• Home
  • Longform
    • Defanging the Unthinkable
      more
      View more

      Defanging the Unthinkable

      8 years ago
    • A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye
      more
      View more

      A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye

      8 years ago
    • The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"
      more
      View more

      The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"

      8 years ago
    • The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"
      more
      View more

      The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"

      8 years ago
  • Interviews
    • A New Way of Telling Love Stories
      more
      View more

      A New Way of Telling Love Stories

      8 years ago
    • Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"
      more
      View more

      Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"

      8 years ago
    • Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast
      more
      View more

      Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast

      8 years ago
    • The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"
      more
      View more

      The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"

      9 years ago
  • Critic-At-Large
    • Now Playing: "From Nowhere"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "From Nowhere"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "War on Everyone"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "War on Everyone"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "The Salesman"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "The Salesman"

      8 years ago
  • Podcast
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"

      8 years ago
Movie Mezzanine
  • Home
  • Longform
    • Defanging the Unthinkable
      more
      View more

      Defanging the Unthinkable

      8 years ago
    • A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye
      more
      View more

      A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye

      8 years ago
    • The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"
      more
      View more

      The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"

      8 years ago
    • The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"
      more
      View more

      The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"

      8 years ago
  • Interviews
    • A New Way of Telling Love Stories
      more
      View more

      A New Way of Telling Love Stories

      8 years ago
    • Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"
      more
      View more

      Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"

      8 years ago
    • Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast
      more
      View more

      Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast

      8 years ago
    • The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"
      more
      View more

      The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"

      9 years ago
  • Critic-At-Large
    • Now Playing: "From Nowhere"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "From Nowhere"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "War on Everyone"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "War on Everyone"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "The Salesman"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "The Salesman"

      8 years ago
  • Podcast
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"

      8 years ago
  • Home
  • Longform
    • Defanging the Unthinkable
      more
      View more

      Defanging the Unthinkable

      8 years ago
    • A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye
      more
      View more

      A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye

      8 years ago
    • The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"
      more
      View more

      The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"

      8 years ago
    • The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"
      more
      View more

      The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"

      8 years ago
  • Interviews
    • A New Way of Telling Love Stories
      more
      View more

      A New Way of Telling Love Stories

      8 years ago
    • Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"
      more
      View more

      Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"

      8 years ago
    • Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast
      more
      View more

      Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast

      8 years ago
    • The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"
      more
      View more

      The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"

      9 years ago
  • Critic-At-Large
    • Now Playing: "From Nowhere"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "From Nowhere"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "War on Everyone"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "War on Everyone"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "The Salesman"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "The Salesman"

      8 years ago
  • Podcast
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"

      8 years ago
History of Film: ‘Days of Heaven’
  • History of Film

History of Film: ‘Days of Heaven’

  • by Andrew Robinson
  • December 13, 2013
  • 0
  • 5609

Editor’s note: Days of Heaven is one of the 10 best films of the 1970s voted on by staff, friends, and readers of Movie Mezzanine. For the sake of surprise, we’ll wait to reveal where this and every other film ranks on the list until the very end. We hope you enjoy.

…

Terrence Malick’s 1978 film Days of Heaven is a tale of two lovers on the run from the law who hide away on a farm during harvest. It’s a meditative, visually stunning drama set in the harsh days before the U.S. entered World War I. Few people would idealize this time as much as Malick, but there’s still a current of melancholy running beneath the gorgeous photography that acts as a reaction to the romantic worldview of the studio era. Malick may believe love is worth fighting for, but he also believes that it’s very, very hard.

Badlands, his debut feature, is more structured around narrative than a lot of his work.  The Tree of Life, The Thin Red Line and The New World, meanwhile, blend visual sumptuousness while emphasizing ideas and tone.  Days of Heaven is the connective tissue—in it, we see Malick evolving both as a visual artist and a storyteller. It’s a work that asks its audience to reconsider how they view and interpret films. More than an experimental film from Europe or a stripped-down piece of New Wave cinema, it requests that the viewer be willing to forget narrative and simply be lost in visual emotion.

We begin in a Chicago steel mill in 1916, unable to hear anything but the loud roars of fire and machinery. Our protagonist, Bill (Richard Gere), accidentally kills the foreman during an argument, so he flees to the Texas Panhandle with his sister Linda (Linda Manz) and his lover Abby (Brooke Adams), the latter of whom pretends to be another sibling. They’re soon hired by a wheat farmer (Sam Shephard) to help with the harvest, but things start to get messy when he starts to fall in love with Abby (he thinks Bill is her brother). The farmer has an unspecified disease and might not live long, so Bill tells Abby to marry him, hoping that he’ll die and leave her enough money to take care of them. However, as time goes by, the farmer doesn’t seem to be very ill, and Bill grows increasingly aggravated as he watches Abby gradually fall for another man.

days of heaven 4

It sounds like a silly classic Hollywood melodrama, but the plot is secondary to what makes Days of Heaven such an especially astounding film. The story is told through disjointed narration by Bill’s little sister, Linda, and it’s easy to dismiss her comments considering she seems to not yet have a complete grasp of the world. As her voice roams the wheat fields, it shifts in comprehension and lucidness; one moment, she’ll be discussing how she felt about moving in with Bill and Abby, and in the next she’ll hypothesize why Bill left with a flying circus. She defines the relationship dynamics of Bill and Abby in ways we barely understand, only to fall into a tangent: “I’ve been thinking what to do wit’ my future. I could be a mud doctor. Checking out the eart’.” This is the story according to a pre-teen, so its accuracy is always in question.

Where Days of Heaven thrives is Malick’s aesthetic vernacular. He doesn’t quite reach the heights he would achieve in 2005’s The New World, but the ever-evolving seeds of his visual language are on full display. We move from wheat fields where a minister prays for a good yield to the post-sunset glow of the harvest, the camera allowing us to take in the beauty of what is. Later, the same field is lit by a locus-consuming flame, a stark reminder of the beauty that was. There are constant visual repetitions that evoke a mood of loss, of cycles doomed to repeat or die. At the end of the film, our three main characters go on the run again, and this time their fate is far less hopeful.

Since the 1970s, filmmakers have been looking for more ways to redefine the romanticized worldview that cinema dreamed up during ‘30s and ‘40s. How can we capture an idealized love while still remaining true to human experience? In Days of Heaven, Malick walks the line between the romantic and the realistic, showing us that it’s possible to have the best of both worlds.

Tags
  • 1
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Related posts

4
History of Film: “Psycho”

History of Film: “Psycho”

11 years ago
1
History of Film: “Lawrence of Arabia”

History of Film: “Lawrence of Arabia”

11 years ago
5
History of Film: “2001: A Space Odyssey”

History of Film: “2001: A Space Odyssey”

11 years ago

2 thoughts on “History of Film: ‘Days of Heaven’”

  1. Steven Flores on December 13, 2013 at 5:32 PM said:

    This is still my favorite Malick film. I was just ravaged by those images and how Malick was able to make a love triangle be so much more.

    • Andrew Robinson on December 13, 2013 at 6:59 PM said:

      I still go for THE NEW WORLD and BADLANDS, if we’re talking favourite… but DAYS OF HEAVEN does a lot for him in my mind.

About Us

Movie Mezzanine is an online publication dedicated to covering the medium that connects us all, one film at a time. With writers stationed around the globe, we offer a uniquely diverse perspective on cinema, both old and new. To learn more about us, go here.

Spotlight

Putting the Geek to the Plow

Cleantalk Pixel