When "Days of Heaven" was finally released in 1978 (see last week's review) after two years of perfectionist fiddling in the editing room, director Terrence Malick was given a blank check by his patron at Paramount, industrialist Charles Bluhdorn, to develop his next project. Malick assembled a small team and began work on "Q," a project long shrouded in mystery.
Malick — perhaps inspired by Stanley Kubrick's "2001" — went to work on the film's epic prologue, which would move through the Big Bang and the origins of the planet before settling into a contemporary love story. Malick tinkered with the script, kept Paramount at bay, researched things like the possibility of filming from space, and traveled the world gathering footage from volcano craters and the Great Barrier Reef. Four years later, the film still wasn't in production, his crew had dispersed, Bluhdorn was dead and Malick walked away from it all.
Perfectionism is a blessing for cinephiles, but a paralyzing curse for those directors who suffer from it. Every decision made is another possibility left unexplored, every flaw magnified beyond proportion, and everything good could always be better. Consider how Malick filmed "Days of Heaven": Each scene was shot repeatedly, at different times of day, in different weather, and at least once without dialogue, to retain maximum flexibility in the editing room. This isn't technique, it's obsession.