174 mins |
Rated
PG (Violence)
There are no battlefields in Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” — only fields of wheat — no concentration-camp horrors, no dramatic midnight raids. But make no mistake: This is a war movie; it’s just that the fight that’s raging here is an internal one, between a Christian and his conscience. A refulgent return to form from one of cinema’s vital auteurs, “A Hidden Life” pits the righteous against the Reich, and puts personal integrity over National Socialism, focusing on the true story of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter’s rejection of Adolf Hitler and his refusal to serve in what he sees as an unjust war.
And lest that sound like more flower-power finger-painting from a director whose oeuvre can sometimes feel like a parody of itself, consider this: Without diminishing the millions of lives lost during World War II, Malick makes a case for rethinking the stakes of that conflict — echoes of which can hardly be ignored in contemporary politics — in more personal terms. Here, it is the fate of one man’s soul that’s at play, and nearly three hours of screen time doesn’t seem the slightest bit excessive when it comes to capturing the sacrifice of Franz (German actor August Diehl), who was ostracized, imprisoned, and ultimately executed for his convictions.
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There are no battlefields in Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” — only fields of wheat — no concentration-camp horrors, no dramatic midnight raids. But make no mistake: This is a war movie; it’s just that the fight that’s raging here is an internal one, between a Christian and his conscience. A refulgent return to form from one of cinema’s vital auteurs, “A Hidden Life” pits the righteous against the Reich, and puts personal integrity over National Socialism, focusing on the true story of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter’s rejection of Adolf Hitler and his refusal to serve in what he sees as an unjust war.
And lest that sound like more flower-power finger-painting from a director whose oeuvre can sometimes feel like a parody of itself, consider this: Without diminishing the millions of lives lost during World War II, Malick makes a case for rethinking the stakes of that conflict — echoes of which can hardly be ignored in contemporary politics — in more personal terms. Here, it is the fate of one man’s soul that’s at play, and nearly three hours of screen time doesn’t seem the slightest bit excessive when it comes to capturing the sacrifice of Franz (German actor August Diehl), who was ostracized, imprisoned, and ultimately executed for his convictions.