A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019): USA

Reviewed by Ethan Messecar. Viewed at AFI Fest 2019.

I stayed an extra day just to catch a screening of writer, director, and philosopher Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life,” less for the sake of enjoying a film and more for the sake of having an unreplicable cinematic experience. This is part of why I feel it is difficult to come up with a definitive statement about the film such as saying “I liked” or “disliked it,” the film seems to have little regard for the audience’s sense of entertainment, similar to how the Nazis had little to no regard for the victims of their atrocities.

The story is far more traditional than many of Malick’s latest efforts, following an Austrian family in the middle of WWII as German men are being called to serve in Hitler’s army as well as pledge their loyalty to him. The patriarch of this family, Franz Jagerstatter (August Deihl) opts to oppose the war, refusing to fight as well as pledging to Hitler. Subsequently imprisoned, Franz fights to maintain humanity in an increasingly inhumane environment, meanwhile at home his wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner) struggles to keep their family from falling apart. While in their own personal as well as physical prisons, the two contemplate the nature of good and evil, trying to comprehend how their worlds have become so bleak and brutal.

While the story may seem somewhat bare, it is less the narrative and more so the filmmaking that elevates this film into what one might call a “sensory overload” experience. The cinematography by Jorg Widmer, who worked with Malick on “Tree of Life,” is powerful and arresting. Each shot, often brought to life with the use of natural light and extremely wide angle lenses, seem as though they could be framed and hung in a gallery. This, combined with Malick’s feverish editing technique, averaging about 17 shots in one minute, creates an immersive experience that concerns the audience less with the story’s plot and more with the visual and emotional implications of each succeeding image. Tension and intrigue is created not through wanting to know what will happen next to the characters, but rather the desire to know what the next image is. Each shot implies a new feeling be it anxiety, love, or sadness. In this way a comparison could be made to the works of William S. Burroughs, a pioneer of the cut-up technique. The cut-up technique consists of taking texts, cutting them up, and re-configuring them to create something new. This inherently puts more emphasis on words themselves as individuals, rather than complete sentences. If a traditional films editing style treats each shot as though it were its own sentence, than it could be argued that Malick “cuts-up” these complete sentences and rearranges them to focus back onto the singularity of the shot itself. Malick’s love for narration, throughout all of his films as well as “A Hidden Life,” can be seen to be an extension of that, often whispering singular words into the void of existence.

While the story is simple, Malick applies his same feverish filmmaking techniques as well as his usual philosophical musings about good and evil. This creates what might not be an enjoyable experience at the cinema, but certainly an engaging one and well worth the three hours spent.