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Before this film, the last I recall was David Lean's sweeping and snow capped "Doctor Zhivago."
"Days Of Heaven" begins in 1916, in Chicago. Richard Gere and his sister Linda (Linca Manz is superb in the role; what happened to her?) meet up with Brooke Adams on a train bound for the Texas panhandle where most of the film is set. Work is hard, and one goes where it is. The film is low on narrative, but what it makes up for in beauty is worth it.
Watching "Days Of Heaven" is like opening a vintage photo album from the period and staring at the pictures as though they come to life. Which they do on the screen. Drawing from the works of American painters like Edward Hopper and Grant Wood, adding in blazing shots of sunrise and sunset, with live shadowed figures silhouetted against them, the film is almost a poetic visual meditation on human existence. Don't be fooled by the slow pacing; this is probably Terrence Malick's best film.
I can tell you that it is, because I saw his "The Thin Red Line" in 1998, and while striking in spots, it was a bore.
"Days Of Heaven" exemplifies filmmaking and a filmmaker at the height of his powers.
Don't wait for 48 years, like me, girls, to see it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A MUST for cineastes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4 comments:
Love this film and you described it perfectly!!
Victoria, I could watch it again, and will soon. Such a stunning work of filmmaking.
At such staggering overruns of time and money, it damned well should look stunning! This was the legendary final fiasco in a string of fiasco that ended United Artists as a studio unto itself. Malick would repeatedly wait around for days at a time, waiting for exactly the right sunset or cloud formation, while the cast and crew sat idle (nonethelesd burning thru cash at a rate that would embarrass most governments). An amazing visual achievement, but the cost in dollars and the premature death of "New Hollywood" just as it hit its stride was ruinous. I'm one of the few who knew of and liked Brooke Addams when this came out, it really derailed her career for awhile. Of course Gere sailed thru unscathed, since he was the Brad Pitt untouchable Hattie of his generation. That Malick was ever able to direct again is astonishing, because he learned nothing: his recent-ish "Tree Of Life" trod a similar path of destruction.
My dear, David did not like it. I found it hypnotically beautiful but flawed. Still, I would watch it again. What happened to Linda Manz? There was such a fuss
made over her at the time; she was good but not revelatory. One has to be
in the right place and mood to view this. After "The Thin Red Line" I planned
avoiding Terrence Malick
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