User reviews

This is gorgeous looking film very much filmed at dusk and dawn. A film misunderstood upon its time of release and only after Terrence Malick's subsequent films can you now understand what the writer- director was aiming at.

The fact that Malick's next film emerged 20 years later we understand this is a person who wants to tell his story by visuals. Actors talking is just secondary and those scenes end up on the cutting room floor.

Days of Heaven which was shot in 70mm always had a reputation for its Cinematography which won an Oscar.

Now we can marvel at it in our homes on widescreen high definition television. You can really have those close ups of those insects. It is also a surprisingly short film, coming in at just over 90 minutes.

The tale is slight, Gere is a hothead with a girlfriend that is pretending to be his sister and his actual younger sister. They get a job whilst fleeing from Chicago in a farm in Texas where the Farmer played by Sam Shepard takes a shine to the girlfriend and marries her. Gere is aware that the Framer only has a year to live.

Apparently the film took several years to be edited and the narration from the youngest sister had to be added to make the story flow. A similar device was used by Malick in 'The Thin Red Line.'

The film might be seen as slow and maybe hard to fathom because there is relative little dialogue but as mentioned you admire the visuals and at 90 minutes it is not as slow moving as you think.

A brave beautifully crafted film.

Terrence Malick is less a storyteller than a visual poet. At times, the images in 'Days of Heaven (1978)' seem too beautiful to be believed – could Mother Nature even construct such moments of magnificence at her own accord? Cinematographers Néstor Almendros and Haskell Wexler (credited only as "additional photographer") consistently shot the film during the "magic hour" between darkness and sunrise/sunset, when the sun's radiance is missing from the sky, and so their colours have a muted presence, as though filtered through the stalks of wheat that saturate the landscape. Crucial alongside the film's photographers are composer Ennio Morricone – utilising a variation on the seventh movement ("Aquarium") in Camille Saint-Saëns's "Carnival of the Animals" suite – and a succession of sound editors, whose work brings a dreamy, ethereal edge to the vast fields of the Texas Panhandle. The film's final act, away from the wheat-fields, recalls Arthur Penn's 'Bonnie and Clyde (1967),' but otherwise Malick's style, contemplative and elegiac, is in a class of its own, more comparable perhaps to Kurosawa's 'Dersu Uzala (1975).'

Malick refuses to explore his characters' motivations. The viewer is deliberately kept at an arm's length, and Malick eschews cinema's traditional notions of narrative development. Instead, the story is told as a succession of fleeting moments, the sort that a young girl (the film's narrator, Linda Manz) might pick up through her day-to-day experiences and muted understanding of adult emotions. Note that the girl is always kept separate from the dramatic crux of the film – the love-triangle between Billy, Abby, and the Farmer – and her comprehension of events is tainted by her adolescent grasp on adult relationships and societal norms. I was reminded of Andrew Dominik's recent 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)' {another sumptuously-photographed picture}, which also refused to explore its title character, Jesse James, kept at a distance through the impartial objectivity of the historical narrator. In Malick's film, Linda's narration tells us one thing, and the viewer sees another. But one can never fully understand the complex emotions driving human behaviour, so perhaps the girl's perspective is as good as any other.

'Days of Heaven' derives its title from a passage in the Bible (Deuteronomy 11:21), and Malick's tale of jealousy and desire is suitably Biblical in nature. Essential to this allegory is an apocalyptic plague of locusts, which descend upon the wheat-fields like an army from the heavens. When the fields erupt into flame, quite literally from the broiling emotions of the film's conflicted characters, the viewer is confronted by the most intense manifestation of Hell-on- Earth since the burning village in Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace (1967).' But, interestingly, Malick here regresses on his own allegory: Judgement Day isn't the end, but rather it comes and goes. Life is driven by the inexorable march of Fate: The Farmer (Sam Shepard) is doomed to die within a year; Bill (Richard Gere) is doomed to repeat his mistakes twice over. In the film's final moments, Linda and her newfound friend embark purposelessly along the railway tracks, the tracks being a physical incarnation of Fate itself: their paths are laid down already, but we mortals can never know precisely where they lead until we get there.

