For a few decades, Terrence Malick was the best living Impressionist filmmaker. From Badlands, his 1973 debut, through Tree of Life, the director’s 2011 magnum opus, Malick’s films felt like dreams touched by reality rather than vice versa. Whether adapting a James Jones novel about World War II or reinterpreting the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, Malick’s films do not feature the world where we live in a concrete matter. Instead, Malick’s movies capture emotional truths through the lens of a natural world that is constantly in motion, a summation of fleeting moments rather than traditional narrative.
But for as good as Badlands is, Malick’s story of a young couple on a killing spree hews more closely to the films of that era than the ethereal poetic meditations that followed. Instead, it’s his 1978 sophomore film, Days of Heaven, that presages what would come after. Even though the story is simple, Malick uses his camera to elevate the tale into something more cosmic, more glorious than a synopsis could ever allow.
It’s the mid-1910s and ne’er-do-well Bill (Richard Gere) works in a Chicago steelyard. After killing his supervisor in a brawl, Bill skips town along with his girlfriend, Abby (Brooke Adams) and his little sister, Linda (Linda Manz). They hop a train that takes them to the Texas panhandle where they find work harvesting wheat. Bill soon discovers that the rich landowner (Sam Shepard) is dying from cancer with less than a year to live. Noticing that the farmer has taken a shine to Abby, Bill convinces her to marry their boss in hope that he bequeaths her the land and his fortune upon his death.
But the Texas of Days of Heaven feels more like a dream than reality. The farmer’s house stands high on the plain, surrounded by nothing but rolling hills and wheat fields. A herd of bison casually grazes nearby. Shot by the legendary Nestor Almendros, Days of Heaven wasn’t filmed in Texas, but on the plains of Alberta. According to Almendros, Malick knew more about photography and painting than an ordinary director. The director also worked with the spirit of discovery rather than a rigid schedule. He looked for the divine in each shot, something he obsessively searched for in the two years it took to edit Days of Heaven after filming.
Malick looked to American master painters such as Wyeth when crafting the idyllic fantasia of the farm. In the early sections of the film, it is a rough, but magical place, one where anything can happen from an impromptu hootenanny to the arrival of a flying circus. The story is told via voiceover from Linda, whose thick New York accent also works to remove the authenticity of place and lend to the film’s dreamlike quality. Also, Linda’s narration doesn’t always relate to what is on the screen. Her voice appears and then disappears for long stretches, talking about mundanities sometimes and then explaining how Abby falls in love with the farmer, much to Bill’s chagrin, the next moment. But Linda can also dig deeper in her narration, explore what it means to be human and all the beauty and terror that comes with it.
It’s the images, however, that stick with you after viewing Days of Heaven. The constant movement of the wheat. The churn of the threshers. The men keeping warm at a fire in the night by the river. The spectral beauty of Shepard’s farmer versus the more crudely masculine Gere. The natural terror as pheasants and skunks flee from a fire. The farmer’s house, the only structure for miles that looks out upon the expanse of land that fuels his opulence, a doll’s house in the maximum sense.
One could read Days of Heaven as a cautionary tale of man against Nature. But Malick’s films are more interested in how man exists within nature. That all around us is evidence of God but this is a God who has made our Garden and then went elsewhere. In Tree of Life, Malick’s narrators whisper for the existence of God, beg for Him to acknowledge their pain. For Malick, God is in all details and the days of heaven are the simple ones where Bill, Linda, Abby and the farmer all live together in supposed harmony, laughing and enjoying the bounty of the land. However, Bill and Abby’s betrayal of the farmer threatens this paradise, a decision preordained that will push these fond moments into memory.
And those memories belong to Linda, who is narrating the film from somewhere in the future. Malick is aware of our transient existences and his mission is to capture these Impressionistic fleeting moments with his camera. Like a butterfly landing on Jessica Chastain’s fingers in Tree of Life, Malick’s cinema isn’t always one of his design but guided by the hand of the cosmic. Malick and Linda know those heavenly days are ephemeral. They will not last forever. In the final moments of the movie, Linda and another girl wander an empty railroad track towards uncertainty. She mourns the past, but the future and all its exciting permutations awaits. But even those moments that have not yet transpired will be fleeting. And the ones that come after too.
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