 When discussing these films, which word best describes the author?
But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face?
 knowledgeable
 vague  optimistic  knowledgeable  biased