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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith

Movies

Terrence Malick should have quit making movies years ago

If writer-director Terrence Malick had quit working at 70, he would have been forever venerated as one of the cinematic visionaries of his generation on the strength of a legendarily brief but absurdly powerful five-film résumé, including “Badlands” (1973), “The Thin Red Line” (1998) and “The Tree of Life” (2011).

Today, though, Malick, a somewhat reclusive and mysterious figure who once took an unexplained 20-year hiatus from filmmaking, is suffering so much career shrinkage that it’s as if his oeuvre just went skinny-dipping in the Arctic. Cinephiles have gone from pleading, “Please, master, give unto us another chapter of holy writ” to “Whose job is it to tell Granddad he’s dribbling on his bib again?”

Following the duds “To the Wonder” (2013) and “Knight of Cups” (2016), Malick’s latest effort “Song to Song,” which is being released Friday, is a vague, diffuse, irritating flop, a film that falls to the wrong side of the line between artsy and fartsy.

Set in contemporary Austin, Texas, “Song to Song” is an all-star production afflicted with student-film banality. Malick wafts in and out of the lives of a music impresario (Michael Fassbender), a musician he exploits (Ryan Gosling), and the aspiring guitarist (Rooney Mara) the two of them share romantically. Meanwhile, Fassbender’s character is (or was, or will be) involved with a waitress (Natalie Portman) he picks up in a diner.

Malick’s trademarks have decayed into gimmicks. Once again, the film is a plotless series of scenes and images jumping randomly around in time picking up wacky movie behavior (drawing on windows, playfully leading your lover along on a leash, dancing on rooftops). The nonstop narration — whispery bits of interior monologue (mostly delivered by the Mara character, Faye) — sounds like it was written by “The Simpsons” would-be auteur Barney Gumble (“Don’t cry for me, I’m already dead”).

Ben Chaplin and John Cusack in Terrence Malick’s 1998 film “The Thin Red Line.”20th Century Fox Film Corp.

Combining sophomore pretentiousness with obtuse self-pity, Malick serves up scores of vomitous lines, such as “I played with the flame of life,” “I rebelled against goodness” and “Save me from my bad heart,” as his camera roams around like a hotel guest looking for the light switch in an unfamiliar room.

There are glimpses of joyless orgies, dying parents, soul-wracked wandering. The beautiful and tortured climb into private jets, zip around in Porsches, survey their gigantic glass mansions. At times they frolic ironically; other times they sorrowfully nuzzle one another’s crotches. Big names (Cate Blanchett, Val Kilmer) appear in bit parts as though they happened to be visiting the set while cameras were rolling. If you blink (or, more likely, yawn), you’ll miss a lead character’s suicide. (Maybe. It’s hard to say.)

The passion! The anguish! “Can’t you see I hurt?” Malick cries out from the darkness. It’s hard not to reply, “Can’t you see you suck?”