, and, in the video at the top of the post, cast-iron skil­lets. Ever the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry observ­er, he fin­ish­es that last by prepar­ing steak au poivre with one of the work­shop’s own skil­lets on the flame of its own skil­let-forg­ing fur­nace. He takes it a step fur­ther, or sev­er­al, in the episode with Japan­ese tat­too artist Takashi where, despite “run­ning out of room” on his own much-tat­tooed skin, he com­mis­sions one more: a mag­nif­i­cent blue chrysan­the­mum on his shoul­der, drawn and inked with only the most time-hon­ored tools and tech­niques.

We even, dur­ing one of Bour­dain’s ink-receiv­ing ses­sions with Takashi, glimpse a true crafts­man-to-crafts­man con­ver­sa­tion­al exchange. Bour­dain asks Takashi about some­thing he’s seen all of the many times he’s been on the tat­too­ing table: a junior artist will approach to watch and learn from the way a senior one works. Takashi, who had to go through a minor ordeal just to con­vince his own mas­ter to take him on as an appren­tice, con­firms both the uni­ver­sal­i­ty and the impor­tance of the prac­tice: “If you stop learn­ing, you are pret­ty much done, you know?” Bour­dain, who could only have agreed with the sen­ti­ment, lived it to the very end. “I’d like it to last as long as I do,” he says of his Takashi tat­too — “Which ain’t that long,” he adds, “but long enough, I hope.” But sure­ly no amount of time could ever sat­is­fy a culi­nary, cul­tur­al, and intel­lec­tu­al appetite as prodi­gious as his.

You can watch the com­plete series of Raw Craft videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

Japan­ese Crafts­man Spends His Life Try­ing to Recre­ate a Thou­sand-Year-Old Sword

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Brooklyn–Based Mak­ers of Arti­sanal Water Let You Sip From America’s Great Cul­tur­al Waters

David Rees Presents a Primer on the Arti­sanal Craft of Pen­cil Sharp­en­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Plate Tectonic Evolution of the Earth Over 500 Million Years: Animated Video Takes You from Pangea, to 250 Million Years in the Future

in Maps, Science | June 11th, 2018

Christo­pher R. Scotese, a geol­o­gist affil­i­at­ed with North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, has cre­at­ed an ani­ma­tion show­ing “the plate tec­ton­ic evo­lu­tion of the Earth from the time of Pangea, 240 mil­lion years ago, to the for­ma­tion of Pangea Prox­i­ma, 250 mil­lion years in the future.” The blurb accom­pa­ny­ing the video on Youtube adds:

The ani­ma­tion starts with the mod­ern world then winds it way back to 240 mil­lion years ago (Tri­as­sic). The ani­ma­tion then revers­es direc­tion, allow­ing us to see how Pangea rift­ed apart to form the mod­ern con­ti­nents and ocean basins. When the ani­ma­tion arrives back at the present-day, it con­tin­ues for anoth­er 250 mil­lion years until the for­ma­tion of the next Pangea, “Pangea Prox­i­ma”.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle pub­lished by NASA back in 2000, Scote­se’s visu­al­iza­tion of the future is some­thing of an edu­cat­ed “guessti­mate.”  “We don’t real­ly know the future, obvi­ous­ly,” he says. “All we can do is make pre­dic­tions of how plate motions will con­tin­ue, what new things might hap­pen, and where it will all end up.” You can see his pre­dic­tions play out above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Map Shows Where Today’s Coun­tries Would Be Locat­ed on Pangea

Paper Ani­ma­tion Tells Curi­ous Sto­ry of How a Mete­o­rol­o­gist The­o­rized Pan­gaea & Con­ti­nen­tal Drift (1910)

View and Down­load Near­ly 60,000 Maps from the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS)

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The Ancient Astronomy of Stonehenge Decoded

in Architecture, Astronomy, History | June 11th, 2018

The sum­mer sol­stice draws nigh, and many of us will spend it bemoan­ing the fact that we have yet again failed to make it to Stone­henge to view the sun ris­ing over its mas­sive Heel Stone.

Don’t beat your­self up too bad­ly.

Accord­ing to Vox’s Senior Edi­to­r­i­al Pro­duc­er Joss Fong, above, it’s like­ly that the win­ter sol­stice was actu­al­ly a far big­ger deal to the Neolith­ic builders who engi­neered the site.

While much of it is now in ruins, arche­ol­o­gists, his­to­ri­ans, astronomers, and oth­er experts have been able to recon­struct what the ancient mon­u­ment would have looked like in its hey­day. The place­ment of the mas­sive stones in care­ful­ly arranged con­cen­tric cir­cles sug­gest that its feats of astron­o­my were no acci­dent.

As Fong points out, the builders would not have known that the earth trav­els around the sun, nor that it tilts on its ver­ti­cal axis, thus effect­ing where the sun’s rays will strike through­out the year.

They would, how­ev­er, have had good cause to mon­i­tor any nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na as it relat­ed to their agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices.

The sum­mer sol­stice would have come at the height of their grow­ing sea­son, but if this year’s sun­rise cel­e­brants spin 180 degrees, they will be fac­ing in the same direc­tion as those ancient builders would have when they arrived to cel­e­brate the win­ter sol­stice with a sun­set feast.

These days, the win­ter sol­stice attracts a siz­able num­ber of tourists, along with neo-druids, neo-pagans, and Wic­cans.

Bun­dle up and join them, take a vir­tu­al tour, or at the very least, try your hand at assem­bling the nifty Aedes-Ars Stone­henge Mod­el Kit Fong glues togeth­er like a pro.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Artist Vis­its Stone­henge in 1573 and Paints a Charm­ing Water­col­or Paint­ing of the Ancient Ruins

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her solo show Nurse!, in which one of Shakespeare’s best loved female char­ac­ters hits the lec­ture cir­cuit to set the record straight opens June 12 at The Tank in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Nirvana Refuses to Play ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ After the Crowd Hurls Sexist Insults at the Opening Act (Buenos Aires, 1992)

in Music | June 11th, 2018

“Anger is an ener­gy,” shouts John Lydon, aka John­ny Rot­ten, on Pub­lic Image Limited’s “Rise,” the 1986 sin­gle writ­ten in reac­tion to Apartheid South African and North­ern Irish inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques. In typ­i­cal fash­ion, Lydon suc­cinct­ly sums up the motive force of punk, in a song, as he told MTV’s Kevin Seal, about “all kinds of tor­ture,” which “doesn’t real­ly achieve any­thing. Vio­lence doesn’t real­ly achieve any­thing.”

Some angry ener­gy cre­ates, and some does noth­ing but destroy. A few years lat­er, Nir­vana brought the angry ener­gy of punk back into main­stream con­scious­ness, with a front­man who spoke out fre­quent­ly against sex­ism and sex­ist vio­lence. In 1992, the band—already a glob­al phe­nom­e­non after the release of Nev­er­mind and the explo­sive suc­cess of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”—per­formed a par­tic­u­lar­ly pissed-off-yet-cre­ative live set. They did so in reac­tion to a wave of abuse hurled at their open­ing act by a crowd of 50,000 in Buenos Aires.

“We brought this all-girl band over from Port­land called Calami­ty Jane,” Kurt Cobain lat­er remem­bered. “Dur­ing their entire set, the whole audi­ence… was throw­ing mon­ey and every­thing out of their pock­ets, mud and rocks, just pelt­ing them. Even­tu­al­ly the girls stormed off cry­ing. It was ter­ri­ble, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, such a mass of sex­ism all at once.”

Enraged, Cobain threat­ened to can­cel, but was talked out of it by bassist Krist Novasel­ic. Instead, the band took the stage and “open­ly mocked the audi­ence,” writes Alex Young at Con­se­quence of Sound, “by play­ing most­ly rar­i­ties and the back­end of Nev­er­mind.” Cobain at least man­aged to turn the ugly moment into a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence for his band.

We end­ed up hav­ing fun, laugh­ing at them (the audi­ence). Before every song, I’d play the intro to ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ and then stop. They didn’t real­ize that we were protest­ing against what they’d done. We played for about forty min­utes, and most of the songs were off Inces­ti­cide, so they didn’t rec­og­nize any­thing. We wound up play­ing the secret noise song (‘End­less, Name­less’) that’s at the end of Nev­er­mind, and because we were so in a rage and were just so pissed off about this whole sit­u­a­tion, that song and whole set were one of the great­est expe­ri­ences I’ve ever had.

The whole show was cap­tured on film by a pro­fes­sion­al crew, and you can watch it above to see what the expe­ri­ence was like for the audi­ence. The open­ing track, “Nobody Knows I’m New Wave,” is “one of only a hand­ful of Nir­vana songs,” notes Young, “nev­er to be released. Nir­vana archivists the­o­rize the impromp­tu jam was made up on the spot.”

You’ll also see from the track­list below that Cobain “was mis­re­mem­ber­ing or embell­ish­ing a bit here and there,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds. “While they did unearth a hand­ful of rar­i­ties from their odds-n-ends col­lec­tion Ins­es­ti­cide… as well as ‘All Apolo­gies’ (it lat­er turned up on In Utero)… they also played most of Nev­er­mind.” Nonethe­less, we can see the show, with its abra­sive open­ing jam (“I promise to shit on your head”) as an attempt to both alien­ate obnox­ious fans and turn rage into a cre­ative force.

