After sharing a slice of life through the eyes of Ken Loach's Sorry We Missed You last week, with his uncanny ability to hold up a mirror to the ‘have-nots’ in our society, my latest film experience was far removed from that modern-day reality.
I attended a pre-release screening of Terrence Malick’s latest work: A Hidden Life. At two and a half hours long, it is a magnificent, towering piece of cinema, harking back to the sweep of his early masterpiece Days of Heaven.
Malick’s beautifully crafted script, of which 70% is delivered in voiceover, is based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), a WW2 conscientious objector. With his wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner), he lives in an Austrian alpine farming village where time has stood still for generations. In a series of visual vignettes, we are shown the first meeting of the couple and their immediate attraction and deep love for each other. Hot summers, village festivals, snowy peaks, dancing and cascading waterfalls pass by. Children are born to the couple, and Franziska’s sister comes to live with them. Working the land is hard but the villagers are close-knit and help each other, and they seem unaffected by the distant war.
But, inevitably, the war creeps up on them, and with it the spreading cancer of Nazism. The young men of the village, including Franz, are called up for a few months of military training, after which they return to their idyllic village in the mountains. Gradually, allegiance to the fatherland permeates through the community and the sound of “Heil Hitler” becomes commonplace, but Franz cannot bring himself to utter the words. Because of his refusal to show allegiance to Hitler, he and his family are increasingly ostracised by the villagers. But Franz and Franziska’s strong family bond enables them to battle on together against the villagers’ contempt for them. The local postman gradually delivers call-up papers to all the young men, including Franz. He leaves his family and smallholding to join the war in the hope that he can secure a non-combatant post. On his first day at the barracks, the new intake is addressed by the salute “Heil Hitler”. Everyone responds in kind except Franz. He is arrested and sent to a conscientious objectors’ prison, where foreign nationals and the mentally deranged are also kept. It is here that Franz is humiliated and brutalised on a daily basis.
The film is then conveyed through an exchange of letters between Franz and Franziska. We see them living their separate lives: Franziska with her sister, children and mother-in-law up in the mountains, battling against the increasing hostility of the villagers. With no help to toil the land, the two sisters knuckle down to work alone through the seasons. As with all Malick films, the themes of nature, family, love and tenderness are ever present and beautifully expressed through the stunning cinematography of Jörg Widmer, greatly helped by the stunning Austrian mountain location.
The production design by Sebastian T. Krawinkel and the costume design by Lisy Christl seem so authentic. Malick’s direction of the two main protagonists, Franz and Franziska, is amazing. The film is punctuated with original wartime footage showing the population’s chilling euphoria for Hitler and Nazism. Malik’s preoccupation with the natural environment and its ability to renew itself is given full rein in the majestic mountain location, seen through the varying seasons – from the hot, golden summers to the snowiest, most bitter winters. As with most of Malick’s films, much of the music is selected from existing works for the emotional underscoring; this film features a lot of Henryk Górecki’s and Arvo Part's compositions to great effect.
For me, this is cinema at its most stunning and thrilling. It is beautiful, poetic and moving. Malick is 100% back on form. And it’s wonderful that films like this are still being made. I found it mesmerising.