Though I differ with @BaskinJon piece on A Hidden Life—for starters, it makes no aesthetic distinction between Malick's style there and his other recent features—I'm honored to be mentioned and grateful for the piece, which heads in very useful directions: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/08/14/the-unbearable-toward-an-antifascist-aesthetic/

It finally struck me why, I think, Malick made the film. Malick is a Heideggerian, Heidegger was a Nazi, and Malick is anti-Nazi. Therefore, he brought his attention and his artistry to bear on confronting the conundrum directly.

Sartre tried to make a left-wing Heideggerism, but he didn't have the prose. Derrida succeeded in making a leftist Heideggerism—because Derrida (like Heidegger) did have the prose. Malick, too, has the prose—a style that transformatively gets to the essence of cinematic language.

So: why, in facing the subject directly, does he self-parodistically fail to illuminate it, whereas in the music scene in Austin, romantic crisis in France and Oklahoma, moral crisis in Hollywood, and family crisis in Texas, his style is deeply, self-challengingly illuminating?

If that self-parody were his intentional creation of swoony nature kitsch in order to suggest the danger that he faces—that his own style (and not an archival clip of Hitler outdoors) risks delighting and fuelling Nazi-ish sentiment—it would be, at least, an achievement.

I've already written about the film and won't belabor the point; in any case, it is good to get back to the subject from the standpoint of @BaskinJon 's piece.