#4
Days of Heaven
Days of Heaven
1978
Written and Directed by: Terrence Malick
Cinematography by: Nestor Almendros
Edited by: Billy Weber
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Linda Manz, Sam Shepard
To start with this Days of Heaven, the opening credits are very memorable. It's the best way to start talking about this movie I believe too, so I will show them first:
It's so beautiful and brilliant. As you can tell too, the music is one of this movie's strongest assets. Ennion Morricone's score as well as the additional music is perfect. By showing defining photos of the era you immediately learn the mood and setting. It's set in the early 20th century, at the time right before the United States entered World War 1 around 1916 or so. Industrialization is really starting to hit the US and the cities are growing at a rapid place as people migrate to look for jobs. At this stage it's really strengthening the divisions between classes. That's precisely what the introduction shows too. It flashes images of poor undernourished (probably unemployed) workers followed by well dressed industrialists. Some people are living better, luxurious lives and some people are barely managing to get by.
The last image it shows is the movie's narrator, the little girl named Linda (Linda Manz). As she describes, her, her brother Bill (Richard Gere) and his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) are "looking for things, searching for things." They are migrant workers, travelling the country looking for work wherever they can. Bill has recently lost his job for fighting with his boss at a steel mill where he worked and is on the run. They find work at a ranch working on the harvest. While there the farm owner (Sam Shepard), who is dying from some sort of disease, falls in love with Abby. Bill knows is informed of both of these facts and convinces Abby to marry the farmer in order to gain his inheritance. This scene shows it all go down:
So Abby agrees and gets married to the Rancher, but she falls in love with him and conventional drama ensues from there as he catches on to the fact that Abby and Bill were an item. Now, of course, Bill is not a good guy. He is not in an amicable position though so you have to feel sorry for him. There is a great scene from the movie where he talks about how when he was young he was always looking forward to the future. He thought that he was smarter than everyone else and that therefore he had a bright future. Eventually he had to come to the realization though that he was no smarter than anyone else. Like so many others from a poor upbringing like his in that era, he had few prospects and had to accept the life he was dealt. Only through this lie could he taste the life of the upper class for a short time.
That's what really gets me about this story. It's as if he was forced into this position whereby the only solution he could see to get out of the gutter was to lie and basically pimp his girlfriend out to this richer man. It's a lack of opportunity which compels people to do terrible things such as this. Nobody in their right state of mind would ever do such a thing. Yet conventional wisdom tells us that Bill is meant to be the bad guy. Most people wouldn't even call to question the fact that it was the rancher who was paying the poor wages and exploiting all those workers who were in an inferior position. Isn't he then partly responsible for Bill committing this act? He was after all creating the circumstances. As the movie shows though, the authorities don't quite view it this way and Bill's life isn't worth nearly as much as the rancher's.
This movie shows the true nature of unbridled capitalism. Everybody learns from their history books about the Great Depression which began in 1929. Unfortunately, too many people understand this as 'the moment' when a crisis led to a collapse in the otherwise stable capitalist business cycle. If one reads further back in the history of capitalism, they learn that it was characterized by boom and bust periods of recessions and depressions since it's inception. One could even say that periodic downturns are a characteristic of capitalism. Along with this of course comes periodic workers revolts as they become fed up with being unable to feed themselves or their family. Full employment was not even imaginable prior to World War 2 though. A world with a pure capitalist economy would most likely resemble the world of this era where families migrated to wherever the work was. After all it's important to remember that one person's fortune is another's misfortune and at the same time one region's fortune is another's misfortune.
Following World War 2 of course, a much more regulatory state began to offset these boom and bust cycles. There are many reasons for this. Workers solidarity and power were at a height. War increased these bonds, people had the feeling that they were fighting for a better life which they expected the state to deliver. But also, with the rise of the USSR and other 'communist' states they had to ensure that people remained loyal to the capitalist model. Either way, this management of the economy manipulated the capitalist business cycle. It was done through redistributatory taxes which had the effect of creating a larger, wealthier middle class thereby increasing the demand of consumer goods. These taxes also gave the state the funds to intervene directly in the economy, propping up some sectors of industry which may have needed restructuring or assistance. Whatever form it took, the main thing is that it provided a safety net to those in jobs which previously may have been unstable. It was considered a right in the post-war era to have a job for life. It worked too for a time with consistent positive growth in the industrialized world up until the recession of 1973. This was when the economic orthodoxy did a complete turn around. Since then, the movement towards state retrenchment has dominated. As this has happened, surprise, periods of boom and bust are becoming common place once again. Only this time they are taking a becoming far more global. Jobs for life are considered a thing of the past. In short, our world is beginning to resemble the world that Bill, Abby, and Linda lived in.
What I find so amazing about Days of Heaven is that it communicates so much, but with such little dialogue. Indeed, the movie has been called a 'visual poem', relying instead on images to push the plot and subplot. We may not hear the characters talk about their hard times, but we see the looks on their faces, their dress, and their plight for ourselves. It's quite refreshing watching this movie and not being told the story by the characters, it's up to our imagination to fill in the holes. Just listen to this narration provided by Linda's character and notice how sparse and uninformative it is:
The dialogue fades to the background and it's the pictures which drive the movie forward. It's a terrible cliche, but this movie shows that a picture says a thousand words. Which is good too because every image in Days of Heaven is so beautifully shot. If for no other reason, watch Days of Heaven to see some of the best cinematography you will ever see, accompanied by one of the greatest scores.
