The movie Wim Wenders called the 21st century’s first masterpiece: “It’s been completely neglected”
There’s no set definition of what makes a movie a masterpiece, but having made at least one of his own, Wim Wenders is allowed to bestow that honour upon any film he pleases.
Unfortunately, there are nowhere near enough people who’d be able to decide whether he was accurate because the picture in question was only a modest box office success. Not only that, but it turned out to be as divisive as it was polarising, which means it’s a can of worms waiting to be opened.
What can’t be argued is that much like Wenders, Terrence Malick also has at least one masterpiece to his name. It could have been a lot more if he’d ever shown any inclination to be anything approaching prolific, even if he appears to have been making up for lost time in recent years.
The enigmatic auteur captured attention and imaginations with Days of Heaven and Badlands, only to take a 20-year sabbatical before returning with The Thin Red Line in 1998. After that, it would be another seven years before he took the reins on another movie and then another six after that.
However, 2011’s The Tree of Life seemed to light a fire under Malick, who’d go on to direct To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Voyage of Time, Song to Song, and A Hidden Life in the space of eight years. It was his first effort of the 21st century that enamoured Wenders, though, to the extent that he declared it as the first cinematic masterpiece to emerge since the turn of the millennium.
“It towers so high above everything else that I’ve seen in so long that I can only talk about this one film,” he told Film Freak Central. “It’s one of the great movies of all time, and it’s been completely neglected. It should have been nominated for everything, but people and critics just don’t get it for some reason. Masterpieces don’t come often, and here it is, and it’s been overlooked.”
To continue his rant about The New World being ignored, Wenders blasted the marketing campaign. “It’s hideously mishandled,” he raged. “I’ve seen this movie four times; the first real masterpiece of the 21st century.” Despite his obvious enthusiasm, the general public wasn’t inclined to rush out in their droves to see Malick’s latest comeback on the big screen.
Wenders is clearly willing to die on the hill that The New World is an unadulterated masterpiece of the moving image, but is it even Malick’s best work? That’s another can of worms with the potential to cause a debate that stretches long into the night, so it’s best to leave that one entirely in the eye of the beholder.
