You can scratch Terrence Malick’s “The Way of the Wind” off your Cannes 2023 predictions. It’s not ready. As for the rest of the year (Venice/Toronto), it’s all up in the air. Malick’s arduous post-production process is still ongoing.
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.
Malick’s salad-toss approach to editing is infuriating to some fans, but sometimes it’s worth the wait (“The Tree of Life” “The Thin Red Line”). 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”.
“The Way of the Wind” started shooting in the summer of 2019. It does look as though, soon to be four years later, we won’t be seeing the film anytime soon, which only whets our appetites further for what a source of mine has called Malick’s “unfinished symphony.”
“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,” is rumored to be one of the parables that will be included in the film.
The cast includes the likes of Matthias Schoenaerts (as Saint Peter), Géza Röhrig (as Jesus), Ben Kingsley, Joseph Fiennes, and Mark Rylance (as Satan).