It's so beautiful and brilliant. As you can tell too, the music is one of this movie's strongest assets. Ennion Morricone's score as well as the additional music is perfect. By showing defining photos of the era you immediately learn the mood and setting. It's set in the early 20th century, at the time right before the United States entered World War 1 around 1916 or so. Industrialization is really starting to hit the US and the cities are growing at a rapid place as people migrate to look for jobs. At this stage it's really strengthening the divisions between classes. That's precisely what the introduction shows too. It flashes images of poor undernourished (probably unemployed) workers followed by well dressed industrialists. Some people are living better, luxurious lives and some people are barely managing to get by.
The last image it shows is the movie's narrator, the little girl named Linda (Linda Manz). As she describes, her, her brother Bill (Richard Gere) and his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) are "looking for things, searching for things." They are migrant workers, travelling the country looking for work wherever they can. Bill has recently lost his job for fighting with his boss at a steel mill where he worked and is on the run. They find work at a ranch working on the harvest. While there the farm owner (Sam Shepard), who is dying from some sort of disease, falls in love with Abby. Bill knows is informed of both of these facts and convinces Abby to marry the farmer in order to gain his inheritance. This scene shows it all go down:
So Abby agrees and gets married to the Rancher, but she falls in love with him and conventional drama ensues from there as he catches on to the fact that Abby and Bill were an item. Now, of course, Bill is not a good guy. He is not in an amicable position though so you have to feel sorry for him. There is a great scene from the movie where he talks about how when he was young he was always looking forward to the future. He thought that he was smarter than everyone else and that therefore he had a bright future. Eventually he had to come to the realization though that he was no smarter than anyone else. Like so many others from a poor upbringing like his in that era, he had few prospects and had to accept the life he was dealt. Only through this lie could he taste the life of the upper class for a short time.
That's what really gets me about this story. It's as if he was forced into this position whereby the only solution he could see to get out of the gutter was to lie and basically pimp his girlfriend out to this richer man. It's a lack of opportunity which compels people to do terrible things such as this. Nobody in their right state of mind would ever do such a thing. Yet conventional wisdom tells us that Bill is meant to be the bad guy. Most people wouldn't even call to question the fact that it was the rancher who was paying the poor wages and exploiting all those workers who were in an inferior position. Isn't he then partly responsible for Bill committing this act? He was after all creating the circumstances. As the movie shows though, the authorities don't quite view it this way and Bill's life isn't worth nearly as much as the rancher's.
This movie shows the true nature of unbridled capitalism. Everybody learns from their history books about the Great Depression which began in 1929. Unfortunately, too many people understand this as 'the moment' when a crisis led to a collapse in the otherwise stable capitalist business cycle. If one reads further back in the history of capitalism, they learn that it was characterized by boom and bust periods of recessions and depressions since it's inception. One could even say that periodic downturns are a characteristic of capitalism. Along with this of course comes periodic workers revolts as they become fed up with being unable to feed themselves or their family. Full employment was not even imaginable prior to World War 2 though. A world with a pure capitalist economy would most likely resemble the world of this era where families migrated to wherever the work was. After all it's important to remember that one person's fortune is another's misfortune and at the same time one region's fortune is another's misfortune.
Following World War 2 of course, a much more regulatory state began to offset these boom and bust cycles. There are many reasons for this. Workers solidarity and power were at a height. War increased these bonds, people had the feeling that they were fighting for a better life which they expected the state to deliver. But also, with the rise of the USSR and other 'communist' states they had to ensure that people remained loyal to the capitalist model. Either way, this management of the economy manipulated the capitalist business cycle. It was done through redistributatory taxes which had the effect of creating a larger, wealthier middle class thereby increasing the demand of consumer goods. These taxes also gave the state the funds to intervene directly in the economy, propping up some sectors of industry which may have needed restructuring or assistance. Whatever form it took, the main thing is that it provided a safety net to those in jobs which previously may have been unstable. It was considered a right in the post-war era to have a job for life. It worked too for a time with consistent positive growth in the industrialized world up until the recession of 1973. This was when the economic orthodoxy did a complete turn around. Since then, the movement towards state retrenchment has dominated. As this has happened, surprise, periods of boom and bust are becoming common place once again. Only this time they are taking a becoming far more global. Jobs for life are considered a thing of the past. In short, our world is beginning to resemble the world that Bill, Abby, and Linda lived in.
What I find so amazing about Days of Heaven is that it communicates so much, but with such little dialogue. Indeed, the movie has been called a 'visual poem', relying instead on images to push the plot and subplot. We may not hear the characters talk about their hard times, but we see the looks on their faces, their dress, and their plight for ourselves. It's quite refreshing watching this movie and not being told the story by the characters, it's up to our imagination to fill in the holes. Just listen to this narration provided by Linda's character and notice how sparse and uninformative it is:
The dialogue fades to the background and it's the pictures which drive the movie forward. It's a terrible cliche, but this movie shows that a picture says a thousand words. Which is good too because every image in Days of Heaven is so beautifully shot. If for no other reason, watch Days of Heaven to see some of the best cinematography you will ever see, accompanied by one of the greatest scores.
For beautifully showing an ugly life, Days of Heaven is in my opinion the 4th greatest movie of the 1970s.
Beautiful movie. I wouldnt say Bill isn't a good guy though. Like the little girl says, 'everyone's half angel, half devil'. The little dialogue there is says a lot.
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