A man, a woman and his kid sister are drifting around the US midwest in the early twentieth-century. In Texas, they find work at the harvest on a wheat ranch and when the rich but dying farmer expresses his love for the woman, the man encourages her to respond to him. When the two are married and the farmer invites them all to live with him, inevitable resentment and jealousy surface ...
Although they've made a lot of westerns and costume-dramas, the Americans don't make many films about their own history which feel real and authentic - the style is often deliberately overdone (as in Jezebel or Gone With The Wind) and there are only a few movies where the filmmakers really try to capture the period (say, The Grapes Of Wrath or Matewan). Days Of Heaven is the best example I've seen of this latter style and an astonishingly unique and haunting film. The simple story is really just a framework with which Malick paints extraordinary landscapes and evocative themes - in every sense this is a timeless picture. If ever there was a showcase of how to photograph a film well, this is it; director of photography Nestor Almendros - with additional shooting by Haskell Wexler (the Chicago scenes) - creates astonishing images of the endless wheatfields and the lonely farmhouse, with incredible use of available light and colour and no diffusion filters or staged lighting. Uniquely, the filmmakers deliberately did not shoot during the normal day, but filmed mainly during the dusk magic-hour, which results in an amazing ghostly ambient feel to the visuals (for more on this, see the excellent American Film Institute documentary Visions Of Light). The long locust invasion / forest fire sequence is one of the most intense and incredible set-pieces ever put on film and my mind boggles as to how they pulled it off (nowadays of course it would all be done with computer opticals). This is one of very few movies where you can literally take any still at all and the lighting, framing and composition are just breathtaking. I'll admit I'm a photography junkie - to me, movies are about images - but if you've never really thought about how a movie is physically shot before, please watch this amazing picture. The other outstanding element of the film is the music; it is bookended by Camille Saint-Saens spine-tingling Aquarium theme from his Le Carnaval Des Animaux, but the rest is awash in a fabulous string/woodwind score by the great Ennio Morricone, one of his very best. As with many truly great pictures, the combination of the visuals and the music result in a sensory experience that lifts you into the stratosphere - it's incredible. I normally talk about actors and writers in my reviews, but here they kinda take backstage. The script is intentionally loose and archetypal (although they have names, the characters are really just Man, Woman, Farmer and Girl) and many plot points are vague; you're never sure if Gere and Adams are married, or whether Gere kills Shepard. The performances are iconic, and whilst I find Adams irresistible in all her films (particularly The Dead Zone), it's narrator Manz who actually comes off best for me; since she's not a star, she conveys the bucolic lost-in-time mood of the piece to terrific effect. Produced by Bert and Harold Schneider and featuring wonderful art direction by Jack Fisk (who has designed all Malick's films). After making this fabulous movie, writer-director Malick took a twenty-year break from cinema and moved to France to teach. This was a great shame, because he is one of the most original, creative and talented directors of all time - don't miss this breathtaking, powerful, incredibly beautiful picture.
Although they've made a lot of westerns and costume-dramas, the Americans don't make many films about their own history which feel real and authentic - the style is often deliberately overdone (as in Jezebel or Gone With The Wind) and there are only a few movies where the filmmakers really try to capture the period (say, The Grapes Of Wrath or Matewan). Days Of Heaven is the best example I've seen of this latter style and an astonishingly unique and haunting film. The simple story is really just a framework with which Malick paints extraordinary landscapes and evocative themes - in every sense this is a timeless picture. If ever there was a showcase of how to photograph a film well, this is it; director of photography Nestor Almendros - with additional shooting by Haskell Wexler (the Chicago scenes) - creates astonishing images of the endless wheatfields and the lonely farmhouse, with incredible use of available light and colour and no diffusion filters or staged lighting. Uniquely, the filmmakers deliberately did not shoot during the normal day, but filmed mainly during the dusk magic-hour, which results in an amazing ghostly ambient feel to the visuals (for more on this, see the excellent American Film Institute documentary Visions Of Light). The long locust invasion / forest fire sequence is one of the most intense and incredible set-pieces ever put on film and my mind boggles as to how they pulled it off (nowadays of course it would all be done with computer opticals). This is one of very few movies where you can literally take any still at all and the lighting, framing and composition are just breathtaking. I'll admit I'm a photography junkie - to me, movies are about images - but if you've never really thought about how a movie is physically shot before, please watch this amazing picture. The other outstanding element of the film is the music; it is bookended by Camille Saint-Saens spine-tingling Aquarium theme from his Le Carnaval Des Animaux, but the rest is awash in a fabulous string/woodwind score by the great Ennio Morricone, one of his very best. As with many truly great pictures, the combination of the visuals and the music result in a sensory experience that lifts you into the stratosphere - it's incredible. I normally talk about actors and writers in my reviews, but here they kinda take backstage. The script is intentionally loose and archetypal (although they have names, the characters are really just Man, Woman, Farmer and Girl) and many plot points are vague; you're never sure if Gere and Adams are married, or whether Gere kills Shepard. The performances are iconic, and whilst I find Adams irresistible in all her films (particularly The Dead Zone), it's narrator Manz who actually comes off best for me; since she's not a star, she conveys the bucolic lost-in-time mood of the piece to terrific effect. Produced by Bert and Harold Schneider and featuring wonderful art direction by Jack Fisk (who has designed all Malick's films). After making this fabulous movie, writer-director Malick took a twenty-year break from cinema and moved to France to teach. This was a great shame, because he is one of the most original, creative and talented directors of all time - don't miss this breathtaking, powerful, incredibly beautiful picture.