Last night I watched Terence Malick's new film, A Hidden Life, about Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian peasant farmer who was beheaded for refusing to fight in Hitler's army. I think it is a movie for mystics. It takes its time to reflect on the beauty of the mountains where he and his wife live, on the love that binds them together with their three little girls, on the sheer goodness of life, and on their intimate relationship with God. His friends and neighbors, his pastor, his bishop keep questioning him about what he hopes to accomplish by his protest. He cannot convince them that it is not a protest, that he is simply following his conscience, refusing to take part in the evil that the Nazis are doing.
In the second part, the film alternates between the mean, cruel treatment he receives in prison from officers and the increasing difficulty that his wife is having trying to run the farm without his help. On the soundtrack we hear the heartfelt letters that they write to each other. When she gets news that he has been condemned to death, she travels to see him. She tells him that she loves him and encourages him to do what he is convinced is right.
Terence Malick strikes me as a mystic who is trying to find ways to express this on film, especially in recent movies like To the Wonder and The Tree of Life. I think he succeeds in A Hidden Life by showing us Jagerstatter's direct awareness of God, by allowing the viewer time for reflection and by keeping the dialogue clear and sparse.
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