Those not versed in the unique stylings of Terrence Malick are likely to have a hard time with his newest film, A Hidden Life. As someone who generally enjoys and appreciates Malick’s philosophical approach to filmmaking, I too struggled with the enormity of the film. The inspiring real-life story of Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter is often bogged down by monotony and repetition, but, for those up to the task, the benefits found in A Hidden Life can offer stirring rewards.
For many, A Hidden Life will be an exercise in stamina. I don’t mind long films (I sat through all 312 minutes of Fanny & Alexander with a giant grin on my face), but for much of his story, Malick drives the same points home over and over again. Dialogue and scenes are augmented with jump-cuts and an enormous amount of mountains, mist, country paths, and vast valleys. These shots are beautiful, but overuse forces tedium, and they lose their meaning and much of their beauty.
But, even under this unvarying style, a compelling story emerges. Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) is an Austrian farmer who refuses to take Hitler’s loyalty oath and fight for Germany during World War II. His small village shuns him, his wife (Valerie Pachner), and their family. What makes Malick’s telling such a fascinating one, is not watching Jägerstätter and his family suffer humiliations at the hands of villagers and prison guards, but in realizing that most of the characters they meet agree with them but are too terrified to openly sympathize with what Jägerstätter feels compelled to do. His former friends and neighbors, the church, even a Nazi court official all see the madness of Hitler’s war and policies and fear the moral or religious retribution they’ll face because of their complicity in them. They lack the conviction to stand up to it as Jägerstätter does, but to defy means to die, and they want to live.
Perhaps most importantly, Malick’s film is asking us what we would do in the face of rising fascism. He’s giving us not only a historical example of someone who has chosen to resist, but showing us the faces of those who don’t. If you strip away all the extra cinematic and, dare I say, self-absorbed embellishments, A Hidden Life is a deeply moving interrogation about morality in the face of hysteria. Buried deep in this very long film is one hell of an important moral and philosophical question that demands to be answered by every one of us: What would you do?
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.