Director: Terrence Malick
Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz
Studio: Paramount/The Criterion Collection 409
Video: 1.78:1 widescreen color
Audio: English DD 5.1, DD 2.0
Extras: Audio commentary with editor Billy Weber, art director Jack Fisk, costume designer Patricia Norris, and casting director Dianne Crittenden; Interview with Richard Gere, Interview with Sam Shepard, Interviews with cinematographer Haskell Wexler and camera operator Bailey; Illustrated printed booklet with essay by critic Adrian Martin and a chapter from photography director Nestor Almendros’ autobiography.
Length: 94 minutes
Rating: *****
This has to be one of the most beautifully-filmed features ever made for the wide screen. Malick is as much a philosopher as a filmmaker. Shooting the story which takes place in the Texas Panhandle in l917 in the spare Hutterite country of Alberta, Malick made arresting use of the sweeping fields, the absence of trees, and closeups of the wildlife and farm animals.
Gere plays a Chicago steelworker on the lam with his young sister and his girlfriend. They hop a freight train which eventually arrives in the Panhandle where they and many others jump off to work the wheat fields of a wealthy farmer played by Sam Shepard. The farmer is told they are brother and sister, and he begins to show an interest in the girlfriend. The Gere character learns that the farmer has only a year to live, and he pushes his girlfriend to marry him so they can soon lift themselves out of poverty. Instead the farmer doesn’t appear to be dying, and the woman begins to fall in love with him. The emotions of the love triangle are set against catastrophes on the farm, including a biblical plague of locusts and a series of fires.
Malick spent two years editing Days of Heaven, including going back to the site a year later to shoot more nature footage without the actors. The actors were at first sorely disappointed to find that most of their on-camera speaking parts had been edited out in favor of an almost silent-movie approach to the images. Much time is spent in the fascinating extras on the photography since the visual aspect of the film is so compelling. Innovative practices in filmmaking left some of the Hollywood crew members nonplussed. For example, very little artificial lighting was used, Malick preferring a Rembrantesque chiaroscuro lighting, especially at night and in the interior of the house.
The transfer of the original 60mm footage is superb, looking just as hi-res on the wide screen as many Blu-ray or HD DVD transfers. This is a motion picture that cries out for large wide screen display – it would lose most of its power confined to pan-and-scan, or severely letterboxed on a standard small 4:3 video screen. The 5.1 surround with the nature sound effects aids the dreamlike quality of the experience. The fires in the fields section is especially powerful with the mix of SFX, voices and music. Then there is the masterful score by Ennio Morricone, dovetailed with the one existing classical selection – a movement of St.-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals which is first heard under the opening titles and returns a couple times very effectively. (Incidentally, the stills of poverty-struck people under the opening titles are the wrong period – too early – and the planes of the aerial circus that flies to the farm seem too modern – more late 1920s than 1917.)
– John Sunier
