As the debate rages on if Terrence Malick‘s recent work matches up to his earlier output (we fall firmly on the side that it’ll be greater appreciated as time goes on), today we have a documentary that explores his process — although, as one might expect, there’s no sight of him across the 90 minutes. Rosy-Fingered Dawn: A Film on Terrence Malick, fittingly named after a description of the goddess of dawn, Aurora, premiered back in 2002 at the Venice Film Festival, but has been hard to find since then.
Hailing from Italy and directed by Luciano Barcaroli, Carlo Hintermann, Gerardo Panichi, and Daniele Villa, it focuses on the making of the three films that had been made then: Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line. Featuring interviews with Jack Fisk, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Sam Shepart, Sissy Spacek, Billy Weber, Haskell Wexler, Elias Koteas, Jim Caviezel, Ennio Morricone, and more of his closet collaborators, it doesn’t quite feel all that cinematic, but it does give an inside look at Malick’s recurring themes of the loss of innocence and finding serenity.
Check out the full documentary below (unfortunately only available in low quality for now) thanks to Cinephilia and Beyond, as well as our discussion of his latest film.
What did you think of the documentary?