Terrence Malick is one of my favourite directors, so it was with an incredible amount of excitement that I took to watching his 1978 picture Days of Heaven. The visual style of Malick is apparent from the outset, as the environment of the 1916 Texas Panhandle comes to life. The Ennio Morricone score adds to the experience, as the music’s sparing use helps in creating an immersive, overwhelming experience.
Now Malick’s Days of Heaven is a film of subdued emotions and of time. It is not a bold, adventurous sort of picture. It moves gracefully, logically. Malick doesn’t impose his characters or his visuals on us like other filmmakers and I think that’s part of what draws me to him. He allows the scene to manipulate us naturally, organically transforming us with every passing image.
It’s important to remember that Days of Heaven is a movie about a viewpoint. We are seeing the story of a love triangle and of tragic consequences through the eyes of Linda (Linda Manz), a young girl who is the younger sister of Chicago labourer Bill (Richard Gere). Linda travels with Bill and Bill’s girlfriend, the lovely Abby (Brooke Adams), as they look for work.
Their travels take them to work for a farmer (Sam Shepard). The farmer is a rich young man, but he’s dying of an unspecified condition and seems to have taken a liking to Abby. Because Bill and Abby are traveling under the guise of being siblings, this opens the door for a sort of con job that puts Abby in a relationship with the soon-to-die farmer in hopes of getting his money when he dies. Of course, this doesn’t really work out as planned and the surrounding emotions prove complicated.
This is all seen through the eyes of young Linda, whose understanding of the events is quite limited. Her narration is nothing short of brilliant, though, and we receive a number of special insights through her eyes that we wouldn’t have received by simply looking at the world through the eyes of the adults. This approach is part of what Malick uses to keep the emotions and the boldness of the tale at a distance.
In understanding the world of Days of Heaven through the eyes of Linda, we too have our perspectives limited. It is this limitation that Malick uses to draw us deeper into the natural world. He uses Linda to give us pause, to offer us a glimpse at the small bugs threatening the farmer’s crops, and to show us visions of blowing wheat fields and limitless prairie.
When it comes to creating films of profound beauty, Malick simply has no modern rival. The cinematography of Néstor Almendros helps draw his vision to life. Malick and Almendros meshed well together during production and the results are clear on screen. There is very little unnatural light cover these scenes, too, and that helps draw attention to the loneliness and exile of the Texas prairie.
It’s interesting to consider Gere in the role of Bill. Malick apparently had first tried to get Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino to appear in the picture, but went with the young Gere after the other two turned him down. Looking at Days of Heaven now, I can’t think of anyone else who could have pulled off the muted resolve of Bill like Richard Gere. Shepard, too, is spot-on as the farmer.
Simply put, Days of Heaven is one of the most beautiful American pictures ever made. It’s showcase of the sprawling, lonely Texas prairie sets the standard for films about wide open spaces and its muted, withdrawn presentation of a very complex relationship is engrossing and stylish without being pretentious. With Days of Heaven, Malick continues to make a believer out of me and continues to be one of my absolute favourite directors of all time.
9.7/10
Trailer:








