Fox Searchlight studio describes A Hidden Life thusly: "Based on real events, from visionary writer-director Terrence Malick, A HIDDEN LIFE is the story of an unsung hero, Franz Jägerstätter, who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II. When the Austrian peasant farmer is faced with the threat of execution for treason, it is his unwavering faith and his love for his wife Fani and children that keeps his spirit alive."
The film's title derives from Mary Ann Evans (aka George Eliot), who wrote in 1871's Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life: "..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
Of 153 reviews, the one that resonates most with me is Variety's Owen Gleiberman: "Cinema at its mightiest and holiest. A movie you enter, like a cathedral of the senses."
A Hidden Life feels very much like Days of Heaven, The Tree of Life, and To the Wonder, which is to say the film is long, meandering, natural, and features nearly three hours' worth of outdoor cinematography, with our principal players laboring in golden meadows kissed by the sun. As others have said for years now, these are Mallick staples, but I don't find them trite or repetitive; I find them glorious, performing, as they do, key and central roles as primary characters.
The film is aesthetically and visually stunning, every bit as good as one's finest trip to Austria, Switzerland, or Italy, and every bit as sensory.
It's a postcard, in equal parts, to suffering with integrity amidst the most beautiful God has to offer, and the most ugly, vile, wicked...and best...man has to offer.
I can't help but think what kindred spirits William Wallace and our protagonist here would have been in life, Franz wondering aloud: "When our leaders are evil, what are we to do?" And being told (on more than one occasion) by people who profess to be Franz's friends: "Will your sacrifice change the world, or the course of history's events? No. You will be forgotten."
Alas, the church's painter offers Franz perhaps the greatest insight, far more than the priests themselves: "Christ has many admirers, but very few followers. I hope that one day I may follow and paint the true Christ with my life."
What a joy to honor the lives of human beings like Franz Jägerstätter, be it through the storytelling of film, or in future ways larger than small.
Hallelujah and Amen.
