Terrence Malick: Notes on Simplicity

Last year, I had the privilege of working under Terrence Malick during the final year of editing A Hidden Life. While the film’s external plot is deceptively simple, a quiet Austrian farmer stands up against the Nazi party, the story is not. On a personal and cosmic scale, it unearths glossed over truths about a well understood period of history. I love the film, and needless to say, the opportunity to work on it was a privilege I will hold forever dear.

As a long time student of Terry’s aesthetic style,. I was expecting a masterclass on the complex philosophies of art and image making. About color science, art history, and philosophy. I did pick up bits and pieces of this along the way, but my most prized lesson during my time with Terry was something far less sexy: Keep it Simple.

Ever since my initial experiments as a high school filmmaker, but especially since it became my job, I often feel a pressure to impress, to wow with my images.Terry’s films, in their grand, unpredictable beauty seemed to encourage this. The opportunity to learn under him, I thought, would be stepping stone in learning to master the craft of wowing people. However, his philosophy on making images couldn’t be more different. “Like music,” he would often say. “You don’t have to think about the way a chord makes you feel when you hear it. You hear and feel it immediately. Images should be that way.”

While the results are often layered and complex, every morsel in the pot must be a clear, concise, immediate expression. Perhaps it was because we were working on a film about an ordinary farmer, but to me this wisdom is a universal antidote against the disease of Hollywood presentationalism. To look for images, sounds, and performances that are as clear as a note of music, or as simple as the ripple on water.

-Andrew Ellis