Days of Heaven

365 Films

Entry #63

Days of Heaven (1978)

Directed by Terrence Malick

“Cartoons are like gossamer and one doesn't dissect gossamer."  So says the editor of the New Yorker talking to Elaine Benes when questioned about the meaning of their most recent cartoon.  That type of thinking tends to manifest itself when trying to parse through the visual symphony of a Terrence Malick film.  The temptation is to sit back and allow the images to overwhelm the reality of sitting in a theater (or on a couch) to the point where they become reality and one’s reaction to them is purely instinctual.  When Terrence Malick embarked upon his second feature, Days of Heaven sometime in the mid-1970’s he did not yet possess the big foot or yeti type reputation he has today.  He had one previous feature, which was very well received, and the anticipation for the follow-up surely held an enormous amount of supportive interest from the film community.  All of that evaporated the moment the horror stories from the production and subsequent post-production started emerging from the entertainment press about this film.  Perhaps horror is too strong a word but the general message was clear: Malick had no idea how to make a film that at all resembled the natural, logical way of doing things.  Crewmembers quit, relationships were slashed and burned, and actors would go on to publicly voice their complaints about how the director had ruined some of their best work.  The film was a box-office disappointment and the film’s critical reception was pretty much split straight down the middle.  There was a definite vocal contingent that rightly praised the startling photographic techniques while an equally passionate section complained that the story telling had been butchered down to an indecipherable mess, thus robbing it of any emotion.  Perhaps because Malick’s techniques (and the continual actorly frustrations that comes with it) are so well known by this point, the film has received a thorough re-evaluation several decades later and is now considered to be one of the finest films ever made.  I write all of this because it is damn near impossible to say anything insightful or evaluative about the film in the space I have allotted myself for this blog and its entries.  The only way I could see to attempt a coherent thought was to point out just how transitory and elusive the thing is.  Calling it a Rorschach test for one’s specific faith in cinema as a primarily visual medium is a glib yet not entirely preposterous summation.  The criticisms leveled against it pertaining to the “lack” of emotion have, in this writer’s opinion, completely missed the point of the entire film.  Days of Heaven is a memory told in fragments from the point of view of a teenage girl who hasn’t quite processed what she has just experienced.  The reason most of the adult conversations appear to be missing vital chunks is because Linda Manz is filling in the blanks and gaps with her own dialogue.  It lends the film an immediacy while simultaneously distancing us as we watch these relatively insignificant human beings play out a shop-worn melodramatic series of events set against the eye-popping enormity of the very landscape itself.  It can’t be accidental that just when the locusts appear there is a “god’s-eye” angle looking straight down at the kitchen where the swarm is first noticed.  That it is a plague of locusts at all should clue one into the film’s biblical influences.  The relationship between the individual and the cosmic has always fascinated Malick and that is certainly the case here.  For all the scheming and greedy plotting of Richard Gere’s character there is always a cut away to an animal detachedly going about its business or a scarecrow looking out as the helpless and empty witness.  But just when the film is about to spin off into the realm of the clinical examination of human folly, we hear Linda Manz’s voice and are reminded that there is an unformed life at the center of it, trying to make sense of whatever she can while trudging forth into the horizon.  For all the intoxicating scenery by which she is surrounded, there are always going to be people with half-angel and half-devil in them.  The moment one makes that realization is about as devastating and heartbreaking as cinema gets.