In a 2018 interview for Criterion’s “Under the Influence” series, director Chloé Zhao broke down her appreciation of Terrence Malick’s 2005 “The New World.” The “Nomadland” director discussed how Malick’s spirituality, and how the viewer got sense of a bigger world beyond the characters and frame, came through in how he approached nature.“The filmmaker’s curiosity of trying to talk about humanity through nature because it’s not just us and nature, we’re the same thing,” Zhao told Criterion about “The New World.” “And he’s really asking us to think that way in his filmmaking, and that dictates how he works with his actors and how his cinematography works.”While she was on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to discuss her third feature film, the Oscar frontrunner “Nomadland,” IndieWire asked Zhao if her description of Malick doesn’t also apply to her own approach to story and filmmaking.
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