Days of Heaven
Of all of Terrence Malick’s films I was anxious to revisit after falling in love with his “A Hidden Life” last year, “Days of Heaven” was the one I was most curious about. Upon my first viewing several years ago, it fell flat for me. That was how Malick was for me, even in the films of his I admired, such as “The New World” and “The Tree of Life.” Now, I respect “Days of Heaven” more, though I still feel at a distance from it. As with Tarkovsky, he is a filmmaker of remarkable conviction as a storyteller; it is how the story unfolds that determines how well the film plays. There are times the film still feels flat for me.
The key contribution when Malick was locking down the film was the narration by Linda Manz, who plays Linda, the kid sister of Bill (Richard Gere). When he was working on the film in editing, the decision to have Manz improvise narration for the film, putting it resolutely from Linda’s perspective, was the key for Malick in making it work for him. Manz was 17 when the film was released, but her voice sounds like she’s about 27. Born in Manhattan, that New York accent is fairly pronounced in her speaking. We arguably hear more from Linda as the narrator of the than we do as a character in the onscreen action, as she provides context to the story of her, Bill and Abby (Brooke Adams). We first see them in Chicago, where Bill is working in a steel mill. One day, he gets into an argument with the foreman and kills him. The three have to go on the run, and make their way to the Texas Panhandle. There, they work as laborers in a vast wheat field owned by a farmer (Sam Shepard). Bill tells everyone that he and Abby are brother and sister, the first of several lies that will change the course of their lives forever.
At the time, “Days of Heaven” was most acclaimed for its cinematography, and indeed, with more films of familiarity of Malick’s style, that visual beauty- captured by Néstor Almendros and Haskell Wexler, who was the original cinematographer on the film- shines through, especially after they begin working on the wheat field. There are individual scenes and moments that play as stunningly gorgeous as in “The New World” or “A Hidden Life” as Bill and Abby or Abby and the farmer (who is never named) walk in nature. The colors are muted in this film, giving it the feel of the time it is set in (1916), but it also results in a film that is not as lush or striking as we’re used to from Malick, which sometimes works like the sequence near the end with the locusts attacking the fields in a stark and powerful sequence that is enhanced by the emotional place the film is at, at the time, but often can feel drab, especially during the opening in Chicago, and some of the early sequences, in general. That is where the score by Ennio Morricone, which references Saint-Seans’s “Carnival of the Animals,” elevates “Days of Heaven,” and achieves the visionary beauty of the best of Malick’s films. It’s one of the great composer’s best scores.
In the end, I’m left feeling adrift when it comes to the film. It’s story is actually a compelling one of love, jealousy and betrayal, but the perspective being Linda’s doesn’t really draw me in so much as keep me at arm’s length. The performances by Gere and Adams are fine, but Manz and Shepard do more to engage us with their characters, and leave stronger impressions on the audience. That throws off the emotional pull the story is supposed to have, and is ultimately why, even though I admire “Days of Heaven” more now than I did after my first time seeing it, I still feel cold towards the story when all is said and done.
