The Better Angels (2014)

Film: The Better Angels (2014)
Stars: Diane Kruger, Jason Clarke, Brit Marling, Wes Bentley, Braydon Denney, Cameron Mitchell Williams
Director: A.J. Edwards
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Terrence Malick's films are not for everyone.  For every person who watches something like The Tree of Life or To the Wonder and hails it a masterpiece, there are others who complain that they are the most boring films ever made, a series of postcards strung together by Bach for a couple of hours.  As is evidenced by any number of reviews and articles I've written about the man over the past few years on the blog, my opinion falls in the former camp-I adore Malick in a way I admire few other directors, and consider him to be a genius of the highest regard.  That said, I've never been quite a fan of any of his protogees or his imitators-inevitably it feels like they might get aspects of Malick right, but they always feel like diet or lite versions of what he is trying to accomplish.  Still, though, in my opinion a failed experiment is always more interesting than a decent status quo, and that really is what The Better Angels ends up being: a failed experiment.

(Spoilers Ahead...though this is really well-known history so I don't know that you particularly need to heed this warning) The film is the tale of a young Abraham Lincoln, and his life in the backwoods of Indiana.  In particular, the film focuses on Lincoln's complicated relationships with his father, his mother, and his stepmother.  The film is narrated by Lincoln's cousin Dennis Hanks (and yes, he is a distant relative of Tom Hanks, meaning that Lincoln and Hanks were in fact related, and pretty closely if you subtract out the 150 years or so).  The movie relies heavily on Hanks' narration (more on that in a second) to guide the tale, frequently using this trope to fill the space of black-and-white photography and sparse dialogue.

The film is produced by Malick, and as a result the main character is not Lincoln nor his parents, but really it's the trees and the light that comes through them.  The film doesn't quite have Malick's confidence (perhaps because Emanuel Lubezki wasn't called upon to do the cinematography), and while it has lovely imagery, it never quite enters that position of being particularly bold.  There isn't the dewy wetness of The New World (where everything seems covered in water) or the way To the Wonder espouses the commonplace beauty of something as odd as a herd of cattle or a Sonic station.  And the imagery never seems to mean as much as his directed pictures.  Films like To the Wonder and The New World and especially The Tree of Life use the imagery and sparse narrative to direct a feeling, a thought process toward our opinions on history or love or the meaning of life.  This film lacks that sort of ambition, and it doesn't seem to have the confidence to go for broke in the way that Malick does.

This is particularly evidenced through the narration, which steals away from the film.  The narration is too expositional, explaining what is happening on the screen instead of us trying to reach our own conclusions.  There are higher ideas that could be found here: the complicated ways that one of history's greatest heroes could have ended up becoming more like his father than his stepmother, and the ways that certain attributes from his father leaked into his personage (such as Lincoln's confidence).  However, the narration limits our ability to find our own answers, and instead frequently just points us in the direction, taking away from the "feel" that is so critical to a Malick picture.

As a result of this, the film is better in the second half, when it becomes slightly more conventional, than it is the beginning, where it is more of a wandering camera.  This is when we are introduced to Lincoln's stepmother (Kruger), and we get more of a sense of direction to go along with the narration.  The film ends with his death, and an explanation of how his stepmother became a guiding force in his life right up until the end.  It's a solid ending, even if it seems a tad bit easy for a film that plays so furiously with story structure.

If there's one home run in the film, it isn't specifically the cinematography (which, while gorgeous, is occasionally a bit too angular for its own good), but in the way that the cinematography shapes our look at young Lincoln's world.  With the exception of the final scene, we never get to see outside of young Lincoln's purview, and the film does a strong job of giving us a look at the trees, animals, and waters that the young president called home.  We see the way that that limited perspective inexplicably made such a powerful leader so improbable: how could a man of such tiny means and minimal access to education and to thought go on to lead a nation during its most difficult chapter?  It's this part that makes the film worth pursuing, and this is the portion of the story that Edwards surely should have grounded all of his energy in, because it's so surreal.

I'm a little reluctant to go with two or three stars here (I consider three stars a "thumbs up" to see the film).  I am going to go on the side of recommending an interesting but ultimately slightly unsuccessful film and go with three, though if you cannot stand Malick this is not the place to start.  For those who have seen the film-where would you go?  This is one of those films that seems like barely a blip on the radar screen, so I'm guessing no one I know will see it, so I'm curious to have some discussion toward the picture.