I think I don't love life enough to truly appreciate this movie. I've not lived enough to love it. By this point, I probably do not want to live more of it. Not in the normal sense. My existence was shaped by an incomplete experience. I'm not sure I could handle anything more. If I don't love life, then what do I love? I have no idea anymore. My heart has been wrecked so many times, I didn't think there was anything left. And yet the heartache never goes away. I can only be sure of fantasies. Beyond their boundaries is a foreign realm. One that would devour and destroy me. Sometimes I want to leap into it. Is that a suicidal ideation or the opposite? Nobody could tell me. Accuse me of escapism though, because it's not like anything else could be done. This movie portrays characters as ghostly essences. They fade in and out visually, sonically and narratively. We get ideas of them, but they appear as distillations of complete wholes. I think, if there is a point of relation for me, it is here. I also feel like a stranger. But my attempt to deal with this is not via scattering myself around, forging myriads of loose connections. Rather by delving deeper inwards. And this is one point where I could not reconcile the differences with the movie. The protagonist is seeking self-realization while searching for it externally. But this movie made me reflect. Made me wonder. Even though at times it made me sick. God, you'd think as you're getting older, your physical states would increasingly disconnect from your emotional states, but it's vice versa. I wanted to turn it off at several points, but then there were moments of immense beauty. Finally, Terrence Malick is one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, as he fully utilizes the medium to its potential. The relationship between the imagery (both symbolic and kinetic), the sound and the narrative concocts a tapestry of meaning, such that could only be done in film.