New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

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.

Continued:       1       2