Terrence Malick likes to look with wonder at the universe. The reclusive American filmmaker has taken his time coming to terms with this impulse — compare the more conventional storytelling of earlier films like Badlands with the more abstract gaze of recent films, namely Tree of Life — but he seems to be at ease now, and he’s taking on what could be his most symphonic project yet.
Voyage of Time is, in short, a documentary about everything: a sweeping monument to the history of the universe, replete with the breathtaking phenomenological images of nature that have characterized his more recent work. It evokes the gorgeous wonder of Tree of Life, or of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and by the way, Brad Pitt is narrating it.
It’s been a busy few years for Malick, who spent the past two decades of the last century hiding out in Paris before returning to the screen with the war drama The Thin Red Line. He’s been most productive (and, if you’re the type who likes the abstract philosophical stuff, at his best) this decade: there was Tree of Life in 2011, To The Wonder a year later, and, just last year, Knight of Cups. Voyage of Time will be his first documentary — a project Malick has been dwelling on for nearly 30 years. It will open in IMAX theaters in October.
As with all Malick films, words probably can’t do it proper justice. Watch the trailer above.
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