This movie was a full and happy surprise for me. This man, Malick, stood twenty years out of business because he had to be, afterwards, after such a beautiful movie he couldn't and shouldn't return with any other thing shorter than this.

Days Of Heaven is absolutely perfect cinema, the plot is not important, Malick simply wants to fill your senses and he achieves it.

I haven't had the chance to watch it in a theatre, I was four years old at the time, I've watched it on television, and I understood immediately, this man is a hero for building up such a magnificent film in the United States, in Hollywood.

A true director builds a universe of his own, with its own "time flow" and dreams and that is what Malick achieved with this film, magic, sacral art. Some sequences are "almost" (a big almost) Tarkovskyand this is a big commendation.

If any movie could be called filmed poetry, this would be it. From its first opening shot to its last frame, there is such lyricism and emotion and beauty that it almost leaves you speechless. I have not seen this movie in years, but it still affects me and I want to write about it. There is a pervading sadness to the movie, like a memory of something wonderful that could have been, that should have been, that almost was, and is all the more tragic because it was in your hands but slipped through your fingers. This is not a movie for everyone, but if you believe that film can be one of the highest forms of art, this is the film to see.

I can understand why Malick didn't make another movie after he made Days of Heaven. The film was panned by the majority of the critics who could only find the cinematography worthy of praise. However, Malick was hugely misunderstood by these dumb critics.

They complain that the film is ponderously slow. This was the intention. Malick used pause to convey that the characters think. Too many actors rattle off their lines without letting their characters think of them. It also conveys the slow pace of their lives.

Critics complain that the characters are too remote - one feels removed from them and can't get involved. Hello! It is narrated by a 13 yr old and is essentially her view of the events that transpired. Naturally she does not grasp most of the more adult moments between them and thus is herself removed from being fully involved in Bill and Abby's relationship and that is what has to come across.

Then Malick, in a moment of genius, allied the four main characters to the four elements; Earth, Air, Fire & Water. Bill is Fire - he is seen at first in front of the furnaces of a foundry where he works. We can see his temper is volatile. Abby is water - in the very first shot she is scavenging(?) by a stream and she is seen against the backdrop of the river. Linda is Earth - In her narration she says that she is close to the "Oith". The Farmer is Air - constantly tinkering with his weather vane, and his fields of wheat are often seen waving in the wind.

All in all a severely mies-judged film and the critics owe Malick a huge apology. The work is pure genius!

This is truly a unique movie: in a class by itself. I had that opinion the first time I saw it on VHS and still feel the same way years later. It's been at the top of my list of favorite movies since I began compiling a list over a decade ago.

It's very dream-like, surreal, a film I never get tired of watching and I've watched this film more than any other in my large collection. If I had to pin it down to two reasons why, it would be the video and the audio.

The cinematography alone makes this movie worth watching repeatedly. Now that we all have access to a widescreen DVD version of this, the scenes are even more breathtaking. (I never had the pleasure of seeing this in a movie theater.)

The same superlatives can be used when discussing the soundtrack, a haunting music score that gets better and better each time one views this film. In fact, lately it's the music more than anything else I miss when I go periods without viewing this film.

The story is a simple one and is explained by others here. No need to repeat it. I find the narration to be unique, an unusual insight into the characters of the film and the thoughts of the little girl (Linda Manz), who does the narrating. The characters that continually fascinate me are Brooke Adams, as the lead female, and Robert J. Wilke, as the farm foreman. I guess it's their faces that intrigue me. Adams' down-turned mouth and sad look and Wilke's wrinklies catch my attention every time.

The story is interesting, generally low-key but with a few quick violent scenes that are quite memorable. More than that, one gets an incredible feel for the land and for the migrant workers of that time period. Another nice aspect of this film is the very small amount of profanity. Kids probably would be bored with this film but at least I wouldn't be afraid to show it to them.

But as many pluses as the story boasts, that haunting music and those incredible visuals are what drive me back for more. Great, great stuff.

