Review: A Hidden Life
Tuesday, December 17, 2019 at 2:06PM 
Though I'm an atheist, I've long been fascinated with stories of faith and spirituality. When it comes to cinema, this is especially true. It's difficult to not be drawn to Bergman's reveries about a cruel God, Dreyer's religious ardor or Bresson's catholic severity. They move and engage, they challenge and inspire, even when the viewer doesn't believe in the cosmic orders they take for granted. Terrence Malick is a good name to add to that list. After all, the Philosophy professor turned filmmaker has dedicated much of his career to the transmutation of the soul into film. He creates spiritual odysseys out of light and color, intuitive editing and ephemerous scripts, star-studded casts and beautiful cinematography.
His style is so specific it's become prone to parody and his self-important themes can feel alienating. A Hidden Life exemplifies all of this to the extreme and, in some ways, it seems to announce itself as the ultimate Terrence Malick project…
A Hidden Life tells the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who refused to fight for the Third Reich during World War II. A devout Catholic, Franz was a courageous conscientious objector in a time and place where morality was quickly abandoned in favor of nationalistic rhetoric. Even the institution of the Catholic Church turned their backs on this believer, leaving him powerless to stop his dark fate at the hands of the Nazis. In 1943, he was executed by guillotine leaving behind a widow, three daughters and a personal history that took many years to come to light. When it finally did, he was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI and now he is sanctified onscreen by the hand of Malick.
August Diehl plays Franz with appropriate nobility while Valerie Pachner gives vibrant life to Fani, the farmer's beloved wife and A Hidden Life's coprotagonist. Theirs are simple performances, but more concrete personalities would work against the director's pirouetting camera and impressionistic structure. The sparse linearity the story possesses is oriented by their words just the same. This is a narrative built of correspondence between husband and wife, their whispered interior monologues and tearful prayers. Along the way, many a German star parades in front of the camera, bestowing their talents on the film for no more than a couple of scenes.
On the one hand, this disperse script and Malick's directing style contribute to an experience that seems more guided by emotions than historical fact. It enlivens the material and allows for moments of blissful grace like the picking of a fallen umbrella or an animal's life told through the journey of its cowbell. On the other, the aesthetic is so mythicizing that the film feels like it's at odds with its protagonists' sense of self. Franz's banality is an important part of his story. He's one of those heroes History forgot, whose merits deserve to be celebrated not because of their grandeur but because of their quiet resistance.
A brief pastoral tale intruded upon by the tyranny of others is here depicted as an overlong, linguistically overcomplicated and tiresomely repetitive epic. Terrence Malick's greatest stylistic assets may turn Franz's life into a sublime thesis on godliness in the face of incomprehensible evil. However, they also deprive A Hidden Life of needed humility and humanity. As a drama and a biography with a coherent symbiosis of form and theme, one must admit this is a failure. It's a fascinating thoughtful, even beautiful, failure, but a failure nonetheless.
I didn't go into the film expecting such a reaction. After rave reviews from Cannes, I was sure I'd love it. I even liked Malick's more recent critical disasters, after all. This one was sure to become another beloved classic in my heart, alongside The Tree of Life and The Thin Red Line. But, as all of us know, the game of expectations is a precarious one and it seems I have lost this time around. Worst of all, A Hidden Life might be the most Terrence Malick of all Terrence Malick films. It is grace and it is hubris, both boundless and unparalleled. Whether that be good or bad lies very much in the eye of the beholder. In my case, after years of being a devout believer in this director's cinema, I find my faith tested like never before.
I feel the bitterness of ambivalence setting in my heart, as A Hidden Life thus breaks my conviction and finally makes a Terrence Malick agnostic out of me.
Reader Comments (2)
I saw it last week. It was awful.
I do want to see this since I still feel that Malick is one of the rare masters we have right now as I also heard it is his most political film yet as it holds a lot of relevance into what is happening right now yet in a more silent approach.