The MoFo Movie Club Discussion: Days of Heaven

Well, it's been about a week since our last poll closed, so I think it's time to start a discussion on the winning film, Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven. I don't really want to post anything too huge (except maybe the next image) to begin because it just makes it harder for others to share their own personal views, so maybe I'll start with a story about how and why I first saw this film back in 1978.


(Hopefully it's not too big to crash the thread.)

In 1978 I was working at the Hollywood Film Archive and going to about 150-200 new releases a year as well as maybe 25-30 trips to art house/repertory movie theatres. One of the most-anticipated films of the year was Days of Heaven. I had seen Malick's Badlands at the drive-in but I wasn't overly impressed the first time, but when the commercials for Days of Heaven started hitting the TV, they seemed to focus on the music and the visuals, and the latter mostly seemed to have awesome shots of trains in lonely landscapes. Since I'd already become something of an amateur photographer by then, I was mesmerized by these shots, especially the shot which resembled a silhouetted train against a blue and white sky. However, I was disappointed to learn that the film wasn't going to be playing where I lived in Orange County when it opened. I immediately decided that I had to go about 40 miles up to Hollywood to see it the opening weekend.

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(Unfortunately both the beginning and ending are flubbed here, but you get the idea... )

The film began with a mostly sepia-toned opening credits consisting of a series of old photos taken during the Woodrow Wilson administration of the mid 1910s. Over this was played haunting piano/string music which I only learned later was Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium. That got me really excited. I was sitting in the front, about five rows back, which was normal for me at the time. Then, almost immediately, there was a shift to a viscerally-intense scene of Richard Gere shovelling coal into a blast furnace at a steel mill where he gets into a conflict with his supervisor. I was really feeling almost giddy because it went from the beautiful to the "macho" very quickly. Linda Manz's narration has always captivated me because she says things which are so bizarre and yet funny at the same time (and will, no, I don't care what the intentions of this particular narration were; they are hilarious and disturbing at the same time. ) After that, it was only a matter of moments before three of the four main characters were on that awesome train going over that awesome bridge...



I don't want to get into the plot at all right now except to say that Malick conveys oodles of information in a minimum amount of dialogue and acting, but there are still plenty of both on film. The driving forces of the film are the visuals and the music, and I've already said that they are basically both my favorites in movie history for what they do. Nestor Almendros, Haskell Wexler and John Bailey did the cinematography, which takes place during the span of over one year, so technically all the seasons are on glorious display here. It's not just that the gorgeous color cinematography displays both heat and cold, but it's especially evocative at dusk and dawn (my fave silhouette hours).



Besides the gorgeous title sequence, the remainder of the musical score by Ennio Morricone, Leo Kottke and Doug Kershaw, is beautiful, rustic and occasionally unnerving. Considering how great I believe the score to be, it's perhaps a bit surprising that there isn't more of it, but what there is is exquisite. Malick does like to use naturalistic sounds and ambient silences just as much as music, but here, he's got just about the perfect and complete package, at least for me.



Days of Heaven is obviously one of my personal fave films. Every time I watch it, I get the feeling that I'm seeing/hearing it for the first time. However, it also seems to be one of those films where I separate my personal thoughts from what I consider a "normal film buff" to think about it. I give the film a solid even if it seems I should give it higher. But you see, this is one unique film, at least for me. It's probably the only American film to which I can give a legit Art House Rating of .




One last admonishment: turn this film up really LOUD and it will pay you back multiple times.

I will return and get into plenty of other specifics, so take this as a WARNING.

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My IMDb page

Warning taken! I've got a copy and I'll be watching it this week, hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

Don't watch it if you're sleepy.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

Big pretty Movie Club page for Days of Heaven is up. Yay.

There were at least 14 shots where I thought I was looking at a painting. If my computer was working I would take all those screenshots and post them but oh well. Tarkovsky is the only other director who I've experienced that with. It's kind of surprising that the cinematographer was going blind during shooting. He would take pictures of the shot with his camera and look at the photo with a giant magnifying glass to tell what it looked like.

Anyway, after a bit of research here's what I found:

- Most of the film and dialogue was figured out as they went along so the actors could "find the story"
- This is the first film to use Panaglide (the steadicam suit) and was used extensively to keep in line with the motif of motion

One should note that the film is always moving (even during the 3 murders), whether it's the camera or the subjects, and juxtaposed with the lack of structure gives the film the very obvious parallel symbol of simply living. Malick used the three main characters searching the Panhandle for purpose basically to exhibit what everyone is looking for. Bill even says how he used to think he knew how his life would turn out and now he has no clue. Speaking of dialogue, it flies by as fast as the wheat in the fields, and things like Bill's realization of his true relationship with Abby or the continuous work of the characters is projected in a subdued manner. I want to question why Linda is the narrator; she is disengaged from the main "plot", but observes it in her own way for us. I also want to ask if the collection far-away shots of the farmer's mansion symbolizes what Bill wants, or even what most people dream for.

As far as a personal opinion, I love the "magic hour" shots, the warm colors of the clothes, skin, buildings, wood bridge, etc that blend with the sky and grain, and I like the execution of how the three main characters live like nomads, almost like a simile for anyone without direction, and all of them ended up in completely different spots. Of course the cinematography was beautiful, but as far as a film I can return to for some sort of fulfillment it is too unrelatable for me. I can only view it "from afar".



I rarely noticed any music playing, I'm surprised it didn't grab me the same way as it did you. Also you were highly equipped to discuss this, that post was worth reading...not that your others aren't.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Hopper and Wyeth.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Richard Gere ruined the film for me. I couldn't tell if he was angry or pouting.

