Stars: August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Karin Neuhauser, Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruno Ganz, Franz Rogowski
Director: Terrence Malick
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead, though it's based on a true story and it's Terrence Malick, so "spoilers" is the wrong term here) The movie is, also in a bit of a departure for Malick, based on a true story. Franz Jagerstatter (Diehl) was in fact an Austrian man who was a conscientious objector, refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II. Though it's not stated in the film, after his death (he was executed for refusing to fight) he would eventually be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI and declared a martyr. Here we focus on his early life as a peasant farmer with his wife Fani (Pachner), and what happened after he refused to sign an oath declaring his loyalty to Adolf Hitler. He is arrested, and we see his imprisonment and ultimate execution for refusing to bend his personal beliefs, and we also watch what this does to his wife at home, where the townspeople hate her for letting her husband be a "traitor."
This is all laid out relatively evenly-unlike the last three Malick films, this isn't something you have to sort of assume you know the plot because of the lack of dialogue. While the script isn't brimming with conversation, there's passages here in a way that you wouldn't normally see from a modern Malick picture. That being said, you of course see a lot of gorgeous shots of the natural world of Austria (Malick's usual cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki isn't on hand here-Lubezki weirdly hasn't lensed a movie since Song to Song in 2017) with mountains and rivers a plenty to complement the consistent narration.
This is Malick's motif, and he finds a way to approach a story pretty much any director would cherish (it's a good story, and one that surprisingly hasn't been told onscreen before) in a method that feels more in line with faith rather than simply a standard "defying the Nazis" narration. Malick's movies are about questioning the world around us, and trying to ask the big questions about the meaning of life and what God's existence might mean for our own. The film is too long (it clocks in at nearly three hours), with perhaps too much time focused in the first hour on the labors of the Jagerstatter family, but its final 90 minutes is staggering, breathtaking visuals as well as a meaningful meditation on what two people can mean to each other, and what it means to stand on principles even when no one is watching. Diehl's work is excellent here, as are small performances by Franz Rogowski (having a boffo year between this and Transit) and the late Bruno Ganz; he finds a sense of unrest in a sainted man, someone who must stand by his convictions not because of what his neighbors might think, but because of his need to stand clean before God. Few films about faith are as powerful and connected to actual belief (rather than just leaning into something schmaltzy) as A Hidden Life. In a lot of ways its not a throwback to Malick's other work, but instead Martin Scorsese's Silence. As a fan of Malick's, I can hardly call this a "return to form" for a director I have liked every outing, but instead simply state that this is his best film since The Tree of Life, and a powerful installment from one of the most singular directors currently working.
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