"Days of Heaven" is a beautiful film with fantastic panoramic cinematography. It's hard to say what it is about this film that captivated me from the start. I didn't expect to enjoy it when I read about the plot. Farm workers? How could that be interesting... But oh, the haunting, heavenly silence of the fields undulating in the wind, a silence not sundered by any garish music. Everything about this film is tangible, real, alive. The dialogue is sparse, believable, the bond between Bill and Abby is one of quiet passion that needs no dramatic proclamations to fuel it. And Sam Shepard's farmer is touching. I don't use that word very often, but I'll venture it here. I have watched this film now several times, and it is a delight each time when the farmer first sees Abby. This perhaps the strongest and most believable love triangle ever put to film, and in my opinion, the most compelling.

Days of heaven is exactly what this is. The magic hour (when much of the film was shot), those moments before dawn and after dusk when everything is indirect, dreamlike, breathless, heartwaking. There's no real story, as such. Sure, there's a general plot line which should satisfy any casual viewer. This isn't, after all, a hard film to follow. It is simply that the environment is the main character as opposed to the human elements. Linda Manz's young character narrates the story sporadically, like a sleepy traveler beside the campfire telling you of half-forgotten memories, and wonderful, casual observations that will seem clearer in the morning light, but no longer worth mentioning. Her voice is halting and uncertain, belying a personality that is confident in all other respects. Other actors, good (Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard) and not-so-good (Richard Gere) blend in perfectly. Their performances are so understated that you forget they are actors playing characters. Even Richard Gere, who never learned subtlety and would never again employ it, is almost invisible here.

This is not a long film. For all its leisurely pace, ninety-six minutes is all it needs to tell its tale. Terrence Malick is out for sight and sound. There is nothing lost to unneeded expression, nothing not shared in the space in front of you. That leaves cinematographer Néstor Almendros with the freedom to photograph, to observe without opinion whatever seems to be happening most openly before him.

When I first finished watching "Days of Heaven" it felt like waking from a dream. I couldn't be sure how much time has passed. It seemed so long, but the silence was the same, and little had changed outside my window. Nothing but the heavy quiet was all around me, and I felt the desperate desire to move. Everything beneath my feet felt moving, quietly slipping past and all I had to do was put soles to earth and start walking. This is a film of photographs, images of the purest sort. Open your eyes.

Welcome to the world of Terrence Mallick where the cinematography is awesome (courtesy of Nestor Almendros) and the dialogue and characters are an afterthought. How else to explain the Brooklyn accents of people supposedly hailing from Chicago? One gets the distinct impression that were this to be pointed out to Mallick he would benignly shrug, such petty concerns of characterization being of secondary or tertiary concern to Mr. Landscape. Give me Ford any day who, like all great film makers, never let his locations, no matter how majestic, dwarf his people. C plus.

Oh, I better come out and say it: I love Terrence Malick. I think he's one of the few filmmakers who has completely and utterly captured filmic form. "The Thin Red Line" was, to me, an astonishing experience; beautiful, horrific and the best movie of the 90s. "Badlands" is the best lovers-on-the-lam movie I've ever seen (it certainly makes "True Romance" look like a gimmicky fraud of a movie). Malick somehow manages to make everything seem painfully beautiful: his landscape, his actors, his dialogue. There's something always elegiac about his movies.

There's a picture of James Dean I saw from his youth -- a baseball team photo -- and the caption said something about how it captured his face, and in it, wisdom and sadness far beyond his years. That's what Malick does in his films and particularly in this film.

He must have been a fan of James Dean (probably one of the reasons he chose to make "Badlands," as a sort of homage), but not in the sense that coolness comes from a perfectly combed coiffure, a red leather jacket (which it wasn't -- it was a windbreaker) and a dark brood. There's a similar story here to that of "Giant," set on a farm with that remarkable house, two men and one girl. Only "Giant" didn't have a philosophizing and very strange little girl. It was also an overblown soap opera and while this film is, I guess, a melodrama, it certainly isn't melodramatic.

If Malick is anyone in the film, he's Sam Shapard; watching his love through a lens. Malick uses Manz as a sort of channel. If this is indeed some fashion of his own story, Malick tells us through her, with he visualized by Shepard, which is a somewhat brilliant approach. Manz is strangely philosophical; at once blunt and abstract. The story is obviously centered around her -- I don't see why this wouldn't be obvious -- but she's pushed into the background, commenting on the characters and informing us like God from above.

