There's a feeling of emotional detachment in so many of Terrence Malick's films that they seem more like metaphysical photograph albums. The historic scope of his Pocahontas epic "The New World" and galaxy-encompassing cosmology of "The Tree of Life" are not experiences most viewers feel are connected to recognizable feelings.
It's a bit easier to find the meaning in "Song to Song." It's a haunting, doleful meditation on sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, the type of movie that can deeply move you and leave you wondering why.
Sex is, as one half-whispered monologue puts it, "the flame of life," the miracle that brought us here, the gift we squander and misinterpret and ignore at our peril as we flit from "song to song."
The story unfolds in the vibrant music scene that is Austin, Texas. Rooney Mara is Faye, a rising vocal star; Michael Fassbender is Cook, a grasping, Ferrari-driving producer, and Ryan Gosling is BV, a jealous, salt-of-the-earth songwriter. Faye, still in the process of discovering herself, is torn between them. Cook and BV are rivals both in the music business and love, but also partly friends. The three of them move among real-life music festivals in an ongoing if never truly intimate love triangle.
At the sidelines and occasionally on center stage are Natalie Portman's blond and buff Rhonda, a teacher; Berenice Marlohe's Zoey, an artistic French expatriate, and Cate Blanchett's Amanda, a staggeringly wealthy single woman.
The story pivots on each character's axis as their crisscrossing connections collide and undercut one another. Each gets a dab of attention in a romantic drama that resembles a pointillist painting viewed close up: The individual droplets are lovely, but the overall design is difficult to detect.
Most of Malick's signature effects and concerns are here. There is no simple narrative, but vignettes that appear and vanish. The story is pieced together like a montage of disconnected events, gloriously photographed in widescreen form by the peerless Emmanuel Lubezki ("The Revenant"). The women are hypnotic, languid, ethereal, heartbreaking. Their lives are full of mystery _ Malick, the great abstractionist, doesn't portray relationships realistically _ but they understand that love alone makes our lives worth something.
The characters spend countless scenes walking across big, ostentatiously chic living spaces that don't feel like homes. There is as much voice-over narration as dialogue, all clipped and oblique. "I don't like to see the birds in the sky because I miss you. Because you saw them with me. Come save me from my bad heart," Faye tells BV through projected feelings rather than direct conversation.
It has become one of Malick's mannerisms to fill cameo roles with celebrities, and here the film goes to town. We see Fassbender jokingly dirt-wrestling a couple of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Iggy Pop explains the real focus of performing music onstage. Patti Smith acts as a mentor in guitar and romance to Faye, a brief role she fills so completely that one smiles whenever she reappears on-screen. Other featured artists include the Sex Pistols' John Lydon, Lykke Li and the groups Florence and the Machine, Black Lips and Die Antwoord.
There's also a former film star playing a lunatic who thinks stage speakers should be sliced with a chain saw. Perhaps he's the one who cut Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes and Iron & Wine from the film. Perhaps they were lucky.
