Terrence Malick’s The Way Of The Wind remains in editing six years on, with his unusual take on the Jesus story showing no sign of release. The career of Terrence Malick is a fascinating one. In the first 20 years of his movie directing life, he made precisely two films, both of them classics. Badlands ... Terrence Malick is struggling with his Wind
Terrence Malick’s The Way Of The Wind remains in editing six years on, with his unusual take on the Jesus story showing no sign of release.
The career of Terrence Malick is a fascinating one. In the first 20 years of his movie directing life, he made precisely two films, both of them classics. Badlands was his debut in 1973, Days Of Heaven following in 1978. Then it’s a two decade wait for 1998’s superb The Thin Red Line. And, seemingly out of nowhere, we then got six films in the 2010s, including The Tree Of Life and 2019’s A Hidden Life.
Also in 2019, Malick started making the film The Way Of The Wind, the nice easy job of, er, making a biblical epic. Having written the script too, the film was shot, with Geza Rohrig playing Jesus Christ and Mark Rylance as Satan. Early signs are that it’s quite a distinct telling of the Jesus story, one that involves nothing in the way of miracles, and something reportedly in the way of, er, wacky baccy instead.
The bigger problem is that Terrence Malick has been in the editing process for the film for a good six years now, and as per a new report at The Telegraph, appears some way away from finishing the movie. Malick was quoted as saying, earlier this year, that the film is “nowhere near finished”, with some 3000 hours of material reportedly shot.
Further voiceover work was reportedly recorded fairly recently for the movie, so The Way Of The Wind is still a going concern. There is the suggestion from headlines around the entertainment press that the movie might not even ever be released. I do wonder though if the biggest challenge might come when it is finished, and someone has to do the marketing campaign. I remember when nuns were protesting against Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ, even though they’d never seen the film. Sounds like they might have a field day with this.
More on The Way Of The Wind as we hear it. By the sounds of it, we might not hear it, but let’s hope the trapped wind problem passes.
