Days of Heaven (1978) film review
Friday, December 3, 2021
This 1978 movie was directed and written by Terrence Mallick, starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, and Linda Manz. It takes place in 1916, starting out in downtown Chicago, where many poor people hop on top of a cargo train to travel elsewhere, seeking work and a better life. The main characters include a young man, his little sister, and his girlfriend. (Terrence Mallick has a small role in the movie, playing a Mill Worker). The movie is narrated by the young girl, which is mostly seen through her eyes, kind of like her diary entries.
They arrive in a Texas Panhandle, where they find work on a wheat farm, working for a dying but a wealthy and lonely farmer. He kind of reminds me of the Great Gatsby, and I felt sorry for this character. The three decide to live with him for work, and he is attracted to the guy’s girlfriend, although they tell the wealthy man that they are brother and sister. Everything appears to be cool, in his eyes, because now he can make his move on the woman. Her boyfriend tells her to play along with him so that they can eventually con him into stealing his wealth. But they all end up having fun together, creating a family. The young girl, Linda, enjoys meditating on nature and the animals, while Abby falls in love with the wealthy farmer, and Bill still enjoys his girlfriend while working the land and going duck-hunting with the farmer. (I felt sorry for the poor ducks). The wealthy farmer courts and marries her, and she starts to have feelings for him, eventually falling in love with him, but she still sneaks off in the middle of the night to be with her boyfriend.
There is a sudden locust infestation on the farm before the whole wheat farm is destroyed by a large fire. Each person’s short-lived “heaven” is slowly being destroyed with the land.
The wealthy farmer soon realizes something weird is happening between the so-called brother and sister, and he starts to question them about their relationship. It leads to a three-way love triangle, with both men fighting for the woman. The wealthy farmer approaches the young guy with a knife. But being more street suave and edgy, the younger guy fights back the wealthy farmer and stabs him in the heart.
While the police are out searching for the wealthy farmer’s body, they notice the young guy, and they start chasing him until they shoot and kill him on a manhunt. The young woman is not just widowed, but she also loses her boyfriend. She takes the young girl to an orphanage for girls, before she moves on, living her life, by herself.
This story also reminds me of someone’s writing description of an upside-down triangle writing form, which slowly inches its way to an ultimate tragedy ending. But I enjoy going to Terrence Mallick's films, mostly for the dramatic photography and cinematography scenes, although his movies are always so depressing with a sad and hopeless ending.
Moreover, although very sad, the dramatic story works well, mostly because of the dramatic and professional cinematography as well as eerie background music. In a way, it is similar to the dramatic scenes from Polanski, Kubrick, and Hitchcock movies. Mallick movies are also about the subtle details and artistic effects that make up the whole drama and story, slowly moving the story along to its ending.
