Review of Days of Heaven (1978) by Jesse B — 04 Dec 2011

Linda's eyes. Those soulful eyes. Those deep greens contain so much history. You find no whimsical fascination in them, as one does in the crisp, gleaming eyes of a child. The eyes of this child are weathered and wearied, calloused and watchful. Her face is beautiful beneath the thick grime and deep scar which runs from the height of her left cheek across her eye and down the top of the bridge of her nose. At first, when you look at her it is not apparent if she is fourteen or somewhere beyond. Maybe twenty, twenty-one or something around there. The only time when her true age is betrayed is when she plays with a girl near her own, or when she monkeys around with her older brother, Bill (Richard Gere). But the few moments of childish revelry are quick to end and her eyes are left to grasps hold of your soul once again.

The story is biblical in proportion, taken from here and there and mashed together as if Malick was able to recall a handful of the epic tales told from his Sunday school days in Waco, Texas: An accidental murder leads a man to run for his life (Moses); the arrival of a man and a woman in a strange land causes their relationship to be hidden out of fear of reprisal. So the man calls the woman he loves his sister (Abraham and Sarah). A swarm of locusts; a raging inferno... The land and those who occupy it are inseparable and the width of the sky is matched only by the depth of their being. The themes explored here seem to be revisited every time Malick picks up the pen and camera hereafter. One could say that he has simply been remaking his first films over and over again, without looking for some perfection in quality, or whittling down of story, but a more intangible result which we may never understand.

The voice of Linda Manz is hypnotic, as if this young child could possible contain the wisdom of the old woman who sits on the hill. She hits rhythms and reaches cords which even the great musicians of the world would have envied. When she speaks, she is like a spirit, ever watchful and ever growing. Never dulling. Her commentary on life comes from a place of solitude, from the corner of the room and not the center. In her voice you are made aware of her ears and how she is constantly listening, soaking in new information, regarding nothing as trivial but everything as precious and full of life and death and all that lies in-between. In her voice there is a ghost. This is the ghost of people long gone, who had fought to survive in barrenness. Forsaken people who have only themselves to look to for help. People who lived and died in much the same way, with rough hands and smelling clothes. Who drank when they were thirsty and ate to ease the hunger pains. People who take pleasure in sunsets, and ground their teeth through the long hard, unforgiving days which lay ahead of them. Her voice is like the voice of Tom Joad, the character doomed to die in John Steinbeck's classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath. She contains that same spirit of knowing her fate, and yet remaining in soul. Her voice is like eyes that never blink and a mind that always thirsts for understanding.