Days of Heaven - Criterion Collection

With only a handful of motion pictures to his credit in a career spanning more than forty years, Terrence Malick remains one of the most emotive and visceral filmmakers working today. Taking a near transcendental approach to his storytelling, the one time graduate student of philosophy conceives his films through visually profound images that either augment his lowly characters or contradict their fortuitous existence. What goes on in the background is equally as important to the narrative as the uncomplicated people who reside within it and are surrounded by it. By making great use of technique and style, Malick's films display a natural and realistic quality where happenstance emerges as the inevitable conclusion to a protagonist's environment and lot in life. In my opinion, nowhere does Malick demonstrate this creative trait more thoroughly than in 'Days of Heaven'.

After accidently killing a foreman at the steel mill where he works, Chicago laborer Bill (Richard Gere) is forced to run away. With girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and younger sister Linda (Linda Manz) in tow, he escapes to the Texas Panhandle, where they are all hired as seasonal farmhands. To avoid scandal for being unmarried, Bill and Abby tell everyone they are siblings. As a wealthy landowner (Sam Shepard) starts to fall for Abby, Bill learns that the farmer suffers from poor health. Hoping they can prosper from the man's death, Bill encourages Abby to marry the farmer, but the man's health never worsens, and Abby starts to develop feelings for her new husband. As time goes by, Bill begins to see his plan fall apart.

The film is a terrific example of the collaboration between director and cinematographer, which was partly done by Néstor Almendos and then completed by Haskell Wexler, though official recognition is typically given to the former. Although the plot was fully envisioned before principal photography took place, the final product arose from an editing process that required more than two years to complete. Much of the dialogue was abandoned and replaced with a voice-over narration, turning the film into a series of strangely edited vignettes of silent but expressive character interactions and gorgeously photographed landscapes. In the end, 'Days of Heaven' became a mythical fable about turn of the century life told majestically and poetically through its evocative images.

Though not made explicit by its plot, the story also shows the routines of immigrant life during pre-World War I America. While the U.S. had already completed expanding its borders to the Pacific Coast by the end of the 19th century, many newcomers to the country were making their own way westward in the hopes of a better life. Whether through the love triangle of descendents of immigrant families, or the farmhands that come and go, we are ultimately seeing a lower class emerging and surviving in a new, almost-heavenly land. The film moves languidly, much like the pace of life itself in this region. These unskilled laborers are also surrounded by industrial advancements in nearly every frame. From the large, monstrous farm equipment to airplanes and automobiles, we watch simple rural reality through a misguided love affair in the midst of technological progress.

Drawing obvious inspiration from Vermeer and Edward Hopper, Terence Malick captures the lives of these people in a minimal fashion that, with the help of the cinematographers, produces a collection of gorgeous and stunning moving photographs. The film is told through the eyes of a someone too young and innocent to fully comprehend the complexities involved in the many silent interactions, yet her reflective comments never the less reveal acute brilliance. When we finally arrive at the film's concluding moments, both Abby and Linda are seen following the train tracks to an unknown destination. But while one seems intent to apply the hurried pace of the locomotive, the other chooses the leisurely movement of traveling by foot. The meaning of these lasting images is another part of the film's ambiguity and beauty. And next to 'Badlands,' this is arguably the director's best work.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

This Blu-ray edition of Terrence Malick's 'Days of Heaven' comes by way of The Criterion Collection (spine #409) on a Region A locked BD50 disc and housed in their standard clear keepcase. Accompanying the disc is a 40-page booklet with color pictures of the film, featuring one essay entitled "On Earth as It Is in Heaven" by Adrian Martin and a reprinted chapter from Néstor Almendos's autobiography A Man with a Camera titled "Shooting Days of Heaven". There are no trailers or promos before being greeted by the distributor's normal menu options.