The Wind Is Driving Him Toward the Open Sea (David Brooks, 1968)

The Wind Is Driving Him Toward the Open Sea is a quietly lovely film with undertows of entropy due in part to a ever-zooming, ever-twirling camera. I wondered if Terence Malick ever saw this because I could feel some of his bucolic reveries at moments. But it's much more varied than that suggests. There are bits of vérité interviews with people discussing a Vietnam vet named Chandler, an artist whom the war has left directionless at best. There's also a kick the can game near Walden pond starring Stanley Cavell, Sidney Morgenbesser, and Arthur Danto (Brooks was his student). The soundtrack features an early version of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" which will probably prevent it from ever getting a DVD release. And it's all over in a quizzical 52 minutes. Brooks died at 24 in 1969 in a car accident.