Terrence Malick Flatters His Ego for 173 Minutes in “A Hidden Life”
Terrence Malick’s latest is his most structured that he’s ever done in the past decade — after fooling around with A-list celebrities and cameras to do…whatever the hell he was doing, Malick returns to shoot with an [actual] script. A Hidden Life tells the moving story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), a conscientious objector who refuses to swear allegiance to Hitler and fight alongside the ranks of Nazism. At almost 3 hours long, A Hidden Life demands your sacred patience and indulgence for Malick’s Ego, at his own expense — it’s one of his most self-centered and egotistical films, but probably his best film (by default).
Terrence Malick is an overrated hack. After The Thin Red Line, he has made nothing but crap, bathing in his own ego and religious beliefs, instead of making compelling cinema. Film critic Armond White said something really interesting about Malick’s entire act as a filmmaker in his review of A Hidden Life: “ Despite his cult status, Malick is not constantly discovering new means of cinematic storytelling. His methods are sometimes laughably familiar — especially in this “second wind” phase of his career and the rush of rough-draft material edited in the mode of poetic observation/introspection.” Malick has never been a good filmmaker. Like with all of his movies, instead of focusing on a simple, yet impactful story like Jägerstätter’s, Malick keeps overwriting until everything looks, sounds and feels terribly pretentious. Some people were telling me that “This is coherent Malick”, I was like “ok, sure”, but you’ll soon learn that Malick is up at his old tricks again, instead of giving us compelling storytelling and keeping it simple stupid.
The best aspect of A Hidden Life is its star-studded cast from August Diehl playing someone who resists Nazism (contrary to what he played in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds), the late Bruno Ganz & Michael Nyqvist (the latter whom gives a fantastic extended cameo as a Priest who tells him he has a “duty to the fatherland), Matthias Schoenaerts and Jürgen Prochnow. All of these actors give terrific performances and elevate the film’s pretentious script to something actually watchable. The cinematography from Jörg Widmer and its score from James Newton Howard are also highlights. Yes, like every Malick film, the movie looks phenomenal, but it’s its score that makes it sumptuous. This is probably James Newton Howard’s most well-realized score — a deeply personal and moving musical score takes over Malick’s film, and it complements the wonderful imagery perfectly. So there’s that.
However, stretching at almost 3 hours long, A Hidden Life can’t find a way to make Franz Jägerstätter’s life meaningful or interesting. When he is sentenced to death, there isn’t any emotion you feel towards Jägerstätter as Malick portrays him as a self-centered idiot — exactly who Malick is as a filmmaker. Jägerstätter is incredibly unlikeable and unsympathetic, which makes for a self-centered movie about a self-centered idiot who contemplates God, writes to his wife using “dear Wife” instead of her name and literally does everything to want to get killed — because he doesn’t believe in Nazism. Throughout the 173 minutes, all you feel for Jägerstätter is sorrow — because he left his family to do something that had absolutely zero impact on the war, just on this one individual who said NO, and by saying NO got executed for. Jägerstätter’s life is ordinarily boring, which makes his act of faux-resistance feel weightless or with no purpose. His conscientious objection against Nazism is inspirational, but because it had no impact on the war at hand and made him lose his family for nothing, A Hidden Life is an absolutely boring and pretentious film about one man’s quest to say NO, but that NO was too much for the Nazis. Malick’s self-centered filmmaking doesn’t do Jägerstätter’s story justice — with a pretentious script that makes everything feel so weightless and dull. Malick stans will, obviously, love it.
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