Yet the episodes which are clearly from Linda’s point-of-view are juxtaposed with instances in which she is absent. Is she creating these scenes in her mind by extrapolating, in retrospect, and what she thinks probably happened? (“Now that I think about it, I bet they were fighting…”) That doesn’t seem likely; her narration doesn’t sound mature enough. Instead, it’s as if she’s telling the story to an adult, and we’re seeing the adult’s speculations on the scenes she missed.
The title of the movie is not quite ironic—in his cold and distant way, Malick loves his characters too much for irony—but wistful. In its broadest sense, the “Days of Heaven” are any “good old days.” We remember them fondly, imagining that “things then were better than things are now,” while even the slightest examination will reveal something unsavory about the past. Malick does not condemn outright this oh-so-human trait of idealizing the past—indeed all his movies could be seen as long, fond remembrances of his childhood in East Texas farmland—but he examines it. Malick is mournful as he deflates the “good old days,” not spiteful or self-righteous.
Everyone’s happy in the big house when Abby and the farmer are together, but only because the farmer doesn’t know about Abby and Bill. The migrant workers should be happy on the plains of Texas, beneath the magnificently photographed skies and in those endless wheat fields. But when we see them under a mechanically-induced barrage of wheat, or being fired for the slightest infraction, we realize the only advantage Texas has over Chicago is that in Texas you get exploited outdoors. In the character of the farm supervisor (Robert Wilke), “Days of Heaven” makes it clear that the boss has the last say in everything and there is no recourse to his decrees. Regardless of his location, Bill is always throwing something into some sort of fire, whether it’s in a steel mill or to power a wheat grinder. Malick even frames the collection of wheat and the tossing of coals into a roaring fire identically.
The land itself is seen reverentially, even religiously, especially by the farmer, yet he reduces it to a commodity to be bought and sold as much as he has reduces the men and women slaving all day in the sun to merely mechanical labor. Malick is not crying “hypocrite!” the way a less interesting filmmaker might, but is affectionately philosophizing over how the human condition cannot seem to include good traits without bad ones. It would be so easy to show the farmer pulling Abby from the field, to screw her literally the way he’s screwed the migrants metaphorically, but no, he’s a nice man.
And, of course, America is on the verge of the Great War, which only pops up at the end of the film. We briefly see soldiers hugging their sweethearts and climbing onto a train, as if the film is saying “and then you know the rest of the story.” Whatever the days of heaven were, they’ve ended. Whatever system or mechanism brought about so much happiness has proved faulty and come undone. More than two decades later in “Russian Ark,” Alexander Sokurov similarly uses the Russian Revolution without actually mentioning or showing the Russian Revolution. In both cases, we know the war is coming like a great storm, and we don’t need to be beaten over the head for everything we see to be colored.
But let’s put aside my garage sale Marxism for a moment and interpret “Days of Heaven” through a religious lens. Is it commenting on the story of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt or is it just a loose retelling? Or does Malick’s use of Genesis not have anything to do with Genesis at all, but is a way to put us in a religious state of mind when we view his huge canvases of land and sky? If this is the case, then the land becomes a character unto itself and not a background. The land is holy, patient, and takes abuse, not unlike the donkey in “Balthazar.”
Part of why “Days of Heaven” has never achieved mass popularity is because people like art to tell them they are the center of things. But the people in “Days of Heaven” are distinctly not the center of things. They must share the story with their land. We like to think our destinies are shaped by our personalities and choices, but “Days of Heaven” shows characters shaped by a huge, overpowering environment. The romance between Abby and the farmer is shaped by her needs and those of her makeshift family. The characters are insignificant when compared to the land and just an indifferent memory to Linda the narrator. Perhaps the allusion to Abraham and Sarah is to help cast Bill and Abby in the eyes of the Old Testament’s God: distant, removed, not exactly uncaring but not enormously interested, as if in the days before Christ man had no way of relating to the cosmos and the God who used it as his face.
A simpler explanation as to why I love “Days of Heaven” might be because it’s so absurdly beautiful. The photography by Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler is breathtaking, all rich orange, pink, and blue skies. They famously shot the movie almost entirely at “magic hour,” when the sun is about to go down or come up, and the sky is its most alive. The burning fields, cut again and again by shadowy figures, are unforgettable. There’s nary a shot indoors and Malick gets some neat handheld stuff, first person shots, and some great pastoral footage in a river. In addition to winning Best Director at Cannes, “Days of Heaven” won the Oscar for cinematography the same year that all the big prizes went to “The Deer Hunter.”
The acting for the most part is naturalistic and quiet. Shepard gives a touchingly sincere performance as the straight-as-an-arrow farmer, a gentle ruler who has never questioned his right to rule. Linda Manz’s dirty, angular face will stick with you. Only Richard Gere seems a little out-of-place; Pauline Kael complains of him giving a bad James Dean impersonation. Maybe Bill is the man of the future one era too early. It’s not just that he returns to the farm by motorcycle and can’t ride a horse, he’s also more cunning than the farmer and able to see more sides of things.
Okay I’m done. Because I don’t seem to be leading anywhere, any concluding paragraph which just seem artificial and tacked-on.
Finished Thursday, September 8th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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