Terrence Malick Shot 3000 Hours of Footage for ‘The Way of the Wind’

Here are some interesting details from French actor Mathieu Kassovitz, who stars in Terrence Malick’s “The Way of the Wind.” He gave an interview on a french radio, a few months ago, where he spoke about his role in Malick’s latest film.

Kassovitz says the movie is actually about Saint Peter (Matthias Schoenaerts) and he plays a small role as Jesus' brother John. He has a scene where he yells at Jesus and tells him to stop smoking weed with his friends and to go help his mother with the cattle.

Here’s the lede though: Kassovitz claims that Malick filmed 5 hours of footage every day, 3000 hours in total, adding that he does not know if he will be part of the film’s final cut. He sure hopes that he is.

Malick has been editing “The Way of the Wind” since 2019, and, now that we know he had to go through 3000 hours of footage, it does finally make sense. How can you possibly sort through that much footage without it taking years to assemble.

Kassovitz’s worry that he might not make final cut on “The Way of the Wind” is warranted. There are plenty of stories of Malick editing out numerous movie stars from his films. It’s a salad toss approach to editing that has justly given Malick his reputation as a perfectionist.

In “The Thin Red Line,” he cut roles from Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Viggo Mortensen and Bill Pullman. Same goes for “To The Wonder” which completely axed Jessica Chastain and Barry Pepper’s characters. Christian Bale got the boot in “Song to Song.”

Malick doesn’t care, if you don’t fit into his overall vision then he’ll axe you from his finished version, without hesitation. The last film he released was 2019’s “A Hidden Life” — it took three years for Malick to edit that one.