IN SAYING
EVERYTHING ABOUT A MOVIE?
|
|
|
IN SAYING EVERYTHING ABOUT A MOVIE? |
| DAYS OF HEAVEN (director/writer: Terrence Malick; cinematographer: Nestor Almendros; editor: Billy Weber; music: Ennio Morricone; cast: Richard Gere (Bill), Brooke Adams (Abby), Sam Shepard (The Farmer), Linda Manz (Linda), Robert Wilke (The Farm Foreman), Jackie Shultis (Linda's Friend), Stuart Margolin (Mill Foreman), Tim Scott (Harvest Hand), Gene Bell (Dancer), Doug Kershaw (Fiddler), Richard Libertini (Vaudeville Leader), Frenchie Lemond (Vaudeville Wrestler); Runtime: 94; MPAA Rating: PG; producers: Bert Schneider/Harold Schneider; Paramount; 1978) |
| "A
truly
beautiful photographed film." Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz A truly beautiful photographed film (with Alberta,
Canada
standing in for Texas). French cinematographer
Nestor Almendros took home a well-deserved Oscar. It's
set
during
President Wilson's tenure, in the pre-World War I
Texas panhandle. Writer/director Terrence
Malick
("Badlands"/"The Thin
Red Line"/"The New World") superbly
shoots it as an enthralling mood piece, that lets its
romanticized
story of the human condition be spelled out visually
to overwhelm us
with its deep emotional impact as a parable of love
and the loss of
innocence with biblical proportions. It's told through the eyes of jaded teenage drifter
Linda (Linda Manz),
who innocently
reflects on her nomadic and chaotic life as lots of
fun and has trouble
understanding good and evil. It follows the drifter lovers, the
cocky Bill (Richard
Gere) and the sad-eyed Abby (Brooke Adams) and Bill's
wide-eyed
16-year-old sister Linda from the foundries of Chicago
to the
paradise-like wheat-fields of West Texas. Bill flees
Chicago and the law
after accidentally murdering the bullying foreman (Stuart
Margolin) in the steel mill. The
now harvest
cropper trio settle in on the vast farm, when Bill
observes the wealthy
landowner's interest in Abby and overhears that he's ill and is only expected
to live for a
year. Bill convinces Abby to
pose as his sister, and lets him marry her when he
proposes so that
within a year they'll all be rich. The farmer lets
wifey's brother and
sister stay on, while Bill stews in the juices of his
own making as he
impatiently waits for the landowner to die. The wily
old foreman (Robert
Wilke) smells
a con job and flashes his hatred
at Bill, warning him that he will not let his
long-time friend be made
a fool. What follows is an Old
Testament story that ends the drifters heavenly days
on the farm, as
the wheat-fields are taken over by a plague of
locusts, a fire rampages
through the prairie and a fight until death
between the
suspicious farmer and the hot-tempered Bill occurs
after the hustler
was observed touching the farmer's wife in not such a
brotherly way. It reminds one of an
arty
silent film, as the dialogue is sparse and all the
attention is poured
into the visuals in a poetical way. REVIEWED ON 3/7/2010 GRADE: A- Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews" © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ |