Malick marries a self-policing use of lyricism (sunsets as painterly as Monet's, a revolver fired into a placid lake) with continuous dissociations of narration ("We had our bad moments ... at times I wished he'd fall in the river and drown, so I could watch"), dialogue ("What a nice place." "The tree makes it nice." "And the flowers. Let's not pick ‘em"), and music (Orloff's "Musica Poetica" over a burning house, Satie and "Love Is Strange," Nat "King" Cole in the darkness).
Fernando F. Croce
January 1, 2008