Setlist:
Nobody Knows I’m New Wave
Aneurysm
Breed
Drain You
Beeswax
Spank Thru
School
Come as You Are
Lithi­um
Lounge Act
Sliv­er
About a Girl
Pol­ly
Jam
In Bloom
Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Piss­ings
Been a Son
On a Plain
Neg­a­tive Creep
Blew

Encore:
All Apolo­gies
End­less, Name­less

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Nirvana’s Last Con­cert: Audio/ Video Record­ed on March 1, 1994

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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David Bowie Memorialized in Traditional Japanese Woodblock Prints

in Art, Life, Music | June 8th, 2018

The East beck­ons me — Japan — but I’m a bit wor­ried that I’ll get too Zen there and my writ­ing will dry up. — David Bowie, 1980

David Bowie’s long­stand­ing fas­ci­na­tion with Japan per­vad­ed his work, becom­ing the gate­way through which many of his fans began to explore that country’s cul­tur­al tra­di­tions and aes­thet­ics.

Per­haps the entry point is design­er Kan­sai Yamamoto’s Zig­gy Star­dust togs, Yukio Mishima’s 1963 nov­el The Sailor Who Fell from Grace from the Sea—one of Bowie’s top 100 books—or the 1000s of images pho­tog­ra­ph­er Masayoshi Suki­ta cap­tured of the rock­er over a peri­od of four decades.

Maybe it was Aladdin Sane’s kabu­ki-like make­up or direc­tor Nag­isa Oshi­ma’s World War II dra­ma,  Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr. Lawrence, in which Bowie played a British offi­cer in a Japan­ese POW camp.

The recent release of two mod­ern ukiyo‑e wood­block prints fea­tur­ing the rock­er has caused such mass swoon­ing among legions of Japanophile Bowie fans, the rever­ber­a­tions may well be pow­er­ful enough to ring tem­ple bells in Kyoto.

For each print, artist Masu­mi Ishikawa casts Bowie as both him­self and an icon­ic Japan­ese fig­ure.

In the image at the top of the page, Bowie’s Aladdin Sane assumes the pose of the cen­tral char­ac­ter in Edo Peri­od artist Uta­gawa Kuniyoshi’s Kidô­maru and the Ten­gu, below.

The oth­er print relo­cates the dash­ing Bowie from Ter­ry O’Neill’s Dia­mond Dogs pub­lic­i­ty pho­tos to the realm of magi­cian Takeza­wa Toji, whose spin­ning top per­for­mances had the pow­er to sum­mon drag­ons, at least as depict­ed by Kuniyoshi.

The prints were ordered by the Ukiyo‑e Project, whose mis­sion is to por­tray today’s artists and pop icons on tra­di­tion­al wood­block prints. (Bowie fol­lows pre­vi­ous hon­orees Kiss and Iron Maid­en.)

The prints and the blocks from which the impres­sions were made will be on dis­play at BOOKMARC in Tokyo’s Omote­san­do neigh­bor­hood from June 23 to July 1.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

Spe­cial David Bowie Metro­Cards Get Released in New York City

The Peri­od­ic Table of David Bowie: A Visu­al­iza­tion of the Sem­i­nal Artist’s Influ­ence and Influ­ences

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and Bowie fan.  Her solo show Nurse!, in which one of Shakespeare’s best loved female char­ac­ters hits the lec­ture cir­cuit to set the record straight opens June 12 at The Tank in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Steve Martin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Einstein & Picasso in a Smart Comedy Routine

in Comedy, Math, Physics | June 8th, 2018

Back in 2002, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor Robert Osser­man chat­ted with come­di­an and ban­jo play­er extra­or­di­naire Steve Mar­tin in San Francisco’s Herb­st The­atre. The event was called “Fun­ny Num­bers” and it was intend­ed to deliv­er an off-kil­ter dis­cus­sion on math. Boy did it deliv­er.

The first half of the dis­cus­sion was loose and relaxed. Mar­tin talked about his writ­ing, ban­jos and his child­hood inter­est in math. “In high school, I used to be able to make mag­ic squares,” said Mar­tin. “I like any­thing kind of ‘jumbly.’ I like ana­grams. What else do I like? I like sex.”

Then Robin Williams, that man­ic ball of ener­gy, showed up. As you can see from the five videos through­out this post, the night quick­ly spi­raled into com­ic mad­ness.

They riffed on the Osbournes, Hen­ry Kissinger, num­ber the­o­ry, and physics. “Schrödinger, pick up your cat,” barks Williams at the end of a par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired tear. “He’s alive. He’s dead. What a pet!”

