Song to Song (2017)

"This is so stupid", I heard whispered by the last remaining audience member besides me as he got up and walked out of the theater. It's hard to imagine that if he had watched the final 30 minutes of "Song to Song" that he would redact his sentiment. If it was director Terrence Malick's hope to completely cull the already small demographic of people interested in his movies, he has succeeded as far as I can tell. Continuing the fractured, flailing, voice-over laden video collage approach of his last decade's worth of films, "Song to Song" follows Rooney Mara and everyone tangentially related to her romantically while they traverse the Austin music industry. Rooney wears wigs, acts like she can play guitar, talks to Patti Smith, and wanders from lover to lover - chief of whom are Ryan Gosling and Michael Fassbender. Nearly everyone in the film is a pretty hipster, and they all express their love to each other through fidgeting and frolicking around really nice houses and apartments. If you ditch the spiritual subtext of "Knight of Cups" and add more dialogue about relationships, that's this movie in a nutshell. The musical aspect of the film is integral, but glossed over, like a mega mix of the entire South by Southwest festival line-up - literally. If all of this sounds bad to you, by all means, don't watch this film. I can't in good conscience recommend this to anyone but film students. For anyone who can stomach the watch, you are treated to the transient nature of love with all of its triumphs and tribulations, and if you like Malick's "The Tree of Life", you might not hate this.