A Hidden Life (2019)

[Simon Boccanegra]

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Based on real events, 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 Fanni and children that keeps his spirit alive.

Visually beautiful and thematically timely. The screenplay is substantive enough, and enough of it survived Terrence Malick's editing process, that the lead actors (August Diehl and Valerie Pachner) can create real characters within the impressionistic Malick style: "poetic" voice-over, angled close-ups of faces, blades of grass, the sky, mist, shadows on walls. The performances are often touching, and this time I do think the many scenic views around the human figures are apposite. They give us a sense of the natural wonders of a world the main character loves but is willing to risk giving up, so appalled is he by evils of the regime demanding his loyalty. Jörg Widmer's cinematography and James Newton Howard's score are award-worthy.  

But it's now hard to believe that the young Malick made his reputation with two classics only about 95 minutes each (Badlands and Days of Heaven). Since his return from a long hiatus in 1998, he's been every bit as solemn but heavier of hand, also less concerned with narrative momentum. From the point that Franz is imprisoned in the second hour (of three), the tempo of the film becomes a crawl, and points are made repeatedly. There are too many scenes of the wife and children being ostracized by former friends in their village, and Pachner has been directed to respond to all of them in a way that makes the character look slow on the uptake. The scenes of Franz in prison are similarly repetitious, and the film becomes obsessive and insistent rather than dramatic.  

There's a great deal of virtue on display here, both artistic and human. Isolated scenes and images are remarkable. But it's a punishing film.  

Edited January 9, 2020 by Simon Boccanegra

[Blergh]

I wonder if there might be a sequel in the works  about Frau Jägerstätter's life after Franz's execution. I mean, he was executed in 1943 when she was only 30 years old . Yet,despite her being ostracized by her fellow townsfolk she not only survived the last very lean two years of WWII and then postwar austerity but she raised their three daughters on her own and would live to see her late husband being viewed as a hero by others before her own death in 2013 at the age of 100[!] -70 years after Franz's execution!