A Hidden Life

After a run of increasingly abstract films that lost him a good deal of goodwill, Terrence Malick returned to the Cannes competition in 2019 with something structured, chronological and shot largely in German. It is nearly three hours long and it is his best work since The Tree of Life.

Franz Jägerstätter was a real farmer in St. Radegund in Upper Austria, beatified by the Catholic Church in 2007. Called up in 1940, he refuses the oath of loyalty to Hitler. August Diehl plays him and Valerie Pachner plays his wife Fani, who stays in the village and is spat at in the lane, refused help with the harvest and told by everyone from the mayor to the bishop that her husband is being proud rather than principled. Jörg Widmer, Malick's longtime camera operator, shot it on wide lenses in the actual valley, and the correspondence between Franz and Fani — real letters — is read throughout in voiceover.

The title comes from George Eliot, quoted at the end: the growing good of the world depends partly on unhistoric acts. Malick's subject is a decision that changed nothing, made by a man nobody would have heard of, and the film's argument is that this is precisely what makes it worth three hours. It is also, quietly, about what a marriage can carry. Bruno Ganz and Michael Nyqvist both appear in their final roles.