Days of Heaven

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⭐10/10

I've had this movie on my radar for quite some time, but it's hard to pull the trigger on a 50 year old movie that's hard to find, and even harder to find someone who's actually watched it. Well I'm really glad I did. 

The mythology behind this movie is something. It's nearly all shot during the golden hour, filmed for about 20 minutes per day to capture that. The cinematographer was going blind as he filmed it.  The editing took several years... It was clearly a labour of love, and it clearly paid off. This movie is absolutely stunning. Because it was recorded on film, and is a 1910s period piece filmed in the 70s, this feels like a movie that couldn't be made today. 

This movie is about Richard Geer, who I randomly saw in a movie a few weeks ago for the first time, as a steel worker in Chicago who accidentally kills someone and so he, his girlfriend and sister flee to Texas to build a new life. There are certainly interesting, even dramatic things that happen in this movie, but I would say the plot is secondary to the mood and atmosphere. Much of this movie is watching gorgeous, breathtaking images set in front of you with beautiful music from the master Ennio Morricone playing in the background. There is a ton footage of animals in nature, and I can't imagine the painstaking hours it took to get it.  If that sounds good to you, you will like this movie. 

It reminded me of a lot of my recent favorites. Off the bat, there are simialries with Train Dreams, and it reminded me of my favorite parts of the Lonesome Dove miniseries. It had all the subtle and not-so-subtle beauty of Princess Kaguya or Before Yesterday. It's hard to describe, but a movie committed to hyper-realism in the period, on capturing real, complicated humans, and preferring natural beauty over exciting conflict. 

I don't want to downplay the story or what this movie was saying or capturing. The characters have precious few lines, and yet by the end you feel like you have the full picture, especially from Brook Adams (the girlfriend) and Linda Manz (the sister). Great performances, and it speaks to the concept I've been into lately where you trust the audience to understand the subtleties and use silence to say more than exposition could. It's not till the end where you realize how much you've fallen for these characters. 

My initial thought after watching was not that it was a masterpiece, though I did love it. But I've been thinking about it quite a bit since watching, and can't get over how beautiful this movie is, and how it made me feel. It fits nicely into my little niche of favorites, and though I wasn't super familiar with Terrence Malick, I'll definitely be adding all of his movies to my watchlist. 

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