As always with Malick, his film is mesmerizing and hypnotic. I was surprised that the film was only a little over an hour-and-a-half. The great Ennio Morricone created a wonderful score for this film that seems to forebode impending doom. Unlike his more famous spaghetti western scores, it's never overly-flamboyant. And the cinematography, listed as belonging to Nestor Almendros, but well-known to be at least substantially contributed to by Haskell Wexler, is so much like an oil painting that it's just about liquid film. I'd be willing to pay a lot of money to see this one on the big screen.

It might seem obvious to state that this film is a transition between "Badlands" and "The Thin Red Line," after all it was the middle film. But this film has moments, especially in the finale, that are surprisingly close to that of "Badlands" and this is the film where Malick fully mastered his approach of lush, visual poetry told at a languid pace that never seems boring, since you're fully within the film;s grasp.

Pauline Kael said in her review that "the film is an empty Christmas tree: you can hang all your dumb metaphors on it." And Charles Taylor, always following Kael's lead (even from beyond the grave), said of Malick's two 1970s films, "Next to the work of Altman, Scorsese, Coppola, De Palma and Mazursky from that period, they're pallid jokes."

What never fails to get me furious is when someone viciously attacks a director, like Malick, for being self-indulgent. Of course it's self-indulgent, he's telling a story that means something to him and trying to share what he feels with us. Malick certainly isn't trying to alienate people, and if you are alienated by his films, well, don't watch them. Malick is a filmmaker like Kubrick, but more fluid and much less abrasive. I mean, if you're going to aggressively attack a filmmaker, aggressively attack someone who is aggressive on his side. Directors like Malick use abstractions to engage their audiences more fully than most. By leaving things -- often feelings -- open to interpretation, the film becomes more intimate.

Certainly one of the most enduring films from the 70s, this is a masterwork.

****

I find it interesting that such a stunning visual director can have such disdain and disinterest in plot and dialog. The cinema-photography is truly amazing and foreshadows similar efforts in the future, but the wooden direction/acting, stilted dialog, and uninteresting characters left me shrugging in disbelief. Even if Malick has little interest in such things, couldn't he have teamed up with a co-writer--even an amateur--to provide a semblance of story line? Surely even a mediocre effort in this area would drastically improve the overall film.

The movie does showcase young Richard Gere, Sam Shephard, and Brooke Adams, but they might have well been Ken and Barbie dolls, strutted on stage for their physical beauty since Malick demanded so little of them. Any acting talent would not be visible to future directors based upon what was required of them.

Certainly the film will be of interest to those who enjoy Malick's work, so there is an historical appreciation to be had. But as a movie seen for the first time, I'd suggest listening to the first 15 minutes with the sound on and then turning it off and luxuriate in the visuals. I don't think you'll miss much.

This is a fine film with a love triangle in the middle. It is full of interesting symbolism, but unfortunately, it doesn't really connect with the viewer. And doesn't make one care about the characters. Nothing happens for too long & then things happen very abruptly. The farmer does not understand the nature of the relationship between his wife & Bill for a very long time. But, when the swarm of locust attacks his field, he surprisingly points a gun at Bill!

Moreover, the farmer & Bill are both so well groomed most of the time that it's hard to believe that they indulge in hard manual labor.

The cinematography is excellent but I wish that the movie wasn't so disjointed as a whole.

My first exposure that I had to Terrence Malick was Badlands. While apparently every critic (and the overwhelming majority of IMDb reviewers) would say that this was a good choice to introduce me to one of the greatest filmmakers, I found the dialog awkward and strange. The actual film, while very effective of capturing the beauty of nature (a staple of Malick movies as I later found out) was not all that great. Still, it had a plot and characters with discernible motives, so I was able to somewhat reason away what I personally thought was a bizarre and pretentious style of making films. Probably the biggest reason I can give a pass to Badlands is that it gave Martin Sheen, one of my favorite actors, a boost into big Hollywood films. I was then told by a friend that I should give Malick another chance, and either Days of Heaven or Thin Red Line would be a good idea for my second film. Needless to say, after sitting through this, I probably will not be getting around to another Malick movie any time soon.

