Terrence Malick is an executive producer of this arthouse drama – and a poster of his 1973 classic Badlands hangs on the wall of an apartment in one scene. I suspect The Book of Vision’s director Carlo Hintermann might be Malick’s number one fan. He once made a documentary about Malick, and was a producer on Tree of Life. This film is his feature debut, and depending on your point of view, it could feel like either a parody of or homage to his film-making hero.
The plot flits between the 18th century and now, with the same actors appearing in both. In slightly refrigerated present-day scenes, Lotte Verbeek plays a surgeon, Eva, who has become obsessed with an 18th-century Prussian physician. This is a Dr Anmuth, who believed that understanding the dreams and inner lives of his patients could help heal their physical aliments. Eva is also secretly pregnant, but she’s living with a heart condition. So her own doctor, magnetically played by Charles Dance, recommends a termination.
