Film Review: "A Hidden Life" (2019).

From the director of The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life comes A Hidden Life. This epic historical drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick. The film centres on an Austrian farmer named Franz Jägerstätter who faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.

In late June 2016, reports first emerged about a film, then entitled Radegund, that would depict the life of Austria’s Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector during World War II who was put to death at the age of 36 for undermining military actions, and was later declared a martyr and beatified by the Catholic Church. By July, August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Jürgen Prochnow, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Nyqvist, Bruno Ganz, Martin Wuttke, Alexander Fehling, and Ulrich Matthes were cast. The film would be marked as Nyqvist's and Ganz's last film, after their respective deaths in 2017 and 2019. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in August. Filming took place at Studio Babelsberg, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany; Saxony and Berlin; Sappada, Siusi, and Südtirol, Italy; and St. Radegund, Austria. Like Malick's other films, artificial lights only used on rare occasions during shooting. For all the other sets, including the prison cells, the team simply used the right time of the day to shoot it until they lost the light. The film was shot digitally on the Red Epic Dragon camera system. The camera was selected for its ability to handle stark contrast within a scene, preserving details in both the highlights and shadows of the image, while still maintaining realistic colour. Malick spent almost three years editing the film. The film's composer James Newton Howard says scoring the film was a highly collaborative process. One of the early ideas Malick brought to Howard, was to incorporate sounds he had captured during production such as church bells from the villages, cow and sheep bells, the saw mill, sounds from the prison, and scythes in the fields. As a result, Howard took many of those sounds and processed them into musical elements that are woven throughout the score. Howard began his process after Malick sent him a series of short clips from the film without any sound or music.

The film stars Diehl, Pachner, Prochnow, Schoenaerts, Nyqvist, Ganz, Wuttke, Fehling, and Matthes. The particular power of this tone poem comes from how quietly resigned both characters are to their fates, as if they sense a guiding hand in their every action.

Despite arresting visuals and strong lead performances, A Hidden Life suffers from an unfocused narrative that will challenge viewers' attention spans over its near three-hour runtime. The film mostly falters on being stately almost to the point of being static. However, that being said, what distinguishes Malick's film is how firmly he refuses to know more than he should. The events in his film, including the tragic battles between Jägerstätter and the Nazis, seem to be happening for the first time. In the end, Malick is simply visionary.

Simon says A Hidden Life receives:

Also, see my review for Song to Song.