Review of Days of Heaven (1978) by Mario L M — 13 Jul 2010

Terrence Malick's 1978 film Days of Heaven is one of the most beautiful ever made. It is a lyrical, meditative piece. It has sparse dialog and a plot that is so thin it's almost non-existent. The film's tone and oblique characterization with a detached narration delivered by a character who is far only tangentially involved in the story. It was released yesterday on Blu-ray and as opposed to star studded, big budget TV movies like The Blind Side, it warrants the dazzling visual clarity that is standard for the High Definition format.

Days is in 1916 and follows Richard Gere's Bill as he accidentally kills the foreman at the steel mill where he works. He goes on the run with his young sister (Linda Manz) and girlfriend Abby (Brook Adams) and they end up working as seasonal laborers for a wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard) who takes a liking to Abby. Bill advises Abby to get closer to the farmer once they learn he is dying of an unspecified disease. They marry but the plan begins to fall apart as the farmer's healthy doesn't disintegrate and the farm foreman begins to suspect their plot. Feelings change and biblical plagues befall that rancher and everything ends in tragedy. But films plot is not it's strength, its poetic imagery is.

The film's straight forward narrative is secondary to its gorgeous cinematography. Nestor Almendros (along Haskell Wexler, who filmed over half the film but was only credited with "additional photography" and denied his rightful Oscar) photography the film using mostly naturally light, giving the film an organic, dream-like quality that befits it's elliptical pacing. Shepard's farm seems boundless; with waves of amber covering every surface. The entire film was only shot at "golden hour", the brief time of day when the set is just about to set and the quality of light is at it's absolute best for filming. This stylistic chose alienated most of the film's crew and caused the film to go hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget, effectively ending the relationship between director Malick and 70's super producer Bert Schneider, who mortgaged his home to see the film completed.

The film's troubles went past its filming and into its post production. The film took two years to edit and so exhausted Malick that he didn't make another film for more than twenty years; 1998's underwhelming remake The Thin Red Line. Malick reportedly found the film hard to shape into coherence until it occurred to him to remove most of the films dialog and replace it with a running commentary by Manz's character; whose musings are often at odds with what's happening on screen. It gives the picture a hallucinatory feel that is utterly transfixing.

I was lucky enough to see the film in its full 35mm glory but Blu-ray is the next best thing. The film has been painstaking transferred to the digital format by the hard working folks of the Criterion Collection company; who also include a interviews with Shepard, Gere, Wexler and a few other members of the film's production staff and booklet containing an essay by critic Adrian Martin. You will be hard pressed to ever find a film this visually stunning on the shelves and owe it to yourselves to see this bona-fide masterpiece.