... and while he may not be wrong about the intention, he's wrong in saying Malick nailed this in the execution. Ballets are all about the bodies and all about emotional connection--- their stories are meticulously structured and executed via the movement. Malick's film lacks the scene-to-scene structure of a ballet (and since many actors cut out of it have said he more or less shot this film on a whim daily, that's not terribly surprising).

Plus, maybe if he'd had ZERO dialogue, it would have forced him to tell the story more clearly through the visuals. Instead, he used as little dialogue as possible and continued to weave in plot lines and let them fade away with no resolution or purpose. It's the cinematic equivalent of "ooh, shiny!" Which is strange, since normally Malick's work despite his filming methods still feels meticulously structured scene-to-scene (Tree of Life is a perfect example of this).