The legendary
Days of Heaven has finally gotten the
Criterion Collection treatment. The second masterpiece by writer-director
Terrence Malick after his debut
Badlands,
Heaven has long been a hallowed title of personal poetic cinema, even with its Paramount studio backing (ah yes, the 70s).
Set in wide-skyed Texas in the romantically naive turn of the (last) century, lovers on the run
Richard Gere and
Brooke Adams pretend to be brother and sister while working on a farm, only to get entangled in bad news when Adams falls for rich land owner
Sam Shepard.
The gem of the film is Gere’s younger sister-in-tow, played by the mesmerizing
Linda Manz. Sort of an ageless teenager, she seems like she isn’t acting, while providing narration more mystical than Hamlet. Ask any film dork about lost icons of the 70s and she’ll be there, making just a few consummate classics (
Days of Heaven,
The Wanderers and
Out of the Blue) before disappearing from cinema altogether, suddenly turning up as an adult in
Gummo. What a career.
Malick’s trademark style holds up today, with luscious imagery and flowing story, shooting tons of dialogue and then taking most of it out to concentrate on the moments that really matter. Sometimes it’s the middle of a conversation rather than the beginning or end, other times it is looks on faces and the surrounding landscapes.
The film’s look is also historic for being shot at ‘magic hour’, brief minutes when the sun has set but there is still light in the sky. Its less than an hour and obviously brutal for a whole shooting day to center around, but the resulting light on film is amazing. Movies aren’t made this way anymore.
Ironically enough, there is an epidemic of “light pollution” on Earth today, as cities get bigger and brighter at night over time (reported everywhere from NASA to the International Dark-Sky Association). At the turn of the century, citizens could see not only more stars but they could see
from the starlight. Now, light from cities can reach hundreds of miles into the desert. Our eyes are adjusting for the worse. It is plausible that the Milky Way will be overpowered and disappear from human sight over time. Innocence lost, huh?
Criterion's disc has the solid extras. An audio commentary (with editor
Billy Weber, art director
Jack Fisk, costume designer
Patricia Norris, and casting director
Dianne Crittenden) is real good, especially if you have fetishized the making of this film for 30 years. A group of interviews are great and insightful, with an exclusive audio interview with
Richard Gere from this year, and video interviews with
Sam Shepard (from 2002), camera operator
John Bailey and cinematographer
Haskell Wexler, who shot “additional” photography on the film.
The DVD booklet has a nice article on Malick written by
Adrian Martin, and an excerpt of official cinematographer
Nestor Alemendros’ wonderful biography: “The decision to shoot these scenes at ‘magic hour’ was not gratuitous or aestheticist; it was completely justifiable. Everyone knows that country people get up very early to do their chores…”
And since the booklet has stills from the film, it’s a great photo book that I already tore pages out of.
Malick? Nowhere to be found here, but he did supervise the new transfer. And the film is what its all about anyway, right?
Single disc available 10/23 for $39.95, cheaper from the
Criterion website.
# posted by Mike Plante @ 10/23/2007 09:11:00 PM
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