Review by Zach Dennis and Jessica Carr
Zach: Terrence Malick is not a director I necessarily fawn over whenever a new one of his movies comes out – at least with his recent, post-Tree of Life fare – but A Hidden Life, the story of a conscientious objector in Austria during World War II, really intrigued me due to its subject matter and how Malick (an intense man of faith) would use his style to capture this story. It really blew me away, which is saying something since this was my first TIFF viewing and it happened at 9 a.m.
Jessica, you saw this at a much more reasonable time and seemed to have the same reaction. What did you make of A Hidden Life?
Jessica: I can confidently say that I like Malick...but he really lost me when he made films like Knight of Cups and Song to Song. I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy anything he made again, AND THEN he comes in swinging with A Hidden Life. The film plays out like a beautiful dream with a looming nightmare overhead. Franz just wants to be a farmer living in the countryside with his wife and children, but he gets called to serve Hitler. Franz refuses to pledge his allegiance to someone so evil, and from there, it becomes a heartbreaking story of a hidden hero. Malick really uses his signature style to bring the audience into the story here instead of isolating them from it, and the film kept me interested for the entire (near 3-hour) runtime. Zach, did you stay engaged as well?
Zach: For 9 a.m., I was remarkably engaged. I echo what you say about his style working in tune with his narrative. What really struck me about this story, compared to other stories about Nazis of late, is how it focuses less on the iconography of them and more on the ideology that bubbled to the surface. I’ll probably speak more about this later in the review of Jojo Rabbit, but Malick seems more interested in engaging with that second line of thinking, which is the more damning of the two. It was an interesting choice by him to share clips of Hitler and the Nazis at rallies, but those were always shown as black-and-white images or projections for the Austrian troops – never as the reality that the characters were inhabiting. In that reality, it was more reliant on the anti-globalist hate being spewed, and this is where Malick’s narrative shines.
What festered within so many people was the quick expansion of the world and their part in it, so setting the story in this small farming town in Austria (isolated within the mountains) kind of crystallizes this concept of the world coming to this small village and explains why most of the town becomes scared of the progress and accepting of the Nazi path.
Jessica: It definitely felt like an ideological approach. All the conversations with Franz doubting the war and following Hitler were done in hushed tones with fellow villagers, working through the thought process of deciding to go against the pack.
Zach: And those conversations are presented in such hushed tones because the decision seems insurmountable. The choice to join the Nazis – at least in the minds of most common people based on how the party was marketed – was a choice to serve your home over the world. Why would you go against your village and the people you have known and grown up with your entire life to side with these outsiders we know nothing about?
What Malick understands here is that this central question is what was driving a lot of the followers of the Nazi party, and that speaks to the modern age more than anything done in TIFF’s other Nazi movie. The expansion of the worldview is what strikes fear in most people’s hearts compared to what the leaders of the movement chose to believe and that fear leads to bigotry and unfiltered hate.
I’m curious what you made of the third act of the film, which is where the movie tends to drag more and features Franz in captivity due to his non-compliance and his wife back at their farm attempting to continue life with only her sister, what with Franz’s mother and their children and all the men and women left in the village spitting hate for his decision. This part dragged for me a bit more than the others just because it is sequence after sequence of the officers berating and beating Franz, but it also spoke a bit to what we have been talking about and this conviction he kept. The scene between him and the military officer who is presiding over the jury in his case was incredible, in my opinion.
Jessica: I agree that it does drag on, but it seemed purposeful to me. The movie is clearly supposed to shine light on Franz as a hidden hero, so we are supposed to see how he suffered for what he believed in. Most Malick movies drag on in the third act, but this one felt more meaningful, so at the end of the day I was okay with it. That ending was absolutely heartbreaking – I could hear people around me sobbing. A Hidden Life is an absolutely remarkable film and I hope Malick continues in this direction for his next feature.