I should point out that there are several aspects of this movie that are excellent. As with Badlands, the cinematography, musical score, and setting are absolutely beautiful. If all of the dialog and scenes with actual people in the frame were removed, I might actually love this movie. What I'm trying to say is if Terrence Malick made a documentary for National Geographic, I would definitely watch it.

The dialog, much like Badlands, is absolutely awful. I don't find entire conversations conveyed through facial expressions, staring, and minimalistic bombastic sentences to be good storytelling. The narration is no better, and managed to annoy me more than anything else. This leads to a fundamental problem of the movie, the dialog and narration is so bad, that I am not able to really understand or relate to the characters. Why do they do what they do? What are there personalities? I don't know. This causes me to not care about them, or what happens to them.

Another problem is when a scene develops, occasionally the camera cuts to nature, or just moves on to another scene with the characters all together. This got so bad that my brother literally called a cutaway before it happened. As a scene was developing that implied sex was about to happen, my brother said, "Huh. I bet its gonna cut to rain or something right before anything physical actually happens." Guess what? Right when something physical was about to happen, it cut to rain falling on leaves. The cuts in this movie are predictably bad.

This movie being pretentious is just my opinion. I am of the belief that characters and character interactions are more important than setting or scenery, and it is obvious that Malick does not share this philosophy, and this means that I probably will never like a movie that he makes. Most will call this good film, and I simply cannot agree with that. This movie is barely 90 minutes but I would rather watch Gettysburg than watch this again. I wanted to like this movie, and that may be why my reaction is so strong. I do not want to try to take away the joy that some moviegoers get from watching this movie, and in the end can only hope that we can agree to disagree about Malick films.

Days of Heaven (1978) ****

"Nobody's perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You just have half-angel and half-devil in you."

This line delivered by Linda Manz in Terrence Malick's gorgeous masterpiece, 'Days of Heaven,' sums up everything you need to know about life on earth. Much of Malick's themes have been devoted to man versus nature, and the idea of perfection is not outside that realm - imperfection is the nature of mankind.

Richard Gere, in his greatest performance, plays Bill, a hot headed, lower class worker, who in a moment of mistake accidentally kills his boss in a Chicago factory. We see that the boss is hassling Bill, but we never know why, we just see faces but no distinguishable voices over the roar of the factory. Bill, his sister (Manz) and his girlfriend Abby, played by Brooke Adams, take off for the panhandle, hitching a ride on a train. Bill and Abby tell everyone that they are all brothers and sisters, because as you know, "people talk." They find work on a farm owned by the rich farmer, played by Sam Shepard. Many other films would make the farmer the bad guy, giving him trade mark heel characteristics, but Shepard's farmer, who we learn is dying, is soulful, and yearning for love. He see's Abby, and is interested, and eventually will ask her to stay - after Bill hears the doctor tell him he has about a year to live. They decide to stay, and after some persuasion from Bill, Abby will marry the dying farmer so that they can be heir to his fortune. Suspicions arise, and hearts and lives are broken, and the Days of Heaven will come to a halting end.

The cinematography is some of the most breathtaking ever captured on film. 'Days of Heaven' could even considered a masterpiece for its aesthetic beauty alone, if the story were not so terrific. Everything about the film is magnificent. Ennio Morricone's score is haunting and beautiful. You will remember it forever, along with Linda Manz' unforgettable narration, likely one of the greatest voice overs in film history. Many have criticized Malick's distancing techniques and muted emotions. We are always kept at arms length away. But these people don't realize that the story is a memory, a memory from the real main character - Linda. Also, in a method that Robert Bresson used, by distancing us emotionally, it leaves us to add our own emotions and imaginations in the story, heightening the power of the film, as long as you are willing not to be spoon-fed what to think.

