“You get used to drifting, waiting.” This sleepy bit of narration from Ryan Gosling’s character in Song to Song proves that writer/director Terrence Malick is officially screwing with us. The Austin, TX-set drama centers on a love triangle, which becomes a love square, and then a love pentagon. Even those descriptions are insufficient, as they imply shape and dimension—two of many essential cinematic qualities that come up lacking in Malick’s two-plus-hour assemblage of rehearsal footage, location scouting, and camera tests. As sure as thirteen patrons left the screening I attended, my mind drifted to alternate-universe movies where Rooney Mara’s character stops complaining about life and actually lives it; where Natalie Portman convincingly plays a struggling waitress/teacher; where the minute allotted to Val Kilmer’s crazed rock star becomes a three-hour road picture, co-starring Iggy Pop; and where more holds my attention than a brief game of “Six Degrees of Ridley Scott”.
Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #205 to hear Ian and HollywoodChicago.com's Pat "The Über Critic" McDonald muster a funeral hymn for Song to Song!