I can't let December get away from me without writing about Terrance Malick's masterpiece, A Hidden Life. A beautifully shot and edited film about Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who refused to swear loyalty to Hitler out of religious conviction and lost his life for it.
I cannot convey enough how gorgeous this film is; shot in the Alps where the Jägerstätters lived in a small, close-knit rural community. The farm work is hard and unrelenting, but it is a good life, and they are a happy family. Malick's unhurried pace provides plenty of time to sink into it. (In that respect, it reminded me of another WW2 film I love: Želary).
The cinematography is stunning. The Tyrolean landscape is wonderful, but Jörg Widmer's framing and long shots of the landscape as well as the tight shots of the characters going about their days paint a detailed and granular picture. I keep thinking about a long shot down a dark hallway in the prison where Franz is taken, with light spearing down from a stairwell above, just a small point of light in the darkness. The analogy is obvious, but it is so beautiful and silent.
We finished the film yesterday and I spent today listening to the gorgeous soundtrack; it is a wistful kind of melancholy that carries the seeds of hope that has stayed with me. As the violin solo resounded in my ears, I realized how little dialogue there is in the film.
Malick uses voice-overs taken from Franz and Fani's letters to provide context and move the film along, but overall there is little that is said except for a few spare conversations as Franz and Fani discern what is morally right. Instead, it is the families working together in the fields, moving through the seasons of the year in rhythm with the land and the liturgical cycle; those small quiet ways that most of us live our lives, not in heavy dialogue.
It could also have been a film that showed a lot of violence, but Malick chose to keep the focus on the quietness of their lives, on the prayerful stillness that Franz and Fani cultivated to survive the isolation of prison and the pressures of everyone around them to take the oath. An excellent film, worthy of all its accolades and awards. It is a long film (clocking just under three hours), so we watched it in 1-hour blocks over three nights. I think breaking up the viewing allowed me to meditate on each hour more deeply, and to take this beautiful film into my soul.
sounds like a really powerful film! thanks for the write up here on it!
ReplyDeleteI LOVED this film. Just gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteI fear I am being inarticulately gushy about it, because it is easier to write about what went wrong than what went right. The beauty and stillness of this film is just beyond all.
Delete(A favorite quote of mine from Graham Greene goes like this:
“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.”)