All of Malick’s distinctive visual and aural hallmarks are here, from windblown fields of wheat to breathy philosophising voiceover. A Hidden Life feels, in many ways, like an apotheosis of his art. His is a story of moral conviction challenged and interrogated on all sides, of man’s search for grace in a world that often appears graceless, and of unacknowledged valor - that scarcely celebrated (and scarcely imitated) act of relinquishing comfort to do the right thing, at great and grave personal cost, and without reward.įew people are better qualified to tell such a story than Malick, whose entire body of work has been situated at the intersection between the ordinary and the exalted - looking inward at man’s infinitesimal stature, and outward at the vast and often inscrutable universe. After a significant time spent in the wilderness of historical obscurity, he was declared a martyr by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, and was beatified later that same year. Many of his fellow Austrian Catholics fought for Hitler without any crisis of conscience, seeing the war as justified because it would bring about the eradication of Bolshevism, and therefore the protection of European Christianity. During Jägerstätter’s life, and for many years following his death, he was regarded as a traitor not only to his country, but also to his faith. For his refusal to pledge allegiance to Adolf Hitler on the grounds that he believed the war to be unjust and Nazi ideology to be antithetical to his Christian faith, he was arrested, tried and executed in 1943 - surrendering his life for his principles. A Hidden Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick, depicts the last years of Franz Jägerstätter, a real-life Austrian farmer who became a conscientious objector during World War II.
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