Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 From Myth, Tragedy and Narrative to Allegory , Trauerspiel and Film in Badlands and Days of Heaven
- 2 Time and History in The Thin Red Line and The New World
- 3 Looking at Evolutionary Narratives in The Tree of Life and Voyage of Time
- 4 The Wastelands of Progress in To the Wonder, Knight of Cups and Song to Song
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Index
3 - Looking at Evolutionary Narratives in The Tree of Life and Voyage of Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 From Myth, Tragedy and Narrative to Allegory , Trauerspiel and Film in Badlands and Days of Heaven
- 2 Time and History in The Thin Red Line and The New World
- 3 Looking at Evolutionary Narratives in The Tree of Life and Voyage of Time
- 4 The Wastelands of Progress in To the Wonder, Knight of Cups and Song to Song
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Chapter 3, ‘Looking at Evolutionary Narratives in The Tree of Life and Voyage of Time,’ extends the non-mechanistic and non-organicist vision of Malick's cinematic looking to a precise material-theological approach to evolutionary narratives and discourses in present culture. Malick's cinematic relation to progressive, evolutionary visions of life intervene in current debates about the role of secular natural theologies in evolutionary sciences. Both films engage with concepts of deep time in ways that foreground a cinematic articulation of meanings and the disruption of dualistic thinking and structural binaries. The films’ relation to time deeply affects myth and the binary logic on which the scientific and religious discourses of the films’ narratives elements are predicated.
Keywords: structural dualism; evolutionary science; theology; material theology; now time.
We may assert that the determining force of historical time cannot be fully grasped, or wholly concentrated in, any empirical process. (Benjamin, ‘Trauerspiel and Tragedy’, p. 55)
[…] there are no empirical grounds for distinguishing chance events in history from purposeful ones (Peter Harrison, ‘What is Historical about Natural History?’, p. 15)
The Tree of Life and Voyage of Time: Life's Journey, released in 2011 and 2016 respectively, share a concern with evolutionary themes and narratives, with a similar approach to scientific data and current theories of the evolution of the universe and organic life on planet Earth. Voyage of Time: Life's Journey is clearly a documentary film, while the evolution of life sequence in The Tree of Life is inscribed within the film's bildung narrative and occupies a long central segment of the story. In both films Malick worked with the same creative team supervised by Dan Glass using mixed source material to create visually stunning imagery representing the latest scientific theories in astrophysics, evolutionary biology, paleontology, and other sciences. Both narratives make use of poetic and evocative voice-overs, effectively reconfiguring the nature-culture dichotomy so that nature (in the form of accurate filmic renditions of twenty-first century's scientific theories of evolution) and culture (in the form of human spiritual and existential questionings) are juxtaposed in the unfolding narratives.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Work of Terrence MalickTime-Based Ecocinema, pp. 105 - 128Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019