Terrence Malick is a filmmaker who came out of nowhere with his talents already fulfilled, and he has not stopped since. His films are filled with such heartbreaking beauty and symbolism, and he is one of the few living filmmakers who truly are creating art, rather than just entertainment. He had one of the greatest debuts ever, in the mesmerizing and haunting 'Badlands,' the deepest and most philosophical 'The Thin Red Line,' which is likely the greatest contemporary war film (as suggested by the late Gene Siskel)and the stunningly beautiful 'The New World.' His films are deep and meaningful, and to get into the underlying symbolism and themes of them here would be pointless, and better saved for a long essay.

Days of Heaven is one of the greatest, and most beautiful films ever made. Cinema is at a low point recently, but as long as Terrence Malick is still making films, we still have some heavenly art to look forward to.

PS - Hopefully someone like Criterion will create a new DVD, as the current one has some soundtrack problems. Imagine seeing it restored, visually and audibly.

Days of Heaven is, in fact, what its highest praisers want you to believe: awe-inspiring cinema, sometimes even mind-blowing in what can be filmed and brought forth in a beautiful, seamless mold of narrative and poetry, photographed with an eye for the prairie and fields like very few others and for the period detail. But it's also wonderful- and haunting- because it evokes what it is to look back on something and remember things vividly, clearly, with a subjectivity that is startling in its scarred interior. This is child-actor Linda Manz, her first role in what is a relatively small career, and she voices, in grungy but fine vocal, from afar at times even as she's one of the principle players.

She's the kid sister of Bill (Richard Gere, a very good if not extraordinary performance compared to others), a factory worker who kills a man by accident and runs off with his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams), and the three of them end up working for a farmer (Sam Shephard), and soon there's a love triangle formed wrapped around an elaborate con of Bill and Abby being brother and sister. These are just the facts, but director Terence Malick isn't after just those, but after a sad look back from a perspective of wonderment and horror and a kind of fractured innocence. It goes without saying that since it is a Malick picture one will expect the painterly landscapes of the fields, those intimate close-ups with bugs and waving fields of grass. But Malick is able to put a unique vision into the perspective of that of a little girl, who is seeing and experiencing everything as it is, not as it may be really imagined or wanting to be.

So there's a lot of interest already just in the nature of the farming on this panhandle in early 20th century. But there's just little things, little fantastic bits that stick in your mind, probably forever: the workers in the field toiling away; the black man tap-dancing by the barn; the airplane circus people coming by and showing silent films. Most notably, as well, are near biblical visions like the plague (and extinguishing by lots of fire) of locusts. And through all of the many, many beautiful shots, there's a tender and perfectly tragic love story played out with great work by Adams and a young Shepherd. Manz too, I might add, is excellent in a role that could have been mucked up by anyone else (also trumping a later future first-time performance in Malick's own The New World with the woman playing Pocahontas).

And as if the crisp eye of Malick and his DPs Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler weren't enough, there's Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack to boot. Here's a crucial part of Malick's success in translating the theme of remembrance and feeling both the moment and the mood of the whole period and characters in the film (sometimes combined): just listen to the theme of the movie, used later in movie trailers and commercials, as it reckons a nostalgic tinge for something that one can't firmly grasp but is felt deeply and without really fully knowing the whole scope. Overall, Days of Heaven is almost too good, too beautiful- it's the kind of picture that defines reputations, for better or worse. Like Malick's. A+

What I liked: Incredibly beautiful. The film was shot almost entirely at golden hour to achieve perfect lighting. Very world building and immersive.

What I disliked: Although it was definitely exploring themes, none of them resonated with me. I didn't take much of substance from the narrative.

This is like a film which never shows the real motive behind the story, yet it all sums up when it ends. It's a story which we have always known. The hunger for materials and trying to topple anything in the way even if means sacrificing the love of the beloved. The slow transformation of greed to love and love to jealousy. With almost zero conversations, this film is filled with little scenes of constantly moving story. The story is not a complicated one, but it is seen through the eyes of a teenage girl which makes it warm and beautiful.

I am so proud. I have just seen Terrence Malick's entire output as a film director. Unfortunately his output is only three movies spanned over 25 years.

Badlands and The Thin Red Line were fantastic movies in their own special way. Days of Heaven seemed to combine a lot of Malick's traits from these two to form another great movie... or was it so great?

