Comment on Review: Malick gets some life back in 'Song to Song'

There's actually a plot (kind of) and the actors are allowed to act and even have some life and (gasp) fun. "Song to Song" is a love triangle of sorts, very much in the Malick mode, where one is pure (Mara and Gosling's struggling musicians), one is untenable (Cate Blanchett and Gosling), one is damned (Fassbender's sleazy, wealthy producer and Mara) and one is doomed (Natalie Portman's local waitress/teacher and Fassbender). Combined with Emmanuel Lubezki's sumptuous cinematography, these travel scenes are fairly riveting. There are unexpected moments of joy, too, that don't involve fields or women twirling or cryptic voiceovers: BV dancing in the dusk to Del Shannon's "Runaway," BV and Cook weightless on a plane, Patti Smith giving sage advice, Val Kilmer taking a chain saw to an amp. There's even a youthful restlessness in his exploration of the impossibility of reconciling wealth and success with innocence and authenticity. Malick's women are usually more enigmas than characters — paragons of grace and goodness who must in turn experience deep shame when they stray, whether encouraged by a lover ("Days of Heaven") or in spite of one ("To the Wonder"). Song to Song, a Broad Green Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for some sexuality, nudity, drug use and language.