bao

on my OWN soul, i'm airing out Rachel

Days of Heaven is pretty much a two-hour magic hour. Filmed almost completely in the ephemeral light shortly before sunset by Terrence Malick and his director of photography Néstor Almendros, the film appears like a memory you’re not sure you truly lived. Fields of wheat aglow with gold. Silhouettes against blood-orange skies. Locusts came in clouds like a biblical curse. It is impressionistic in a way that makes most recent movies look like TV commercials. The story is simple: a love triangle in the Texas panhandle just before WWI. Richard Gere’s restless worker. Brooke Adams’s serene beauty. Sam Shepard’s compassionate farmer. Malick depicts it like a fairy tale, minimal dialogue, whispered narration, settings that overwhelm the characters entirely. The natural light is not a gimmick, it is the goal. You can sense the heat, the dust, the loneliness of that boundless plain. Brilliant cinematography but the emotional distance kinda threw me off. Malick loves his photographs so much that occasionally the people disappear in them. I wanted to feel the heartbreak as much as I felt the anguish of those amber meadows. And the child narrator is amazing yet her voice over dips into the abstract just enough to draw me out. But when the fire comes, when the locusts come, when that last shot drifts over the river... you know you've just seen something that can't be unmade. “It’s cinema as pure atmosphere.” And that's good enough. You HAVE to see this film on the biggest screen you can find. Preferably, at dusk. With the volume too loud. And enjoy the experience.