When Mar­tin and Williams read pas­sages from Martin’s hit play, Picas­so at the Lapin Agile Williams read his part at dif­fer­ent points as if he were Mar­lon Bran­do, Peter Lorre and Elmer Fudd. At anoth­er time, Williams and Mar­tin riffed on the num­ber zero. Williams, for once act­ing as the straight man, asked Osser­man, “I have one quick ques­tion, up to the Cru­sades, the num­ber zero did­n’t exist, right? In West­ern civ­i­liza­tion.” To which Mar­tin bel­lowed, “That is a lie! How dare you imply that the num­ber zero…oh, I think he’s right.”

The videos are weird­ly glitchy, though the audio is just fine. And the com­e­dy is com­plete­ly hilar­i­ous and sur­pris­ing­ly thought pro­vok­ing.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Sep­tem­ber, 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Mar­tin Writes Song for Hymn-Deprived Athe­ists

Watch Steve Mar­tin Make His First TV Appear­ance: The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour (1968)

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

Ein­stein Explains His Famous For­mu­la, E=mc², in Orig­i­nal Audio

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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A Deep Study of Terence Malick’s Filmography

in Film | June 8th, 2018

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured the Direc­tors Series, the ever-expand­ing col­lec­tion of video essays that seeks out the essence of the auteurs of our time by close­ly exam­in­ing their entire fil­mo­gra­phies. So far, the series’ cre­ator Cameron Beyl has taken on the work of Stan­ley Kubrick, the Coen Broth­ers, David Finch­er, Paul Thomas Ander­son, and Christo­pher Nolan — all titans of cin­e­ma, and with the excep­tion of the last, all Amer­i­can. Giv­en that appar­ent cul­tur­al incli­na­tion, Beyl’s choice of a sub­ject for the just-begun cur­rent chap­ter of the Direc­tors Series fol­lows nat­u­ral­ly: that uncom­pro­mis­ing Amer­i­can tran­scen­den­tal­ist of the sil­ver screen, Ter­rence Mal­ick.

It also makes good sense to focus on Mal­ick now, giv­en that he’s spent the past few years in a peri­od of sur­pris­ing late-career pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. After estab­lish­ing the film­mak­er’s iden­ti­ty and main themes as well as giv­ing a sketch of his col­or­ful (and often only sparse­ly doc­u­ment­ed) life, Beyl uses his first episode on Mal­ick to get into his “crimes of pas­sion” movies, his 1973 debut Bad­lands and its 1978 fol­low-up Days of Heav­en.

The lat­ter seems to have solid­i­fied in the cin­e­mat­ic con­scious­ness many of the basic ele­ments of Mal­ick­’s style, includ­ing hushed yet often grand­ly philo­soph­i­cal nar­ra­tion; a wor­ship­ful, even reli­gious view of the nat­ur­al world; and a relent­less expan­sion of his own visu­al lan­guage. But though the film won Mal­ick a Best Direc­tor award at Cannes, he did­n’t make anoth­er movie for twen­ty years.

After return­ing to film­mak­ing in 1998 with the James Jones-adapt­ing World War II pic­ture The Thin Red Line, Mal­ick appeared to pick up right where he left off: The New World, his inter­pre­ta­tion of John Smith’s encounter with Poc­a­hon­tas, came in 2005, fol­lowed by 2011’s Palme d’Or-win­ning The Tree of Life. That film, deeply per­son­al in its depic­tion of an Amer­i­can child­hood in the 1940s and even more deeply per­son­al in its zoom out to the cos­mic scale, reveals as much about Mal­ick­’s obses­sions as any­thing he’s done. Yet the star­tling­ly many pic­tures he has direct­ed since — the impro­vised roman­tic dra­ma To the Wonder, the Los Ange­les odyssey Knight of Cups, the his­to­ry-of-the-uni­verse doc­u­men­tary Voy­age of Time, the exper­i­men­tal musi­cal Song to Song, and his upcom­ing return to WWII Rade­gund — tell us, as Beyl will show, that his cin­e­mat­ic explo­rations have many more awe-inspir­ing places still to take us.

Watch Part 1 of the Mal­ick study above. Find future parts on the Direc­tors Series Vimeo page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Direc­tors Series” Presents Free Immer­sive Stud­ies of Stan­ley Kubrick, the Coen Broth­ers, David Finch­er, Paul Thomas Ander­son & Christo­pher Nolan

Video Essay­ist Kog­o­na­da Makes His Own Acclaimed Fea­ture Film: Watch His Trib­utes to Its Inspi­ra­tions Like Ozu, Lin­klater & Mal­ick

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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