A Hidden Life (Terrance Malick, 2019): Germany/USA

Reviewed by Mark Wang. Viewed at the AFI Fest 2019.

Viewing A Hidden Life at the AFI fest is a religious experience. At the screening, the film stirs the mood and air of the audience, inducted them into the shoes of the main character and guides them towards sadly what the only sensical ending for the main character can be.

The film is set during World War II in the peaceful Austrian countryside where the Nazis occupy and conscript people into their war. Farmer Franz Jägerstätter (played by August Diehl) resists Nazi power by refusing to join service for a second time after his return from the first. For this treasonous act, the Nazi authorities imprison him and physically harm him through his time in it. Though Franz physically submits to the jail guards, his never-ending will for his convictions stands strong. After receiving a mail that Franz is to be executed, his wife Franziska Jägerstätter (played by Valarie Pachner) pays a visit to him to only come back without her husband and lover. There is no happy ending. There is a sense that his sacrifice is in vain as we, the audience, know that Nazi Germany loses the world war.

Malick masterfully pushes his actors to embody the real persons who sacrifice for a cause they believe in yet conflicted about their convictions. Thus, the title of the film makes a heavy sense. There is a hidden life that resides internally in the characters – love and conflict. Externally, the film displays the life of a martyr with a fighting conviction that is typically omitted/hidden from history.

There are two contrasting camera shots. One type of shot is the wide shot, which is regularly used on the grassy hills and cloudy mountains surrounding in the setting when the couple is together. The other is the close-up. The close-ups of the Franz and Franziska evoke their emotional journey shown on their faces from open happiness to close sadness. Camera movements are never fast, a fitting choice for the film as it helps the audience digest the scenery just as the character would have.

The film is a slow-paced movie (like Malick’s other films such as Tree of Life) that is also aided by a wonderful moody composition done by James Newton Howard. The film immerses the audience into the peaceful atmosphere of the open Austrian countryside and the darker, grimier, constricted space of prison cells where Franz occupies for the second half of the film.

Without a doubt, A Hidden Life is Terrance Malick’s triumphant jewel within his trove of beautiful poetic films. In it, you traverse the painstaking journey of a martyr. Make sure to see it on the big screen once it premieres in December.