Brad Pitt Talks Terrence Malick

What’s the Latest Development?

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life took home the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the world’s most celebrity-filled celebration of cinema. But Malick was nowhere to be seen, even when his film was awarded the Palme d’Or. “‘He’s an extremely internal man,’ says Pitt. ‘A Rhodes scholar, studied philosophy, has a love of science, a love of nature, a love of God; I have great difficulty just completing a sentence. I don’t feel right speaking for him but I have to take a stab at it.’ Pitt denies Malick is in any way aloof or enigmatic for the sake of appearances, though.”

What’s the Big Idea?

In the age of celebrity, everyone has the capacity to become a public persona. It is taken for granted that artists of all media will fill this role for the fame-hungry public, but what happens when a noteworthy artist actively sheds the limelight? Love his movies or love them, Terrence Malick has a talent for dodging the paparazzi. And in the vacuum of his public life, his legend grows. But as Pitt reveals, while Malick has translated the works of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, he is just as likely to be found sipping a beer on his front porch.