Classic Movie Review: Days of Heaven
By Josh Spiegel
September 18, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com

We are all made of straw.
I don't know, I must be a philistine. Okay, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but even though I consider the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson, and countless other directors to be among the tops in the current century, one director whose work, past or present, I cannot fully get into is Terrence Malick. Sure, he's got about 30 years on some of the men I mentioned, but Malick, with only a few films (four that have been released, and one called Tree of Life on the way) under his belt, is considered one of the American masters of cinema. Granted, I've only made it through one and a half of Malick's films, but when a guy makes a few movies, there's only so much to judge.

Yes, I'm a bad filmgoer: I turned off 2005's The New World about halfway through, partly due to an overwhelming sense of disappointment. Sure, it's meant to be the story of Pocahontas, John Smith, and Jamestown, but Malick uses the story as a means to shooting lots of admittedly gorgeous footage of nature. Unfortunately, I was hoping for some semblance of a story, characters, and all other things that make a movie, not a nature documentary. Days of Heaven is Malick's second film, from 1978; this film came out only five years after his debut, Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as a lovestruck pair of serial killers. I went into Days of Heaven with great trepidation, but considering that the film is just under 90 minutes, I doubted I'd have an urge to turn the movie off.

Thankfully, nothing so bad as abandoning a movie midway through happened. Days of Heaven is a low-key affair, a movie about the desecration of nature's beauty, unrequited love, lies, murder, fire, and lots of locusts. Once again, Malick uses his camera to show the audience the glory and splendor of the American landscape; this time, it's the fields of Texas during the early 20th century. The leads are Bill, a temperamental day laborer; Abby, his girlfriend; Linda, his sister; and an unnamed farmer who gets in the way of their hopelessly cheerful existence. Bill, to be fair, gets himself in trouble at the beginning. He's working in Chicago in the mines, when he kills the foreman simply for being a bit of a jerk. Bill, Abby, and Linda escape justice to Texas, where they decide to build something of a new life.

The first wrinkle is that Bill and Abby decide to fob themselves off as brother and sister, not lovers. They assume it won't arouse suspicion (but they don't pretend that they're not lovers very well, which...does arouse suspicion); unfortunately, this brings a love triangle into the story, as the farmer falls in love with Abby and assumes he has no competition. Bill can't keep his jealousy under wraps, the farmer can't help but notice how tender Bill and Abby are with each other, and Abby wonders if she's starting to like the farmer more. All of this transpires while the characters work at farming the fields, running into suspicion from fellow workers, and the raspy-voiced narration from Linda.

Days of Heaven looks great. Unfortunately, that and a haunting piece of classical music from Camille Saint-Saens is all that truly sticks out from the film. What's most intriguing is how blatantly obvious it is that most, if not all of the dialogue has been overdubbed so many times, it's almost a joke. Though he is the most recognizable actor now, hearing Richard Gere (as Bill) speak is jarring at best and amateurish at worst. His performance is not bad, but the dubbing of his dialogue is relatively unprofessional. Roger Ebert has accounted for his love of the film by seeing it as viewed completely through the eyes of its narrator, Linda, a somewhat shrewd teenager who never expresses any feelings; she seems to live vicariously through Bill and Abby.

If you buy this argument (and most times, I will buy anything Roger Ebert posits), the film and its awkward dialogue exchanges could be seen as floating in the ether of Linda's mind. Certainly, there is an eerie, ethereal nature about the setting of the film. Its final sequence, set in a small town, with the softly sliding chords of Saint-Saens' "The Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium" in the background, feels like something out of the mind, something not fully real. However, that's about five minutes of a 90-minute movie. Moreover, it's hard to see this film as a success, if it's meant to be a film. Dream or not, it'd be nice if I cared about any of these characters, something that never happened. I was detached from the film at all times; Malick certainly doesn't try to engage the viewer.

So all we're left with is a movie that is more fascinated with itself than we are. Too bad for us; a story with such a complicated love triangle sounds pretty compelling. However, we're meant to guess at everything, left with a narrator who talks with an implacable accent and doesn't give away any information worth knowing, to the maddening and abrupt ending (one that would have done well had it been a minute shorter). Thus, it is fascinating to me that Malick's film is cherished. Yes, the imagery's great, but to what point and purpose?

It's hard to critique the performances from Gere, Shepard, and Adams, who are more visible than Manz, but are blanks, mere statues who, every once in a while, do something as required by the script. At no point was I interested in any of these characters. More than most movies, I wanted to get involved in the story, in the struggles Bill has, but what struggles? I am told at the beginning that Bill is a hothead because he murders someone. Fair point. Moreso, he seems to murder the man for just being a bit of an ass. Yes, but why lie when you get to Texas, Bill? There's no sense in this story. Why does Abby go along with it? Why does Linda go along with it? Doesn't she care about leaving home?

Questions, questions, questions. None of these questions are answered because no one thinks the answers are important. If the answers to these questions aren't important, why are the characters important? Why worry about a script? My final example: the real wrinkle with the love triangle is that Bill initially encourages Abby to get close to the farmer, because the farmer believes he is dying. If the farmer dies, Abby could inherit the land. Suffice to say, things aren't so easy, because the farmer just gets...better. You could argue it's because he's in love, or it's because Malick forgets about this twist. Days of Heaven is a movie that grows more and more frustrating after a first viewing, if only because of the squandered potential.