Today I yam a man, a retired man, and I've been thinking for some time that when that happened would be a good time to start writing brief, shallow comments on films I see. So let's crank this Model T and see whether we can't get it restarted.
A Hidden Life
Crit
Honestly, a 3-hour Terrence Malick film on moral courage in the face of a wicked state is more a "I guess I gotta" than an "oh boy!" for me, but man, is there any filmmaker as unafraid of the biggest of the big questions? Why all the wickedness, why all the suffering, why all the injustice, and what the heck are we here for anyway? No answers, of course, but plenty of big questions.Also big is the gorgeous setting: if you were a person who believes in God, and who believes that the voice of God can, under the right conditions, be heard, the mountains and valleys--partly wooded, partly cleared for farming--of Austria would be conditions that would make sense. Of course, as just about any biblical prophet could tell you, there's zero worldly, practical value to hearing God's voice, unless you happen to have a death wish. Then again, those who hear God's voice tend not to be much about practicalities.
OK, this is my first time doing this in a while, and I realize that I sound awfully flip, as if I didn't admire this film, as if I didn't find it moving, even awe-inspiring, and, at bottom, as if I didn't like it a ton; not so, i.e., negative all those negatives. And see it.
- Let's do trailers that excited me in brief, like so: Downhill, clearly a comic remake of Force majeure, with Julia-Louis Dreyfus and Will Ferrell and a script credited in part to Alexander Payne's writing partners for The Descendants; Kelly Reichardt's next, First Cow; and a wild-looking spin on Peter Pan, Wendy, by Benh Zeitlin (remember Beasts of the Southern Wild?).
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