Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Maria Simon, Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruno Ganz, Michael Nyqvist
Intro:
...terribly long and demands a lot from the audience...
There are some things in life you can’t rush, like ageing a single malt or a Terrence Malick film. Of course, both are an acquired taste. Malick broke into the American film world with Badlands back in 1973 and, though he has written and filmed nearly twenty stories since, his filmography has been both drawn out and patchy. Not that he would care, this most ‘European’ of American directors never seems to listen to anyone when he is on a quest to film things his way. His films can also feel terribly long and demand a lot from audiences. Be warned this one is no different.
It tells the story a German man trying to pull away from the second world war madness. Franz’s (August Diehl) father died in the trenches in WW1 and so he has an understandable detestation of war. When he sees his country lurching into the collective madness of Nazism, he resolves to flee with his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner) to the rural life. Things go well for a while and he and Fani find the heavy labour of farming both rewarding and absorbing.
Alas, Franz has to join up. Eventually he is back in the village and, this time he is determined to stay away from active service. Unfortunately, the villagers regard him as a traitor and do nothing to shield him from the jackboots brigades that come to haul him off to jail as an objector. Fani is left to look after their three little girls but at least she has her sister to share the farm work.
Malick’s deliberately stylised touches are in evidence throughout. There are the strangely low-level prowling camera angles mixed with beautiful wide vistas that set Franz up against the sky like a poster hero. Then there are oddly oblique interactions with the people around him, the muttering and side long glances from the villagers, and the deep and meaningfuls with his devoted wife. In many ways, Franz remains an enigma. He is engaged in a Lutheresque conversation with God and his conscience, and that implies a sense of purpose more important than earthly existence.
Even his choices and motives are open to question though. One character suggests that God judges not so much by a person’s actions, as by what is in their heart. So why doesn’t Franz just play along till the national madness blows over, thereby saving himself and his family all this heartache? Of course, there would be no film then, at least not the three tortuous hours that Malick devotes to his plight.
Malick is widely read in philosophy and (see for example 2011’s The Tree of Life), and he is clearly obsessed with the ineffable beauty and mystery of life. That this can never be explained doesn’t foreclose his sense of wonder or inflicting it on us. Whether the audience will forgive his getting lost in all this burdensome rapture, is itself another kind of mystery.
