It may have been a disservice to A.J. Edwards to be marketed as Terrence Malick’s “creative protégé” in the promotional material for his first feature, The Better Angels. A better tack may have been to let Edwards’ retelling of the childhood of Abraham Lincoln stand on its own. Though the film is a confident debut, the heavy specter of Malick (listed in the credits as a producer) looms large over the proceedings.

Filmed in black and white, The Better Angels recounts the time when a 9-year-old Abe (Braydon Denney) lived in the hardscrabble Indiana wilderness with his father Thomas (Jason Clarke), and mother Nancy (Brit Marling), as well as his younger sister. When Nancy dies suddenly of “milk sickness” (a total waste of Marling as a beautiful woman who passes away in that beautiful way that women do in movies, beautifully backlit by sunlight with nary a bead of sweat on her brow), Thomas takes up with Sarah (Diane Kruger), who sees Abe’s potential beyond their tough farm life and insists he be sent away to get an education.

To say the film is Malickian would be an understatement. All of the earmarks are there: an elliptical nearly-plotless structure, sweeping elegiac camera movements that prettify even the most quotidian moments, philosophical and thematically relevant narration, a soundtrack pulled from symphonies by Kalinnikov, Bruckner, and Dvořák (an excerpt from the latter’s New World is used as a sort of narrative punchline that will be eye-rollingly on-the-nose for those familiar with classical music). In fact, it so closely resembles Malick’s masterpiece The Tree of Life (Clarke even does his best Brad Pitt-as-gruff-but-loving-father), one wonders if Edwards was working from a crib sheet handed down from The Boss.

Where does The Better Angels fail where The Tree of Life soars? While Malick’s opus overreaches in the “origins of the universe” segments, its strengths lie in the 1950s Texas scenes, tapping into a shared sense of childhood experience that comments on the nature of memory and nostalgia. However, when Edwards applies a similar tone to his biopic, the very specificity of the story drags it down. It also doesn’t help that the film is not immune to some of the very worst habits of biographical films. The most egregious is the wholly made-up origin myth of Lincoln’s later interest in abolishing slavery. Here, as the young Abe witnesses a slaver marching his captives through the woods, the once-and-future President looks on thoughtfully—as though his someday proclamation will solely be a matter of principle than merely one of politically convenient lobbying.

But at least it certainly is beautiful to look at.

Grade: C+