Here and there : Malick's cinema and McGilchrist's 'divided brain'

In this chapter, I will also locate the particular power of Malick’s cinema in the application of several of these devices and their effects on the viewer, philosopher, and non-philosopher alike. However, in doing so, my specific contention is that these devices and effects are qualities of the filmic medium that can work to generate a spectatorial experience that is more akin to a particular “howness” of the world: one that recalibrates spectatorship not purely as the site of identification or meaning making, but as a process of reciprocity between body and image. Malick’s distinctive approach to the construction of sound and image, with its accentuation of texture, rhythm, sensory intensification, and the gestural body of the performer, often subjugates those aspects that are commonly thought to be at the basis of film’s strength as a representational medium—causal logic, narrative, and characterization.