A good third of this film is spent on the "audience," the rural townspeople. Its derived from the "Breathless" tradition. Its not like "Cool Hand Luke," or "Bonnie and Clyde" at all where the man decides. You can trace it to the female version in "Thelma and Louise," where they have their end only because they know someone will watch. You can see Malick here, the notion that the character sees us seeing him, that he knows he is fictional and knows we think him not. He knows he is a cinematic creature, someone to be observed and dreamed about. Same ethic, could even have been the same man. This was after "Easy Rider" and instead of bold men moving into a life, we have life chasing an honest man. Guided by his eavesdropping on police radio, and some psychic ability. There is only one other character, a blind black disk jockey who is listened to by apparently everyone. There's a backstory about his being a good cop and turning in some rotten apples, so by degrees we come to understand the moral landscape. Find he was a Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, a star racer and then a cop. This fellow is Kowalski, a name imported from a landmark film. If you do not know it, the primary narrative is essentially no narrative: a muscle car speeding across the desert chased by police, initially for speeding and ultimately just to exert power. And for a US-made movie, it is pretty pure. Seeing it again is a real lesson on how certain cinematic language, if presented purely, transcends. Gosh, I had forgotten how powerful this is.
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