4 Comments

1. Matt Brown says:

   June 16, 2011 at 7:57 am

   OK, I’m convinced.

   Reply
2. rot says:

   June 16, 2011 at 9:32 am

   Jessica Chastain, particularly in those close-ups walking through the woods, looks like someone that belongs in a Carl Theodor Dreyer movie, or even Bergman. I assume it is unintentional but I cannot help thinking about those films by virtue of how her stark beauty is rendered in these scenes.

   Reply
3. Kurt Halfyard says:

   June 16, 2011 at 9:41 am

   Malick has had lots of practice with equally unusual beauties and photographing them in interesting ways: Badlands (Spacek is luminous and oddly well-groomed for someone perpetually on the lam), Days of Heaven (Brooke Adams), The New World (Q’orianka Kilcher) and even The Thin Red Line (Miranda Otto as Ben Chaplain’s eventual ‘dear john’ writing spouse). Malick tends to put the ladies on a sort of ethereal pedestal in ALL of his films…

   Reply
4. Mike Rot says:

   June 16, 2011 at 10:00 am

   I am thinking though of even the sculptural quality of her face, the strong cheek bones, and often in extreme close-up to me evokes Maria Falconetti

   

   

   And drawn from this iconography you get implicitly this impression of Mrs. O’Brien as a kind of Joan of Arc suffering for her faith.

   Reply