This splendid book tells a compelling story of Terrence Malick's life and work—a gift to film lovers who long to know more about the gifted director.
~George Stevens, Jr., author of My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington and founder of the Kennedy Center Honors and the American Film Institute
Bleasdale's biography of Malick is as smart, readable, and penetrating as fans of the great director's films could wish for—a thrillingly engaged piece of work.
~Tom Shone, author of The Nolan Variations
Terrence Malick is one of the most brilliant yet enigmatic of American filmmakers, a contemplative visual poet beyond compare among modern auteurs. After a stunning debut with two of the finest movies of the 1970s, he vanished without public explanation for two decades, only to come back with several ambitious feature films that have been embraced by a devoted audience of admirers, and others that have flopped with both viewers and critics. John Bleasdale, one of our most thoughtful and best-informed film journalists and scholars, dives deep to explore the life and work of an elusive artist who has consistently challenged us with powerful, intense, and idiosyncratic movies that smash through the boundaries of conventional filmmaking.
~Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic
Offering in-depth accounts of the making of Malick's films, Bleasdale details how the director's stubbornness and inexperience hamstrung the production of his debut feature, Badlands, and how he privileged authenticity when filming The New World, erecting full-scale recreations of colonial Jamestown and its neighboring Powhatan settlement using only locally sourced materials and period-appropriate construction techniques. Background on how Malick's personal life influenced his films open a window onto his work.
~Publishers Weekly
A myth-shattering look into the life and career of the legendarily publicity-shy cinematic visionary.... But his in-depth research uncovered a very different picture from the media-crafted version of the director that developed during the lengthy gap between his second film, Days of Heaven (1978), and its follow-up, The Thin Red Line (1998). In doing so, the author tells of a complex artist and human being whose films, good and bad, are among the most thrillingly original works of art on the planet.... No matter how you feel about Malick's oeuvre, this book is a must for cinephiles.
~Kirkus Starred Review
John Bleasdale's impressive new biography The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick reveals many crucial and insightful details on the filmmaker's life course, from his Persian family history and fledgling youth in Oklahoma-Texas to an ongoing artistic career, spanning over half of a century.... For those curious as to how Malick curated such a sui generis approach to filmmaking, this text serves as both a series illuminating windows into the myth of the artist and a tonic for any doubts one might have levied against him. ... While honoring aspects of Malick's known preference for privacy, Bleasdale imparts many formative and absorbing details on this mysterious figure. In so doing, he humanizes the mythic Malick and illuminates the biography of a man whose fascinating personal journey through life is truly the stuff of legend.
~Film International
