Terrence Malick’s World War Two drama is finally… | Little White Lies

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Ter­rence Malick’s World War Two dra­ma is final­ly tak­ing shape

24 Jan 2017

Words by Lena Hanafy

A person wearing a straw hat, sunglasses, and a denim shirt with patches, standing outdoors.
A person wearing a straw hat, sunglasses, and a denim shirt with patches, standing outdoors.
Matthias Schoe­naerts and Bruno Ganz are among the cast of the director’s upcom­ing film Radegund.

Ahead of the release of Ter­rence Malick’s star-stud­ded Song to Song in March, the syn­op­sis for the writer/director’s next fea­ture has been revealed. Rade­gund makrs his sec­ond World War Two-set dra­ma, fol­low­ing 1998’s The Thin Red Line, and cen­tres on the true sto­ry of Franz Jäger­stät­ter, an Aus­tri­an farmer and a con­sci­en­tious objec­tor to the Nazi régime dur­ing the War. In 1943 he was exe­cut­ed for refus­ing to serve in the Ger­man army and in 2007 he was declared a mar­tyr by the Catholic Church.

Ger­man actor August Diehl is play­ing the lead, which is some­what iron­ic giv­en that he’s best known for his role as the vin­dic­tive Nazi Major in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds. Rade­gund will report­ed­ly fol­low Franz and his wife Franziska (Valerie Pach­n­er) as they face resis­tance from a com­mu­ni­ty that views his fail­ure to serve his coun­try as a shame­ful betray­al. Told through wartime let­ters, the couple’s rela­tion­ship will pre­sum­ably pro­vide the main nar­ra­tive thrust; love in the face of extreme persecution.

Where Malick’s recent films have boast­ed A‑list casts, this one is dom­i­nat­ed by less­er-known char­ac­ter actors. Among the more recog­nis­able faces are Matthias Schoe­naerts, who played a Nazi in 2014’s Suite Française, and Bruno Ganz, who famous­ly por­trayed Hitler him­self in Oliv­er Hirschbiegel’s Down­fall. Giv­en the most­ly Ger­man line-up, it’s a fair bet to say that this will be Malick’s first for­eign-lan­guage film.

The film is cur­rent­ly list­ed as in post-pro­duc­tion after film­ing wrapped last August, and a release is not expect­ed until 2018. Giv­en Hollywood’s con­tin­ued fas­ci­na­tion with this par­tic­u­lar con­flict – this year alone sees the release of Hack­saw Ridge, Dunkirk and The Man with the iron Heart – it will be inter­est­ing to see what Mal­ick brings to the table here. The ear­ly signs are cer­tain­ly pos­i­tive, point­ing towards an alter­nate perspective.

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