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I think that was on purpose just because he was a frustrated guy with no real destination. Naturally he 'really know how to feel about that, but that's just my explanation.

Also Holden thanks for posting those screenshots, great picks

A practical reason is for plot clarification due to the fact that Malick excised a lot of the existing dialogue while editing. The voiceovers were apparently devised solely during postproduction. I suppose it was merely convenient that she was already present in most of the key scenes.

There is also the matter that the film---and Malick in general---stresses the pure being-in over the subjective mental world, so it would have been rather "disruptive" for one of the two main characters to make commentaries when the focus is on action and image. Furthermore, Linda rarely, if ever, makes comments about her internal thoughts; only stating the bare facts. And once she even makes an ethereal comment that could even be interpreted as describing a kind of lapse in being. She says:

It's as if she is blending into the very world itself, taking on its age. Losing her self and becoming a true narrator of the world.

I will re-watch this and if I think of anything new to say I'll post it after that but w/r to this:

I think the being 'disengaged from the main "plot"' probably relates to the observation, right? I definitely think that by having the narrator (shorthand for surrogate audience) be somewhat alien or unrelatable serves to foreground the act of watching. I could be misremembering this but I seem to recall the "watching" being nested more than once as well. Like a lot of what Linda is watching is her older brother, who's simultaneously obsessed with/detached from the artificial relationship between his girlfriend and Sam Shepard. My overly simplistic geometric configuration has concentric spheres with Shepard at the Center and Us at the outside, something like: Us: Linda: Bill: Abby: Sam Shepard. I need to watch it again and focus on details because it could be more complicated or completely different than that, but I'm pretty sure there's some kind of multiple nesting going on, though not explicitly.

There's something about the narration in Malick's movies that's very hard to pin down and tie to anything but still highly engaging. It's also somewhat amazing to me that he uses narration in all his movies because the imagery is so strong that they could almost be silent and still work.

I had a dream about watching this in a theater last night and noticing a lot of really grainy and green-tinted interior scenes that I'm sure weren't in the movie.

As lines says, thus far all of Malick's films have a narration, and they all seem to come from a totally different perspective than the actual story shown on screen. However, in this instance, Linda's narration does touch on some specific things which are happening in the film although she doesn't seem to be able to fully comprehend them. It's almost as if she's "speaking in tongues". Sometimes what she says is actually foreshadowing of the spectacular, fiery ending where something resembling an Old Testament God seems to visit his wrath upon these mostly simple, almost pathetic souls. Then again, Linda seems to understand the conflict arising between the other three main characters even before they do.

I mostly look at the voiceover here as ironic as opposed to disengaged. She's seeing things from the perspective of a naive teenager who doesn't fully understand why she's been forced to be uprooted (similarly to the Sissy Spacek character in Badlands). She has her various semi-formed thoughts about the world and she basically shares with us what's she feeling at the time. Her specific choice of words though seems meaningful to me and always produces smiles and laughs because she often says things which just sound so outrageous and so against what you would think her character would say.

Oh yes, lines, your dream has nothing to do with the reality of the film.

Yes, I found a lot of what she said a bit bizarre just because it seemed like she didn't care that she couldn't fully digest the circumstances around her but still commented on them like it didn't even matter, however the speaking in tongues thing seems partially inaccurate. I would say the flow of events was the speaking in tongues, and she was the translator, and thus we interpret it through the foggy child's responses, which could tie in with ->
because, in light of the adults not even sure of where they should go, a child narrator lost in the ambiguity of it all naturally would be a fit scribe for the scenes.

Hmmm, I like this idea of Linda as translator. The film as a whole could be said to be about people who get lost in the world. People who have no direction and head wherever the turning of the world sweeps them into. It's a kind of child's logic, an open, unbounded logic only Linda can properly grasp. Only she can see the necessity and the totality of the meanderings as part of something more meaningful.

The testimony is lucid only in its dreaminess. In a sense, this is where it is most accurate and literal.

I also love lines' idea of concentricity. I don't think he is incorrect about the order either---Us: Linda: Bill: Abby: Sam Shepard. Especially in the case of Shepard you get this ominous sense that the locust storm is a kind of explosive manifestation of his repressed jealousy.

It's almost as if Shepard---in some sense a "bored god" living alone at the center of his planar expanse---commands a kind of power over the land. Furthermore, I'd claim we are the most alienated from his internal character. Taking lines' order you have a gradual decrease in subjective understanding---we understand ourselves the most, Linda speaks as if dictating her thoughts, Bill and Abby's dominant dialogues, Shepard's relative silence amid it all. Most of what we get from Shepard is a rather dark, impenetrable gaze culminating with the wonderfully demonic "flash-light trick" shot during the fire scenes.

Does anybody remember the first time locusts are shown in the film, early on?

My fave cinematic music ever from the film:

ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFyeLJ0AXmk&feature=related

&feature=related

ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxuvJU0MVaU&feature=related

I just love how Morricone's "Harvest" enters a dialogue with "The Aquarium"---with the former being a more somber adaptation of the latter.

There is actually a piece in the score where piano "excerpts" from "Aquarium" are much more readily heard within a Morricone piece, but I couldn't find that for some reason.

"The Harvest" first appears just before the wheat harvest which is basically presented as a holy act, accompanied by some form of priest. It appears later when Abby agrees to stay on at the farm and also during the marriage ceremony.

Play them all at once, man. It's a trip.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."