Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.5

Song to Song Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson June 20, 2020

Broad Green Pictures has released an UHD/Blu-ray combo and this Blu-ray only edition of Terrence Malick's SONG TO SONG (2017).

From The Tree of Life (2011) onward, the films of Terrence Malick have resembled Godfrey Reggio's documentaries more so than a majority of narrative features on the independent scene. Like Reggio's abstract and poetical images, Malick's camera (as captured by his ace cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki) has fixated its "eye" on horizontal landscapes, bodies of water, cityscapes, and highways. Malick's movies may have more "story" than Reggio's but gone are the longer takes that he employed in Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978). The camera floats and meanders through space, absorbing something about the characters in one vector before moving on to another. Lubezki frequently frames them from high above with an "Eye of God" perch. In addition, academic theorists of film sound have remarked that Malick incorporates an voice-on/voice-off mode of narration. For instance, a first-person narrator quietly murmurs or muses about something in his/her life before cutting off so we have a time cut to that same character at an alternative point or the narration shifts to a different character's POV.

These stylistic devices perhaps reach their apex in Malick's eighth feature, Song to Song, whose first cut reportedly ran for eight hours. The film is about the romantic entanglements of four central characters: Cook (Michael Fassbender), a record producer; BV (Ryan Gosling), Cook's occasional songwriting collaborator; Faye (Rooney Mara), a musician; and Rhonda (Natalie Portman), a waitress. Malick intertwines their tales through a non-chronological timeline. The film is set in the music scene of Austin, TX and also shifts to some of Texas' suburban neighborhoods, which recall those seen in Malick's autobiographical The Tree of Life. (While Malick's birthplace isn't definitively known, it's most likely Waco, TX in the opinion of this reviewer, who has researched the reclusive filmmaker's career.) Fassbender's Cook is apparently based on Mephistopheles and he's portrayed as the main villain. He appears to have divorced Rhonda, is an unscrupulous businessman, shown to be sexually aggressive, and a carouser with prostitutes. BV is the more gentle man. He's also less mature with a more playful personality. BV also has a temporary fling with Amanda, who's played by Cate Blanchett in little more than an extended cameo. Faye romantically shuffles her ballads between Cook and BV. Song to Song has in common with The Thin Red Line (1998) a blurring of the lines when it comes to working and playing. In the latter, it isn't clear if the Melanesian islanders are collectively doing menial tasks for their village or if their sacred rituals are part of their "play." In Song to Song, it also isn't clear if Cook and BV are playing songs just for fun or if they're performing them for an eventual album.

Let's drink to eternity.

Malick's cinema frequently invokes death, spiritual transcendence, and suggests an afterlife. Song to Song makes use of those tropes early when BV and Cook make a "toast" to a deceased doctor's urn vase at a pool party, which supposedly has become an annual rite. Malick excerpts Camille Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre,Op. 40, which Renoir famously performed as a "dance of death" in The Rules of the Game (1939). Additionally, Malick has some references to Día de Muertos. For example, BV is shown striking a piñata, which is likely associated with a festival of the dead. Late in the film, BV visits his father (Neely Bingham), who's become a bedridden vegetable. In watching Song to Song about four times and carefully listening to its voice-over narration, which is inquisitive and soul-searching, I interpret Malick's characters as seeking a higher plane of existence that'll push them into a cosmic realm, which may be their entry into the next lifetime.

Song to Song is surfeit with artistic and cultural references. For instance, there's a portrait of French poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose poems Malick surely has read. Also, Val Kilmer makes a cameo as the crazy rocker, Duane, who takes a chainsaw to on-stage sound equipment at a concert. Duane is reprimanded and thrown out by security guards, which recalls the fate of Kilmer's Jim Morrison at a Miami concert in The Doors (1991).

Song to Song Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Broad Green Pictures has released Song to Song on an MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50, which averages a video bitrate of 34621 kbps. It appears in its native ratio of 2.35:1. The picture was shot on Arri Alexa, Arricam, Arriflex, and Red Epic cameras. Each is equipped with the Zeiss Master Prime Lenses, which are very fast and provide outstanding optical performance. Lubezki's crew also employed the GoPro cameras for the many glided tracking movements. Some scenes were also photographed on Super 35mm so we have a transfer that's taken from an amalgam of digital and film footage. All of Malick's movies are rapturously beautiful and Song to Song sports many shots reaching astronomical beauty. Malick has always had an eye for getting the right magic hour shots and Lubezki rewards him in Screenshot #s 5, 11, and 25, which were lensed at sundown. The swimming pool has a chlorine light blue that was likely taken during evening hours. Malick also shot in a nightclub that has phosphorescent glows of blue and green (see capture #s 17-20). Malick shows a clip from a silent film, which looked oddly familiar to me, and Milo Garner of the UK-based UCL Film & Television Society confirms it is Dimitri Kirsanoff's Ménilmontant (1926).

Broad Green has provided twenty chapter markers for the 129-minute feature.

Song to Song Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Broad Green supplies a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (3362 kbps, 24-bit) as the default sound track. Before the main titles, this prefatory note displays: "For Optimal Sound Reproduction, the Producers of this Film Suggest That You Play it Loud." The volume-boost recommendation has become obligatory for most all Malick movies on Blu-ray. It helps to have the sound way up to hear some of the softly-spoken voice-overs. I understand that Song to Song has 100 pieces of diegetic and non-diegetic music heard in the film! Malick famously used Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals - The Aquarium in Days of Heaven and brings him back for the aforesaid Danse macabre and excerpts from two of his symphonies. Malick fell in love with Francesco Lupica's Cosmic Beam Experience and put it in the sound track for The Thin Red Line and it makes a reprisal here. Zbigniew Preisner's From the Abyss is performed fairly often. Composer Hanan Townshend did an excellent job of writing an underscore that complements the classical pieces. Automobiles swooshing by and birds chirping are only just a few non-musical examples of how the surrounds are quite active. In all, this is a very dynamic lossless audio presentation.

Optional English SDH and Spanish subtitled can be conveniently accessed through the menu or via remote.

Song to Song Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Music Behind the Movie (2:01, 1080p) - producers Sarah Green and Ken Kao as well as actors Natalie Portman and Michael Fassbender speak very briefly about the film but not really much at all about the music. In English, not subtitled.

• Promotional Trailers - bonus previews for Knight of Cups, New Life, The Infiltrator, and Wish Upon. These load in succession after inserting the disc and can be skipped.

Song to Song Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I got more out of Song to Song than I did To the Wonder (much of which I love) and repeated viewings only enhanced my appreciation of what this great artist brings to his cinematic canvas each and every time. There's a scene where Fassbender's Cook stands and strikes the keystrokes of his piano, an allusion to the Jerry Lee Lewis biopic that Malick has been working on since the '80s and still wants to make. (He may have contributed an early script for 1989's Great Balls of Fire! [1989].) I would definitely recommend viewers see Malick's films in the new millennium to better learn and understand what he has working in Song to Song. This is a great film to have on in the background at a cocktail party. Broad Green Pictures delivers an excellent transfer and reference-quality uncompressed audio but there are barely any extras. This is another title deserving of the Criterion treatment. Still, a MUST PURCHASE for connoisseurs of Malick.