I saw Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” in a movie theatre last night. I have previously viewed it only on my wee television at home. Seeing “Days of Heaven” on a big screen with cinema quality sound is a totally different experience. Terrence Malick may soon force me to go out and buy a new monster-size home entertainment centre.
The fundamental point of “Days of Heaven” is conveyed in the extraordinary beauty with which Malick fills the screen. The words of dialogue and voice-over are often obscure and difficult to hear. But words are far less central to “Days of Heaven” than the visuals and natural background sounds of birds, animals, wind, water, and fire, combined with the extraordinary music that fills the film. The viewer could probably benefit as much from viewing “Days of Heaven” without access to any of the words of the screenplay.
“Days of Heaven” is a mood-movie. The film creates an intense lyrical feeling of beauty and wonder. As difficult as their lives may be the characters who populate the world of “Days of Heaven” inhabit a transcendentally beautiful universe. The problems arise when this is not enough.
Terror breaks into the world when Bill and the Farmer give in to the poison of dissatisfaction. For Bill his relationship with Abby and with his sister, being able to work hard as a labourer but free to relish in the lavish beauty of the world around him, is not adequate. Bill wants something more than the simple pleasures life seems to offer. He thinks that the something more he wants is wealth and a life of ease.
The Farmer who has more money than he could possibly need and lives a life of comfortable leisure in an elegant home wants the one thing Bill has. He wants Abby.
This twisted triangle of passion and discontent leads to the disaster in which both Bill and the Farmer lose all they possessed chasing after the one thing they felt their lives lacked.
What is it in the heart of human beings that causes this terrible discontent? Why is it that what we have is never enough and what someone else has seems always to be the one thing we feel is most necessary?
Terrence Malick poses these questions in “Days of Heaven”. And, while he offers no answers, he does intimate that this is the unresolved tension that lies coiled at the heart of all the catastrophes and tragedies of human history.
At the end of “Days of Heaven” Abby steps on a train accompanied by a smiling, celebrating, happy throng of young men. They are off to see the world and encounter great adventure. The adventure upon which these young men have embarked is the First World War. What the viewer is acutely aware of, that the characters in the film do not understand of course, is that the “adventure” these young men are taking is going to be a journey into hell. Just as Bill and the Farmer’s worlds were destroyed by the events in which their lives became embroiled, many of these young men will not return to their families and others will have their lives physically and spiritually shattered by the terrible events they approach with such ignorant enthusiasm.
The key offered in “Days of Heaven” is not to try to understand the confusing ways life unfolds. It is certainly not to enter into the struggle to gain mastery over the events of our lives. The response Terrence Malick offers to the suffering, confusion, and puzzle of life is to open our hearts to the deep Beauty that permeates all of life and allow that Beauty to be our guide.
Throughout the film, as difficult as their circumstances may be, Malick shows us people who are able to celebrate life. He shows us characters who, though poor and oppressed, are able to find the rhythm of Love that permeates the universe. They are able to enter into that rhythm of Love with an abandon that leads them from the hell of their circumstances into the heaven that is a part of daily life for those with eyes to see, even if they don’t own a large screen TV with surround sound to help with the vision.
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August 17, 2011 at 7:43 pm
jaqueline
” What is it in the heart of human beings that causes this terrible discontent? Why is it that what we have is never enough and what someone else has seems always to be the one thing we feel is most necessary? ”
I am curious about your take on this Christopher.
For me the movie was a reminder of the desperation that many were in not so long ago . The conditions that we consider part of the ‘third world’ were right there , for us to see right here in North America as the black haired girl scrabbled about the putrid water of some polluted inner city creek.
The injustice of her meager wages being docked, the chance for a way out of the dark and grime of industrial age economic inequality taken by a tough yet tender survivor, cannot be put down to misplaced spiritual longing. If it does come to that , the farmer wanting a wife and wanting a profit is misplaced spiritual longing as well…but men want wives, and women want love and boys want something to do and something to show for their hard work. That people want and need these things cannot be washed away by the truth of their spiritual need.
Not long after the year this film was set A sweat shop in Chicago was burned to the ground and 100′s of girls like the black haired girl were burned to death and there was such a protest that it set forth the legitimacy and power of the labour movement. and a conscientiousness of the lot of the poor and working class.
It seemed all too pertinent again to see that age portrayed in this day as we teeter on the brink of trashing what those girls had died for.
August 19, 2011 at 9:34 am
Frank J. Moretti
Christopher .. Thanks for your insightful comments. They’re really useful as I ponder and ponder and ponder! I do like your basic conclusion that “as difficult as their circumstances may be, Mallik shows us people who are able to celebrate life …. in a transcendentally beautiful universe” But there is one point on which I don’t completely agree, and that is your including the Farmer in the statement “Bill and the Farmer give in to the poison of dissatisfaction”. I agree that it’s true for Bill, but the Farmer has a legitimate dissatisfaction in that he lives alone in a huge house without companionship, and while it’s true that “he wants what Bill has — Abby”, he was deceived into believing that they are brother and sister, so his wooing her is entirely legitimate, appropriate and honourable. Yes?
I like your description of it as being a “mood film”. I continue to be struck by what I see as symbolism in place of reality. By that I mean, for example, the giant house on the top of the hill, standing completely naked and barren, as a symbol of overpowering dominance, but unrealistic in the sense that the Farmer lives alone, like a hermit, with no indication of any staff. Similarly, he owns a huge spread, but we see no help except the foreman, a symbolic older archetypal veteran of the prairies who has probably known the Farmer since birth. (“I know what you’re doin’. … He’s like a son to me” he says to Bill). There’s no attempt to realistically portray day-to-day life on the farm (or ranch). Similarly the “marriage” of the Farmer and Abby is portrayed in a symbolic way, in the sense that they are never portrayed behaving like husband and wife. It is all extremely chaste and dignified and tentative .. they never seem to connect in any way, and at one point he articulates this when he says ” I feel like I hardly know you” or words to that effect .. because he really doesn’t know her. Even the dalliances between Bill and Abby seem to me to be for the most part symbolic .. they certainly don’t act like a husband and wife reunited for a few brief stolen moments. And so on, and so on. I am just struck by the way he creates each scene with just enough detail to set the mood, like a series of sketches for a sculpture that is never completed.
Anyway, that’s part of my reaction to a first viewing .. I’m sure that if I saw it once or twice more, my perspective would be altered significantly!
Frank.