“A Hidden Life,” the latest Terrence Malick movie, arrived in the mail this morning. I spent the afternoon watching all 2 hours and 54 minutes of it. It is a movie that could have been made by no one other than Malick. I see reflections and reminders of every one of his previous movies in this one.
The story is simple. A young farmer with a wife and 3 little girls and an aged mother cannot bring himself to swear allegiance to a man whom he believes to be an evil dictator who has taken his country into an unjust war and who is killing innocent people.
The story is simple. A young farmer with a wife and 3 little girls and an aged mother cannot bring himself to swear allegiance to a man whom he believes to be an evil dictator who has taken his country into an unjust war and who is killing innocent people.
It takes place in Germany in 1943. The cast is composed of German actors. Much of the dialogue is in untranslated German. It speaks strongly to life in America today, perhaps more strongly than any other movie I have ever seen.
The titles comes from “Middlemarch” by George Eliot: "... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
The movie has been criticized for being “too pretty.” It is indeed ravishingly gorgeous, not only the mountain villages but the prisons as well. I found it not pretty but beautiful. That beauty is more than decoration: for me it is a great part of what a conscientious man knows he is giving up, what we know he is giving up;
The tra1ler gives you some taste of that:
The tra1ler gives you some taste of that:
It has been criticized for not showing the Holocaust. But it is not about that. It is about a small act of conscience that is hardly noticed in the grand scheme. But look back at that quotation from Eliot.
Long, slow, meditative. Philosophic.
Long, slow, meditative. Philosophic.
This acquisition completes my collection of Terrence Malick. I pray that he will continue to give me more. But no matter what, I have all his movies thus far that I may return to again and again
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