🎃🔥Mr. Like🔥🎃’s review published on Letterboxd:
Rotten Tomatoes: 80%
Metacritic Metascore: 78
IMDB: 7.5
Viewing Platform: Redbox
89/100
Release Date: 31 August 2019
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios
Worldwide Gross: $4.6M
Filming Locations: Berlin, Germany
Filming Locations: St. Radegund, Austria
Franz Jägerstätter: "Does a man have the right to let himself be put to death for the truth? Could it possibly please God? He wants us to have peace, happiness. Not to bring suffering on ourselves."
SYNOPSIS: The Austrian Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector, refuses to fight for the Nazis in World War II.
- Source: IMDb
Based on true events, A Hidden Life is Malick's most direct exploration of faith since To the Wonder, and perhaps his most fully realized work yet. It is an allegorical story about a man of extraordinary faith. A real-life parable of perseverance and free will. A spiritual journey centered in not just our humanity, but on what it means to truly walk the steps of one's faith that also correlates with it means to choose what we believe is right when we are given every reason not to.
TRIVIA: Terrence Malick spent almost three years editing this film. It's also his first film since The New World (2005) to have a linear narrative.
Malick doesn't glorify the central character's ideals or deeds. Rather we focus on the humble threads of love and the storm they weather--and the romantic chemistry is perfect. August Diehl & Valerie Pachner are both exceptional and so incredibly in love. Seconds into the film and you already know it. Pachner gives a particularly moving performance that definitely flew under the radar along with the rest of the film as it was not recognized by the Academy at all.
TRIVIA: During a shooting in Radegund, at the actual house of Jägerstätters, both August Diehl and Valerie Pachner had met with the daughters of Franz and Fani's - Maria, Rosalia, and Aloisa - who still live in the same village that their parents had lived.
Every touch, glance, or embrace between these two is personal, powerful, believable. You can see the stress leave their shoulders each time they first see each other. Sincerity fills the screen as their thoughts, worries, desires, and personal bond resurfaces in the context of personal faith.
TRIVIA: The production was shot digitally on the Red Dragon camera system. The camera was selected for its ability to handle stark contrast within a scene, preserving details in both the highlights and shadows of the image, while still maintaining realistic color.
The cinematography is superb, truly carrying the film at times with its transfixing imagery of the Austrian landscapes, with DP notably credited to Jörg Widmer and not Emmanuel Lubezki. There is a rare seamless quality achieved blending in old footage as well as in choosing to entirely forgo subtitles in a film spoken in equal parts English and German. The score is also one of the best of the year, if not the best. James Newton Howard composed a beautiful traditional theme with Handel, Dvorak, and other great classical works mixed in.
TRIVIA: Artificial lights only used on rare occasions during shooting. For all the other sets, including the prison cells, the team simply used the right time of the day to shoot it until they lost the light.
What sets this film apart is its emotional brutality; it is heartbreaking, grim, and absolutely brutal, and yet, throughout all of this, the courage, faith, and bravery of Franz and his wife, not to mention their three little girls and Franz's mother-is incredibly overwhelming. The film is not without flaws-it's needlessly too long, with some repetitive shots, but that does not take away from the fact that it is still one of the most immersive films I have seen in recent years.
TRIVIA: The film takes its title from the last sentence of Middlemarch by George Eliott: "... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
A Hidden Life is a film that may stay with you for some time. This is quintessential Malick, joining the ranks of The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Go in with an open mind and heart and let the experience envelop you.
For those who have read this entire review...
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Fact-Checking Source: IMDB
Directing - 4/5
Screenplay - 4.5/5
Editing - 4/5
Prod Design - 5/5
Cinematography - 5/5
Acting - 4.5/5
Pacing - 3.5/5
Sound - 5/5
Enjoyment rating - 9/10