Richard Gere, Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams form a love triangle in Days of Heaven that isn't very interesting or very original. In fact the whole story is rather lifeless and the dialogue is snooze-worthy. The only thing that kept this movie alive was the score ( I know I heard it before somewhere) and the fabulous oscar winning cinematography.

A bunch of locusts do deliver some excitement and some scares - did the camera have to go so close to them? But by then it's too late. The whole movie would've been terrible if every single frame wasn't worthy of a place in the Loueve. Some of the visuals are fabulous. The snow covered cornfields, the train on the bridge, the attempts to destroy the locusts. This movie is a lesson in beauty, not much else.

A single amazing shot demonstrates what makes "Days of Heaven" so great: for ten seconds the camera focuses on wheat rolling in the wind like the surface of the ocean before a storm. Trouble is coming, and no amount of narration or expository dialogue could sum the situation up better. Brooke Adams, Sam Sheppard and Richard Gere are all excellent, but the real stars of this movie are Director Terrence Malick and Cinematographer Nestor Almendros. After reading the plot summary on imdb, you could watch this movie with the sound off and enjoy it just as much.

Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven is one of the most beautiful movies ever made. This movie is all about visual impact and this gorgeous, haunting piece of art will leave you in awe and you will wonder how on earth did this film come out in 1978. Terrence Malick, perhaps the most elusive human being on this planet, is known as a visual director and he proves it here with his second film. The story is very simple, but the story is not supposed to be at the forefront. Apparently after several days of shooting, Malick threw away the script and told the actors to wing it. Through a long and arduous editing process, Malick was able to come up with a coherent story.

Let's talk about these visuals for a second. They are completely mesmerizing and it took people by surprise upon its release. I loved the use of natural lighting on set, which gave the film its unique colors. Malick wouldn't allow the use of artificial light much to the dismay of many people who were not used to working this style. Much of the film was created during the hour just after sunset and just before it became dark. That is really impressive. Now many of the scenes are outdoors at a Texas prairie. Some of the best shots were just seeing the wheat swaying in the wind as night was falling. Two of cinema's most impressive cinematographers worked on the movie: Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler. There was some controversy because Almendros had to leave the film after a long while due to prior commitments, but he was given the credit of the work despite Wexler being able to prove he shot more than half of the film. These visuals are complimented beautifully by the haunting score of Ennio Morricone, one of the greatest composers of all time. This combination of visuals and music created a unique form of art and something wondrous to behold.

The story is simple and relatively straightforward. The story did not become clear until the two years Malick spent in the editing room putting the film together. The film takes place right before the First World War. Bill (Richard Gere) and Abby (Brooke Adams) are a couple from Chicago. After Bill kills a man at his workplace, he and Abby pose as siblings as they escape down south to find a new life. Along with Billy's little sister Linda (Linda Manz), they find employment on a Texas farm working the harvest. As they do the work, the farmer (Sam Shepard) has fallen in love with Abby. But Billy discovers the farmer is terminally ill and may only have one year left to live. Billy persuades Abby to marry the farmer so they can take advantage of the wealth after the farmer dies. But all may not go according to the plan.

Despite emphasis being placed on the visuals, I think the acting was fantastic. The actors here were mostly new to the business, but they would go on to have long careers. (Especially Richard Gere and Sam Shepard). Gere, Shepard, and Adams have fantastic chemistry with each other which is needed when there is a love triangle. I thought Linda Manz did a really fine job. The film is told from her point-of-view and she provides a haunting narration over the course of the movie. She is only a teenager, but she goes through experiences which causes her to be far more mature than her age.

Overall, Days of Heaven is a breath-taking masterpiece that allows the visuals to do its talking. This film was extremely rare for the time period it was created. With all the trouble that happened during production, it amazes me that this film is actually good. Malick had such a hard time with this film. In fact, he didn't make another film until twenty years later. That is sad because he is a talented director, and he was able to push himself over the edge to create this film. I compare this film to nature. Nature is beautiful and there is gorgeous scenery in every location of this globe. Nature can be breath-taking and that is how I feel about this film.

My Grade: A