It’s faith ver­sus fas­cism in the trail­er for A Hid­den Life

Back at this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the crit­ics were divid­ed on Ter­rence Mal­ick​‘s lat­est fea­ture A Hid­den Life. Was it a thun­der­ous return to form for the world-renowned auteur, or mere­ly the lat­est in a con­sis­tent series of mas­ter­pieces that didn’t even neces­si­tate a return from any­thing in the first place?

Point being that it’s a very good movie – though the upcom­ing pub­lic release will undoubt­ed­ly bring some con­tention to that claim. The first offi­cial trail­er is now here to prop­er­ly ignite the debate, dish­ing up the clas­sic Mal­ick we all know and love (or don’t love).

The whis­pery voiceovers, twirling cin­e­matog­ra­phy, and vis­tas of nat­ur­al splen­dor remain hall­marks of Malick’s style as he shifts focus to wartime Aus­tria. It’s there that con­sci­en­tious objec­tor Franz Jäger­stät­ter (August Diehl) refus­es to join the ranks of the Nazis, firm in his belief that the Chris­t­ian god he wor­ships would frown on his cre­ations method­i­cal­ly exter­mi­nat­ing one another.

The trail­er plays up the themes of peace­ful resis­tance, a notion with excep­tion­al poten­cy for Amer­i­can audi­ences at the moment, as the nation argues with itself over the best way to stem the oncom­ing tide of domes­tic fas­cism. Diehl’s life sto­ry – spoil­er alert, but he was exe­cut­ed with the assur­ance that his noble deeds would be lost to his­to­ry – is just as liable to cat­alyze heat­ed debate as the polar­iz­ing Mal­ick­ian technique.

We at Lit­tle White Lies fell in the pro-Mal­ick dur­ing Cannes, with our own Adam Wood­ward describ­ing the film as ​“sub­lime” and ​“breath­tak­ing.” Whether the director’s work inspires rap­ture or revul­sion, one thing is clear: in the com­ing Mal­ick Wars, there will be no one left sit­ting out.

A Hid­den Life comes to the­aters in the US on 13 Decem­ber, and then the UK on 17 Jan­u­ary, 2020.