I haven’t yet seen Terrence Malick’s Tree Of Life; I didn’t particularly want to see it in the dubbed Italian version so I’m still waiting for the official DVD release.
This delay is quite fortunate as it gives me time to plug gaps in my movie knowledge as I realised that to my shame I hadn’t seen his earlier films The New World or Days of Heaven.
When I read critic David Thompson’s assertion that the latter is one of the most beautiful films ever made I decided that i needed to see at least this one.
When you consider how often Richard Gere in Pretty Woman gets repeated on TV, it is a sign of the dumbing down of culture that Days of Heaven doesn’t have a higher profile.
Gere is actually not that convincing in the part of a manual labourer with dreams of grandeur, he’s just too clean-cut. Sam Shepherd as the lonely farmer plays his part in a restrained manner.
What makes it such a marvellous movie is not the individual performances but the way Malick evokes the setting (the Texas panhandle in 1916 to be specific).
The landscape is beautifully photographed by Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler and this, plus the inspired editing makes the movie a sublime work of art.
It took Malick two years to complete the movie after the shooting was completed, an example of the meticulous attention to detail and perfectionism of the enigmatic director.
In the end the visuals in themselves are so stunning that dialogue becomes redundant. Late in the day he decided to give greater prominence to the voiceover by Linda (played by Linda Manx), a young witness of the tragic love story. Usually this is a cinematic device I find irritating but her flat, unemotional narration is part of what makes the movie memorable.
