It’s time for my yearly update on Terrence Malick’s “The Way of the Wind.” I’ve been doing these updates for, I don’t know, at least three years now. “The Way of the Wind” started shooting in the summer of 2019. However, there’s been some kind of PROGRESS!
Long story short, separate sources are telling me that Malick is practically done editing the film, it could very well see the light of day in 2024. There is an end in sight. However, you can almost certainly scratch off a Cannes 2024 appearance. He’ll be working on this one until, at least, August — that’s when the final stages of mixing occur. The next best case scenario is a Venice premiere.
This aligns well with how Malick usually works, taking his time in the editing room, refining and molding whatever footage he has into a tone poem that satisfies the inner artist in him. That process seems to be nearly completed.
Malick’s salad-toss approach to editing is infuriating to some fans, but sometimes it’s definitely worth the wait (“The Tree of Life” “The Thin Red Line”). I truly hope he has something special here. By the sounds of it, he really believes this could be his magnum opus.
We’ve all read and heard eccentric Terry stories over the years. A few years ago, composer James Horner explained the fascinating post-production process on “The New World”.
Horner basically implied that Malick butchered his score in the editing room and that the theatrical cut was not what he signed up for. It seems as though Horner didn’t quite grasp who he was working with in this creative endeavour …
There are plenty of stories like these out there. Malick has even edited out numerous movie stars from his films. In “The Thin Red Line” he completely aced already-shot roles by 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.”
“The Way of the Wind” is supposed to convey passages “in the life of Christ” through the representation of evangelical parables. Jesus Christ's descent into the world of the dead, also known as his “descent into hades,” rumored to be one of the parables included in the film.
The cast, for now, includes the likes of Matthias Schoenaerts (as Saint Peter), Géza Röhrig (as Jesus), Ben Kingsley, Joseph Fiennes, and Mark Rylance (as Satan).
Last year, Matthieu Kassovitz, who also acted in ‘Way of the Wind,’ claimed 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.
Last August, Producer Alex Boden told Variety that Malick’s biblical drama “The Way of the Wind” seemed to be nearing some kind of end.
It’s very much in the edit room at the moment and the filming is completed […] Terry is very happy with what he is working on so far is the word, but there’s no announcements yet.
Malick has been editing this film for five years.
Firing back at critics is nothing new, but calling an entire profession “failed artists” who belong "in the bin" is hilarious, and wildly unhinged.