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Rating: A film is sometimes tied to the memory of a period in one's life, to a particular detail, a feeling. Something personal anyway.
A film like this can be associated, for example, with the sight of any sunset at the end of a day. Surely, said like this, it doesn't quite convey the essence. But this is what Days of Heaven represents for me.
The wheat fields, those sunsets, those landscapes, those colors - also a homage to the great American painting art, and not by chance the film, an Oscar winner for cinematography, was shot in 70mm, a format brought back into vogue thanks to P.T. Anderson and Tarantino to enhance its visual impact - these entered my brain and, after seeing Malick's second film for the first time, for an entire summer many years ago, at every sunset, the images of this late '70s gem would regularly come to my mind. After all, this is what cinema should do: indelibly link the visual experience to an emotional sensation of the viewer. And ensure the viewer carries it with them.
Malick has created a new way of making cinema and expressing the union between man and nature.
But this film, in just an hour and a half, crosses such a broad spectrum of human feelings and emotions that it leaves one entranced. And it does so with that fairy-tale tone, that narrative simplicity, that lightness and grace that many miss compared to today's Malick, and which they accuse the Texan director of having lost along the way in the twenty years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.
Another story.
By the way, after a debut that entered the history of cinema like Badlands (1973), an epochal work that entered the collective imagination of a generation, a cult object for the subsequent ones and still seen as a masterpiece, five years passed for the second test of one of the purest talents of that decade that changed so much for the seventh art. And this second film of his, for me, was even more beautiful than the first, but even then Malick was not prone to releasing a film every year. Then, as mentioned, two whole decades passed before he returned to shake American cinema, and not only.
Those first two films are today very loved even, if not especially, by those who instead can barely stand The Tree of Life and To the Wonder. Personally, I think that Malick's cinema has simply evolved and expanded toward an increasingly boundless horizon. Back then, the boundaries, although quite extended, rural and evocative according to the typically American tradition of the frontier and wandering, still existed; they were, in a sense, physical. Today, however (and you can particularly perceive it, in my opinion, in the more recent and splendid Malickian work, Knight of Cups) the boundaries no longer exist, the journey (or the escape, as in the early works) is no longer through land but only and solely through the soul and potentially towards infinity. Films without a beginning and without an end. Journeys without existing destinations.
Days of Heaven, however, cannot be considered inferior to any of the director's works, and Morricone's splendid music further contributes to making these images magical. Texas was never as beautiful as in those days of heaven.
Malick continues to inspire, to be honored, quoted, emulated (David Gordon Green, Inarritu, Sorrentino himself...) or simply admired by cinephiles and directors. Or he can also be barely tolerated, some may not like him, of course. He can even irritate if he is not well-received. But in any case, he must be acknowledged for daring where few have and for being the author of cinema similar to none before him. And one of those filmmakers who are genuinely artists.
"You’re only live on this earth once. And up to my opinion, as long as you’re around, you should have it nice."
(Here - http://screenmusings.org/movie/dvd/Days-of-Heaven/ a series of screencaps from the film)
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